Not My Romeo (The Game Changers 1)

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.”