I took a deep breath at a strange pang I felt in the chest. “You can always find some beauty in the darkness.”
“So you’re humanizing your villain a bit, huh? I like it.”
“If that’s what you want to call it.”
“But the girl in your story refuses him,” Adonis mused, studying the words in front of him. My words. “And then his world begins to fall apart.”
A shiver worked its way down my spine even though I had no idea why I suddenly felt so anxious. “Something like that.”
“The girl is going to be your most important casting decision. She’s going to be hard to get right, vulnerable and resolute at the same time.”
The doors at the back of the theater banged open, making me jump. Another group of students entered the space, laughing and talking together like they didn’t have a care in the world. And they probably didn’t, I was the one who always had one foot in the real world and the other in a nightmare.
Sometimes, I wished they could just cut out the part of my brain where all the crazy came from.
“I guess our time is up.” Adonis stood and gestured for me to follow him. “Come backstage with me. I want to show you something.”
My heart beating a little too hard in my chest, I followed him out of the theater and behind the stage. The gazes of the students behind us burned into my back. I knew what they thought when they saw us together, wondering what a golden boy like Adonis was doing with a girl as strange as I was.
The hallway behind the stage was dark because no one else had been back here all day. I had to use the wall as a guide, so I didn’t trip over my own feet. Adonis put a steadying hand on my arm, and I tried to ignore the tingling sensation that moved along my skin.
We bypassed the empty dressing rooms and entered the deserted costume department. I’d always loved it back here. Olympus College was small, but our theater department had become its flagship program, with all the funding a group of generous donors thought we needed to put on the most beautiful productions in the valley. This room was full to bursting with period pieces from every era imaginable, along with enough accessories to outfit a battalion.
It was one of my favorite places, and not just because my favorite places were out of the spotlight. To me, backstage was the place where the magic really happened. Without the set designers, costumers, and makeup artists, the actors would never get to the stage in the first place. The actual performance was the culmination of work from dozens of other people.
Adonis flipped on the lights, entering the room as if he had every right to be there. “I was helping Madame Aurora catalog everything last week. I’m so glad she’s taken over the costume department. Whoever was here last let this place become a total wreck. There’s some really cool stuff hidden back here that hasn’t been used in ages.”
The costume mistress, Madame Aurora, was territorial as hell. It had taken me six months of sucking up to her just to make it past the doorway. We were lucky she wasn’t here to chase us away with a pair of fabric shears.
“What did you want to show me?”
Adonis strode to the nearest rack with the confidence of someone who knew they could get away with anything. He rifled through the hangers on the rack, biting his lip as he flipped past one garment after another. “It was right here the other day.”
I glanced at my watch, resisting the urge to tap my foot on the floor. It was getting late, and I hated being out after dark. Once the sun set, I needed to be ensconced in my apartment, preferably in bed and under the covers. “We can come back tomorrow.”
“No need. Here it is.” He gently pulled a bundle of frothy fabric out from the rack and laid it over his arm, presenting it to me. “Perfect, isn’t it?”
The dress was perfect. Hand-woven white lace over flesh-colored silk with a bodice that was meant to hug the curves. The bust was modest, cut in a straight line just below the collarbone, leaving the shoulders bare. It was exactly what I imagined the girl in my play wearing.
I’d seen one just like it in my dreams.
Shaking off that irrational thought, I smiled weakly. “It’s amazing.”
His expression didn’t change. “Try it on.”
I raised an eyebrow at him.
“Over your clothes, obviously. Don’t be a coward, just do it.”
I wanted to tell him to go to hell, but the moment that my hands touched the delicate fabric, a shiver of awareness washed over me. This dress was meant for me, I understood it in the same way I knew I had to keep breathing in order to live.
He let the dress fall heavily into my arms, so I was forced to take it or let it fall to the ground. I wanted to tell him no, that it didn’t matter if the dress fit because I would never wear it on stage. But it felt like mine, like something I was meant to wear.
I stripped off my Black Flag T-shirt and then stepped into the dress, pulling it up over my skinny jeans, while Adonis respectfully looked away. The dress was clearly in sharp contrast to my normal wardrobe, I preferred clothes that were mildly grunge because they kept people from noticing me. If I had no makeup and messy hair, then I could pretend people ignored me because of that and not for other reasons.
There was a breathless moment as I pulled the dress over my hips, and the fragile fabric had to stretch slightly. I definitely wondered if it would tear for a heart-wrenching second. But it glided over my waist, and I gently pushed my arms into the sleeves as the full skirt bloomed around me.
“Ta-da.”
Adonis turned back, and his eyes widened. “Wow.”
I turned in the direction of the tall mirror standing upright in the corner. Even in its dusty surface, I could see that the dress fit me like a glove. When I breathed, the fabric pressed against my rib cage and made me feel like I was trapped in a gilded cage of lace and silk.
“It’s nice,” I offered.
“It’s perfect.” He waved his copy of the script in my face. “This was so close to what you described in the notes that it could have been made for your play. I hope whoever you pick to be your leading lady has the same proportions that you do. Hold on, though. We have to try one more thing.” He shifted behind me, and his hands were already in my hair when I realized what he was doing. Before I could stop him, a dark cascade of messy waves and loose curls fell around my shoulders.
“Damnit, Adonis. It took me forever to get my hair to stay up. I haven’t even brushed it today.”
“Sorry,” he murmured, sounding anything but.
I stared at my own reflection, caught in a vision of innocence and latent sexuality. The cream fabric underneath the lace gave the illusion of bare skin, making the dress seem more revealing than it was. There was a cutout just below my ribcage, revealing a flat expanse of my tummy before the stiff lace flared into a full skirt.
“This would look great with it, too.” Going to the rack of accessories on the wall, he picked up a delicate lariat necklace, so brightly gold that it shone in the light. It had no clasp and was made of one long chain that hooked through a crescent moon to form a circle, leaving a trail of stones meant to drape down the chest when it was worn.
“No!” Fear streaked through me for no discernible reason. All I knew was that I didn’t want to put that necklace on, no matter how beautiful it was.