I haven’t been acting, have I? At some point everything I’ve done with Ryan has shifted from pretend to real.

When did it become real?

I shove Ryan off me, so hard he crashes into Jessie, who is quick on her feet and wraps her arms around his chest, keeping them both upright.

She flattens her palms on his belly and shouts, “I count eight! Eight pack for the win!”

And then I run, shooting down hallways, running past people who are staring at our little party.

The party I can’t escape fast enough.

“Carrie!” Ryan’s calling for me, but I ignore him, yanking open the stairwell door and sprinting up the steps.

I can’t.

I can’t pretend any more.

A hot ball of emotion forms in my gut like a new star, roiling and twisting, hot and fevered.

What have I done?

I race to my room — our room — and throw myself on the bed, the cool sheets like my mother’s hand against my cheek.

Within seconds, though, I realize I’ve made another mistake as I look up to see Ryan standing before me, hands at his sides, giving me that smoldering gaze.

And just like that, it’s time to be real.

RYAN

“What the hell was that?” she hisses as the hotel room door clicks shut. Carrie is on the bed. Whipping around, the hem of her skirt twirling slightly as she stands, she rears up on me like a frightened horse. “What did you think you were doing back there, Ryan?”

“Having fun. Putting on a show.” My mouth fills with copper. The conflict between pretend and real is bitter, a sour taste I can’t stomach any longer. My smirk makes her face go blank, but only for a few seconds.

The replacement emotion is unthrottled fury.

“I can’t believe you danced like that for the bachelorette party! You’re not here to work. You’re here to pretend to be my boyfriend!” Fuming, she grabs a pillow and punches it. “Every woman in that room ogled you.” Her words are incriminating, accusatory, weighted with unspoken expectation.

I broke a rule I didn’t know we had.

I broke a rule I knew damn well I hated.

“You do know what I do for a living, right?” I can feel my eyebrows hit my hairline. I gesture at my body, undoing my belt buckle, sliding the belt out of the loops.

Snap! I crack the two ends and make her jump.

“What are you doing?”

I drop the belt, undo the button of my pants, then reach up and rip off my own damn shirt, buttons pinging against the ceiling, the lampshade, the ocean-view window. In seconds I’m standing there in my boxer briefs, hand on one hip, giving her a show.

A private one, this time.

“I’m giving you exactly what every other woman in that room got. Go ahead. Look.”

Her pupils go wide, breath catching in her throat. A few strands of wavy hair have pulled out of her hairstyle, curling down the lobes of her ears, brushing against the tops of her breasts. Her cleavage is the pink tone of outrage.

“I’ve seen you in a g-string a thousand times, Ryan.” She pauses, eyes going up and to the right. “Literally. Two years of work is more than five hundred days we’ve been at O together, and I’ve looked at you twice each day.” She closes her eyes and swallows hard, then makes a breathy sound. “At least.”

The dismissive huff makes my blood boil, pulse rolling like a boulder in an avalanche. The air between us is an electromagnetic pulse that shuts down my thinking mind until I am nothing but instinct.

Near-naked instinct.

“Then why do you suddenly care that Jenny’s bridesmaids and mother saw me like this?” I cross the room, determined, my arms tense and akimbo. Every hair on my body starts to rise, standing at attention, the creep of awareness capturing my skin.

“Because… because...” She tosses the pillow at me. I catch it and fling it to the floor, moving slowly like a big game cat, prowling to her, unafraid.

I’m done with fear. Just done.

“Kissing you in public is part of what you wanted, Carrie.” I’ve gone low and cold, my heart thudding in my throat like a bell tolling at midnight, warning the world of the thin layer between light and dark. She’s about to tip everything – our friendship, this fake relationship, the last two years of working together – into dangerous territory.

And I’m ready.

But that doesn’t mean what we’re about to say to each other doesn’t have consequences.

“You know, if we really were boyfriend and girlfriend, that’s not how I would kiss you!” she shouts.

“Oh yeah? Then how would you kiss me? Because that kiss in front of all those people was damn hot.”

“So was your dance!” Our faces are inches away, her breath sweet, the rum in the mojitos she drank earlier drawing me in. The skin under her eyes pulls up as she scrutinizes me. Carrie’s trying not to look at my body.

I grab her hand and put it flat against my stomach, willing her to feel the pulse there, to touch my center, to feel my heat.

“What are you doing?” Her voice cracks midway through the sentence, body betraying whatever anger she has and making her take a step closer to me. One hip brushes against my erection. I close my throat so I don’t react.

“You’re angry all those women ate me up like I’m eye candy.”

“I didn’t — ”

“Admit it.”

A dawning look of something damn close to admiration and revelation ripples across her face. It’s like she’s seeing me through a new lens.

She tries to pull her hand away but I hold her to me with an iron grip, closing the inches between us, my other hand on her chin, making her look at me. Our eyes say a thousand words.

“I — ”

Releasing her hand, I reach up and thread my fingers in the hair at the nape of her neck. “If we really were boyfriend and girlfriend, how would you kiss me, Carrie?”

“Look, I just said that because I was...” My hand in her hair prevents her from looking down, looking away, looking inward instead of straight through the bullseye of my heart.

Where she can see so much more than my naked flesh.

“Carrie,” I insist, pressing her, the stakes too high to step back into the shade of safety. “How would you kiss me?” I move so close but hold back that final half inch, tortured by the blow of warm breath from her lips, the hesitation I feel in her tendons and bone, my own need on display.