can become someone else so readily, so completely, then is who she is with me even real?
Or is it merely another character she’s created? One her sister and the FBI designed based on some profile of what would appeal to me?
Was any of it real?
My feelings were. They are.
I’m honest enough to admit to myself that in just a few days, she’s carved a hole in my heart and inserted herself, and now that hole feels empty. She’s entwined herself with my emotions, and I wish I could explore them just as much as she declared the same to me.
But if what I feel is based on some fantasy creature that doesn’t even exist in real life, then how real can they be?
Anger replaces the affection the longer I sit here, watching her act, watching her laugh and talk with her co-workers during breaks, casually chatting and keeping it relaxed before the director calls for action again. It’s disconcerting, watching her flip in and out of character like it’s nothing.
I hear the disembodied voice of the director, who’s been in a tiny orchestra pit this whole time, call a wrap with a rehearsal call time for tomorrow, and people start to mill out, but then he calls out, “Emma, a moment, please.”
I see the bite of her lip, a sign of her nerves. But she approaches the front row with her head held high.
She looks every bit the educated, upper-class, rich girl she grew up as. Not too cocky, not too bitchy, just serenely elegant and ready to take anything the director says to her with a wan smile.
Bland, vanilla, fake.
This is her fake.
I can see that at least, and a tiny kernel of hope tries to rise inside me. But I remember her on stage, how real it all seemed, like I was merely watching people go about their actual lives. Not acting.
She’s that good, I remind myself harshly.
The director gets up on stage and says something quietly to her before she walks off, and I can see the smile on Emma’s face, like she gave her good feedback or something. I want to take her happiness away. I can’t bear to see her have it from someone else.
Not when she’s destroying my every belief in her right before my very eyes.
I stand, walking to the front silently, my feet barely whispering on the carpet. Reaching into my pocket, I message my driver. 3 min.
“Emma?” I say from the darkness when her back is turned, and she can’t see me in the glare of the stage lights.
She jumps, whirling. “Shit, you scared me!”
I step further into the light, and she looks around as confusion scrunches her brows. “What are you doing here?”
“Spying on you,” I tell her honestly, wanting to throw the truth at her like a knife. “You’re good. Really good.”
Her smile almost returns instinctively at the compliment, but then it registers that perhaps I hadn’t intended it as one. “Why do I get the feeling you think that’s a bad thing?”
“Come,” I say simply, though I expect her to argue. Instead, she nods and hooks a thumb toward the side of the stage.
“Let me grab my bag.”
Her agreeableness is suspect. I think everything she does will be suspect from here on out.
But she does disappear backstage and then reappear a moment later with a normal-sized bag slung over one shoulder.
“Where to?” she asks, trying not to smile but still managing to give off the impression that she’s happy about this. But can I trust what my gut’s telling me about her reaction?
I turn, leaving the theater and heading to the curb outside. She follows like a trained dog, or like the submissive girlfriend she’s been playing, I think with a sneer. I hate that something so new and unexpectedly delightful to me has been sullied by her repeated lies and omissions.
Did she enjoy it too, or was that part of the act?
My gut roils, remembering our night together. If anything, I’m pretty sure she didn’t fake her orgasms . . . although who says you can’t enjoy your work?
I hold the car door open for her, not because I’m a gentleman but so I can shove her inside if she tries to make a run for it.
The ride to my house is quiet, and I stare out the window, thinking.
She looks at me the whole way, saying nothing, but her eyes full of questions. Questions I’m not going to answer here.
Grant opens the door when we arrive,