Even with my shoulder surgery looming, that gnawing worry about my future in the NFL, this month has been the happiest I’ve— God.

She’s the girl a man dreams of finding someday . . . everything I always wanted.

And I threw it back in her face.

I reacted without listening. I . . . fuck.

You lobbed another interception, Jack.

You lost the fucking game.

Chapter 33

ELENA

Dressed in a knight’s costume, Jack enters the masquerade party as Romeo and gazes at me with what Laura calls Romeo’s “Dang, she’s all I want, and I want my lips on hers” look. It’s pretend.

I’m stage right, makeup repaired, wings on, acting my ass off.

He moves toward me, a dark flush on his cheeks, his lines not quite as sure as they have been. He’s been floundering since the play started. I saw it right away, as soon as he said his first line. I watch him, encouragement in my gaze. Jack, Jack, Jack. You are so beautiful. Don’t let the people get to you is what I hope he sees on my face.

He presses his hand to mine. We kiss. Barely. Pull apart. Gaze at each other as the party continues stage center.

“Then have my lips the sin that they have took,” I say.

“Give me my sin again,” he murmurs.

I swallow. He’s jumped ahead a few lines, but I nod and kiss him again.

He slants his mouth across mine and sighs, his hand still on my face, our bodies closer than they should be.

“Elena.” It’s not loud, but it’s audible and clear. The cast keeps on, never looking at us. His eyes search mine as he opens his mouth, as if to say something, but it’s my line.

“You kiss by th’ book,” I say ardently—like the line calls for.

“Then I’ll take another.”

That is not the line. Nurse appears for her line, and Jack ignores her and kisses me again, his hands sliding into my hair. “Elena,” he whispers in my ear, and I pull back, eyes big.

The mic is hot, catching it, and the audience murmurs. If they missed it the last time, they definitely heard it this time.

Giselle says her line, and Jack is supposed to leave the scene—only he doesn’t. His eyes refuse to drop mine.

Giselle clears her throat, says her line again, and I come back.

One of the stage crew shrugs when I dart my eyes at him. He’s waiting for Romeo to leave, only Jack is still next to me.

There’s an awkward pause, until I flare my eyes backstage. Close the curtains!

The scene ends, the curtains falling at the end of act one.

I blow out a breath and dash stage right for a costume change. Jack follows me, and I whip around. The stage crew stares at us, but I barely notice.

“You can’t do that onstage,” I tell him. “They can hear you.” I refuse to think about how it made me feel, his mouth against mine, wanting me to really kiss him back.

Giselle gets between us and points her finger at him. “You best get back over there where you’re supposed to be, Romeo! You have the first line of act two.”

He swallows, his throat bobbing, then turns and stalks away.

Giselle looks back at me. “You okay?”

I nod. Yeah. But we still have a lot of play left. What else is he going to do?

By the time we get to the balcony scene, I’m sure he’s lost his mind.

Halfway through a long line, he climbs up the ladder to my window—when he isn’t supposed to—and says the rest of it. We’re face to face, and I’m overwhelmed by the maleness of him, by the intensity in his eyes.

It’s a play, Elena. Acting. This is the scene where Romeo wants to crawl in your bed and get busy . . .

But he’s doing whatever he wants onstage, trying to get close to me when he’s near me.

Focus.

I suck in a breath and say my line. “What satisfaction canst thou have tonight?”

“The exchange of thy love’s faithful vow for mine,” he says softly.

My lashes flutter. “I gave thee mine before you asked. I would give it again.”

I screwed it up. That was all wrong. I left out so much. Lord. Help.

He stares at me. “Would you give it again?”

Oh my God. That is not his line!

I clear my throat. “My bounty is as boundless as the sea—”

He cuts me off, saying my line. “My love as deep, the more I give to thee. The more I have, for both are infinite. Forever.”

He takes my hand and laces our fingers together. “Will you tell me again? No one’s ever said it and meant it, Elena.”

I shake my head at him, heart pounding. Hammering.

“I know it’s not a line, but I have to know.”

