Kissing Me Harder, Stepbrother novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Season Two

I didn't answer her.

I'd promised him on the tower.

I turned around and looked at Lennon.

He was still sitting in the sand by the projector, with the light from episode thirty-eight on the side of his face.

Four hundred people followed my eyes and looked at him too.

He stood up slowly and brushed the sand off his jeans.

"Me," he said.

The head of content looked him up and down.

"The stuntman who can't read."

"I can read," Lennon said. "Slow. I learn it by ear. You saw it in your office."

"I did." She almost smiled. "Is that a yes?"

"It's a yes." He looked at me, then back at her. "One thing. I want to read the first script myself. Before anybody reads it to me. However long it takes."

She looked at me.

"It's his script," I said. "He gets it first."

"Fine. Christmas." She put her phones in her back pockets. "Somebody turn off that generator before I lose my hearing."

Captain turned off the generator.

In the quiet, you could hear the waves and four hundred people breathing.

Then Mom started clapping in the third row.

Then everybody did.

The next morning, Lennon sat at my kitchen table with nine pages of yellow legal pad in front of him.

I sat across from him on my hands.

Literally on my hands, so I wouldn't point at anything.

He read with one finger under the line, his lips moving a little.

It took him ten minutes to read the first page.

I didn't help once.

When he got to his first line, he stopped.

He read it again, to himself.

Then he looked up at me and said it out loud, in his own voice.

"You came back for the towel?"

"Is it bad?"

"No." He looked back down at the page. "It's mine."

He read all nine pages.

It took him an hour and forty minutes.

I made three pots of coffee and didn't say a word.

When he finished, he put the pad down very carefully.

"Write the rest," he said.

The app wired the first payment two days later.

My writer's fee, the one Dallas never signed. Plus the license for thirty-eight episodes, with the crew's back pay taken out first, the way she'd promised on the sand.

I looked at the number on my phone for a long time.

Then I drove to Long Beach.

The surf shop under Lennon's studio had a bell on the door like Mom's.

The guy behind the counter looked up from a board he was waxing.

"Hey," he said. "You're the bedsheet girl."

← Chapter 21 · All chapters · Chapter 23 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend