“Ignore him,” she says. “And us,” she adds quickly. “But I gotta be in bed before midnight. We got an early morning, and I’m fading.”
“Don’t want you to turn into a pumpkin on us, Beck.” Henry shrugs. “I guess we should give the people what they want.”
I nod and close my eyes as my lips melt into his for a long but chaste kiss that leaves me wishing for more.
His hands wrap around me in a tight hug, holding me close to his chest, and I can hear the thumping beat of his heart. It might be my new favorite sound. One of his fingers traces a pattern into my bare back over and over again.
My head is foggy, so it takes me a moment to realize he’s telling me something. He’s giving me a message. His finger continues to trace over and over again until he pulls away with an innocent, barely there smile on his face.
I can still feel his finger dragging across my skin in a familiar way, leaving a trace of heat, and I hope to God I got exactly what it was that he was trying to say.
Eight. Two. Six. Eight. Two. Six. Eight. Two. Six. Eight. Two. Six. Eight. Two. Six.
Three numbers that could only mean one thing. Henry’s hotel room.
As soon as I walk through the door of my room, Irina is waiting for me.
I let out a yelp. “What are you doing here?”
She holds a hand out. “The dress,” she says simply, not looking up from the game on her cell phone.
I hold my arm up. “The least you could do is unzip it.”
She unzips and gets a whiff of my armpit. “Ugh, I’ve got to get this thing dry-cleaned. It smells like a sports bra. A sad lost-and-found sports bra at the YMCA. Not even the nice YMCA. The kind with a drained pool and one of those jiggle machines from—”
“I get the point,” I tell her as I step out of the dress and into a pair of leggings and an oversize men’s undershirt I cut into a crop top. “The shoes too?” I ask, the memory of Henry kneeling before me sending a chill up my spine.
“The shoes especially,” she says.
I pick up the Jimmy Choos from the floor and give them a quick kiss on the side of the toe. “Goodbye, beauty.”
Irina sighs. “They are very, very good shoes.”
I nod. “They were good to me.”
She takes them from my hands, and for the first time, I think Irina and I have found common ground. At least the woman can appreciate good taste in shoes.
“You might be smelly,” she says, “but you were really something tonight. I perhaps have to put money on you.”
“I’m not a racehorse,” I tell her as she slinks out of the room with the garment bag over her shoulder.
“Tell that to Wes. He won the pot last year and went on a two-week trip to Bali.”
“What?” I ask, but she’s already gone. “What pot?”
Well, that’s just great. Not only am I dating a man who’s dating seven other women, but I guess the crew is betting on us too. Delightful. I sit down at the desk by my window with my sketch pad, the Statue of Liberty glowing through the nighttime haze, and I write his room number over and over again. Eight twenty-six. Eight twenty-six. Eight twenty-six. Eight twenty-six. Eight twenty-six. Eight twenty-six. Eight twenty-six. Eight twenty-six. Eight twenty-six. Until eventually, it doesn’t look like numbers at all. Just an abstract pattern.
I don’t even have to look to know that Mallory or Zeke is outside guarding the hallway. There’s no way I’m getting out of this room and making it all the way to Henry’s without getting stopped. After our disappearance tonight, I’m sure we’re being even more heavily guarded than usual.
With his walkie-talkie dead and mine very nearly, I’m left with no way to contact Henry. I wish they hadn’t taken the phones out of this room. Surely that’s some kind of insurance liability. If I had my phone, I would curl up in bed and call him and we would talk all night until our breathing became heavy and we just fell asleep to the sound of one another.
I try washing my face. Eight twenty-six. I try pulling my hair into a ponytail. Eight twenty-six. I braid it. Eight twenty-six. It doesn’t look good. Eight twenty-six. I settle for a sloppy bun instead. I try a Korean face mask. Eight twenty-six. I lie in bed. Eight twenty-six. But none of it works. Eight twenty-six.
I can’t do this. I can’t stop thinking about him, and I can’t stop thinking about the chance to spend a whole night with him without a camera in sight.
That’s it. I jump out of bed and put on my gold glitter Kate Spade Keds and a hoodie. Slowly, I creak my door open to peer out into the hallway and find Zeke sitting a few doors down, slumped against the wall, dead asleep. I was fully prepared to blackmail him again just so I could make it to the elevators, but Lady Liberty must be watching over me. If I had a cell phone, I’d snap a picture to send to Anna so she could see how dopey he looks.
With the coast clear, I step out into the hallway, closing my door slowly to stop it from slamming, and tiptoe past him to the elevator. Just as I’m about to hit the button to go five flights up, I stop myself. The dinging sound. It could wake Sleeping Beauty back there, so I opt for the stairs.
As I lean over the rail and take a nice long look at the never-ending staircase, I remind myself that just a few weeks ago, I lived in a third-floor walk-up. By the time I make it to the eighth floor, though, I’m a little sweatier than I was, but I’m relieved to find no producers guarding this floor. I feel like I’m in a video game trying to dodge zombies, when really all I’m trying to do is hang out with a guy I like. Somehow, this show has mentally reverted me to sixteen and I’m scared of being caught inside a boy’s room.
After one knock, the door of room 826 opens to reveal Henry, barefoot with his shirt partially unbuttoned and his tie dangling between his fingers. He smirks. “For a minute there, I was worried you might just assume I was very specifically obsessed with one part of your back.”
He reaches for my hand and pulls me inside.
As the door closes behind me, I slide the tie from his other hand and run my fingers over the shadowed stripes. The silk melts beneath my touch, and I flip the tie over to find the label. “Fancy. Hermès.”
“It was a gift,” he says.
“From your mom?” I ask.
He tilts his head to the side. “Sabrina.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” I tell him, “wearing a tie from your ex on a date with your new—person.”
He takes a step closer to me. “Not a fan of labels?”
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call myself your girlfriend,” I tell him. As I’m talking, he takes another step toward me and dips his head down so that my lips brush his on that last word.
“This feels pretty serious to me,” he says, his voice husky as his fingers dig into my waist.
“I don’t know,” I say, breathless from his touch. “Feels a little crowded.”
He leans his temple against my shoulder so that his breath is hot on my neck. “I want to make so many promises to you right now. Almost as badly as the things I want to do to you.”
I feel like I know two versions of him. On-Screen Henry and Private Henry, but it’s as though the two versions can’t even talk to each other or share information. On-Screen Henry is sweet and flirtatious, but I never fully know where I stand with him. Private Henry is a little rougher around the edges, but he never leaves me wondering.