Star-Crossed by Luna Lacour Read Free Book Online Page B

waste any time. Stretching out your ulterior motives might work for people like Marius; but when it came to my circumstances, it was best to start planting seeds early as possible. I didn't want to leave him wondering. I wanted things to be very, very clear.
    Still, it was hard to control my fluttering anxieties; especially when I arrived in the theater early Friday morning, fifteen minutes before auditions were to start - knowing that Will would likely be alone.
    Breathing deep, I heaved open the heavy barrier and stepped inside. Only to see, of all things, Mr. Tennant as he was buttoning his shirt.
    He paused. The two of us froze for what couldn't have been longer than half a second, but he lingered just long enough for me to see the beginnings of his chest. Protruding collarbones; taut muscle covering fair skin.
    On the chair beside him was a T-shirt.
    I turned immediately, slammed the door shut, and didn't come inside until Mr. Tennant opened the door and cleared his throat.
    “Terribly sorry,” he mumbled, chagrined. “Coffee spill. Come in.”
    He made certain to latch the door behind him. When it was just the two of us, I smiled at him and he smiled at me, and he pointed to the rows of stadium-style theater seating.
    “You can take a seat for now,” he said mildly. “The rest should be arriving shortly.”
    He returned to his seat nearby on stage, focusing on some papers he was grading. I watched him, feeling for the first time a sort of awkwardness. Like I'd made some grand overstep.
    He didn't look up at me once.
    And that's when the notion came that maybe I had fantasized everything. The prolonged looks and soft sighs had been nothing but a tortured, ever-enveloping piece of my imagination.
    “Mr. Tennant,” I said, after several seconds had passed. He looked up, eyebrows raised, and I was ashamed at my own hesitancy. “Is it true that Olivia Hussey has a nude scene in Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet ?”
    His lips parted, then closed, then parted again.
    “It's very brief,” he finally said. “Fleeting, really. Lasts a quick second.”
    “Oh,” I mumbled, crossing my legs. “But there are no nude scenes in this play, correct?”
    He fumbled; coughing and tapping a finger, more rapidly, against his desk.
    “I'd say that's rather obvious,” he said. Then, finally, he scooted his chair back. “You ask a lot of forward questions, Miss Laurent.”
    I smiled. He smiled.
    “I think it's okay for you to call me Kaitlyn.”
    Will laughed, loud and lovely and echoing a sound that I wish could have lasted forever. He didn't laugh much, so when he did, it was wonderful. I liked that I made him laugh.
    “Mr. Tennant,” I curled my fingers into fists, releasing them immediately. “How old are you?”
    “Twenty,” he answered, stopping himself. “Eight.”
    “Twenty-eight?”
    “Yes,” he said, tongue clicking against the side of his cheek. Eventually he took the papers that were on the small stage-centered table, stacked them into a neat pile, and shoved the desk noisily behind the curtain. When he finally emerged, it felt like the symbolic gesture had rendered him someone new. A resurrected William Tennant. “How old are you?”
    “Legal,” I told him. His brow furrowed.
    “Don't be crass,” he said. Was it sick that a part of me enjoyed his authoritative, borderline parental tone? Maybe. “What is your age ?”
    “Eighteen,” I said. “I turned eighteen in January.”
    He smiled. Twenty-eight. A decade between us.
    “Did you do anything fun to celebrate?”
    He was closer now, but for some reason I had failed to notice in the span of time between my eyes falling to the ground and his silent footsteps sliding forward.
    I considered telling him that my father had wanted to make the event into something big. A party of the grandest endeavor; something that Trinity Prep – and the parents of the highest social breeding of Trinity Prep – would be talking about long after the mess was cleaned