I dart a look at the audience, who are sitting on the edges of their seats. I see Mama and Aunt Clara. Birdie Walker gawking. Quinn and Devon, an older lady between them.

Nurse comes in, pulling Juliet away, but the play requires me to rush back out to the balcony to Jack. I have no clue what to expect.

I stumble through my part, exiting like Juliet, then running back to see him one more time. Young and reckless and silly girl. Her love will only end in heartbreak, and her Romeo will be banished after he kills Tybalt, and everything will crumble.

Maybe it’s the unease on my face that pushes Jack, because he never misses a beat this time, his timing perfect, his lines not off script.

I’m a total disaster by the time we dash through the hasty wedding with the friar, and by the time the wedding night rolls around, well, all logical thought is gone. The man I love is in Juliet’s bed, lying next to me, his leg pressed against mine as we pretend to awake to the sunrise. I’m wearing a long white nightgown—and he’s in a long white pirate-style shirt and dark pants.

His hands hold mine as he leaves from my balcony window. I can’t think straight. I’m dropping lines like crazy, ad-libbing to make it work. I can’t stop thinking about the next kiss, the next time he holds me.

He steals my line again, changing it. “Do you think we shall ever meet again?”

Wait, what’s my next line?

“I doubt it not,” he picks up with a small smile. “You love me; do you not?”

I gape at him. That is not Romeo’s line. Or mine.

“Do you love me?”

My hands clench. “Did I not say it was so?”

“Will my love forgive me for leaving when he first heard of it? It was only fear and insecurities that drove him thus.”

I glare at him in exasperation. Laura, goodness, I can feel her staring at us in shock.

I shake myself, butchering the next part but getting it out. “Methinks I see you now, as one dead in the bottom of a tomb. Either my eyesight fails, or thou lookest pale.”

He looks out at the sky, seeing the sunrise, and when Romeo is supposed to be sad to be banished from Verona, Jack isn’t. He looks determined, a glint in his eyes as he looks back at me.

“One more kiss, and I’ll descend.”

Nope, we’ve already done that. Not doing it again.

He stalks toward me, gathers me in his arms, and puts his lips on mine, parting them slowly, carefully, almost as if he’s afraid I might run. His left hand holds my hip, away from the stage, a brand on my skin as he deepens the kiss. His hand curls around my waist, and I melt against him, letting him in more, savoring the smell of him, the scent of leather and male, the feel of his hard chest against my breasts.

I push him, my chest heaving.

His eyes glitter down at me as his thumb brushes against my lips. “I love you.”

He walks away from me, and I fight for control, gathering myself as I watch him exit off the stage. It’s the last time Juliet sees Romeo alive. It’s the last time . . .

“Juliet?”

I start as he climbs back up the trellis.

“Romeo, you’re back. What a surprise.”

Someone giggles in the audience. I think it’s Timmy.

“Someone once said that the two most important days of your life are the day you were born and the day you figure out why. I know why.”

Mark Twain? Wrong century! Wrong author!

“To meet you. To fall in love with you. Fate’s a funny thing; she hits you with terrible things sometimes, making you grow up before you’re ready. I never believed in destiny, but what if we’d never met? What if I hadn’t been there at that exact moment when we were supposed to meet at . . . at . . . the masquerade party, where you were supposed to be dancing with someone else. But I was there. And there you were. And I had on the right shirt, er, costume, and you sat down with me, and my heart began to beat. Isn’t that fate? Isn’t that life giving us a chance? Isn’t it? Please, tell me it is, because I can’t walk away from you again without knowing you haven’t given up on me.”

I can’t think of one thing to say. And I should, because by now even a two-year-old could figure out that we are doing a Jack-and-Elena thing here and not Romeo and Juliet.

He continues. “That same author also said that love is not a product of reasonings and statistics, but it just comes—none knows whence—and cannot explain itself.” He pauses. “I didn’t expect it, never dreamed it, never aspired to it. But here it is. Yours.”

Juliet’s mother enters the stage, a startled look on her face. No one knows what to do.

“Go,” I whisper. “Please.”