Twenty minutes later I’m standing in front of the ABC Studios building on 66th, mustering the very small reserves of courage inside me. A breeze has picked up, and I listen to the flags above me rustle as my dress blows around my legs.

“I can do this,” I say, to no one. To myself.

Then I breathe in through my nose, hard, exhale through my mouth, and push open the doors.

The security guard is the same one that was on duty last time I was here; with any luck he’ll recognize me and figure I belong. He does seem to think I look familiar, but I can also tell he’s not quite placing me. I approach the desk, rooting in my memory—not good even at the best of times, certainly not good now—for his name.

“Can I help you?” he says.

“Yes,” I say, giving him what I hope is an engaging and sincere smile. “You’re … Al, right?”

He nods, narrows his eyes at me. “And you are?”

“Jenna—remember I was here with Mitch last week? Mitchell Cole?”

He nods, smiling back at me now. “Oh, yeah, of course. Let me just let him know you’re here—”

“No!” I say, startling him with his hand halfway to the phone. “I mean, I—I want to surprise him.”

Yeah, surprise him with a visit from the last person he wants to see right now. How’s that sound, Al?

He’s shaking his head. “Sorry, ma’am, I can’t let you in unless he comes out to get you. Can’t have just anyone traipsing around back there.”

“No, no, of course not,” I agree, nodding. “It’s just—it’s a little surprise, you know?” Again, I pull out my most winning smile.

He remains unimpressed, and picks up the phone.

“Maybe I could just sort of peek around the corner and flag him down?” I say.

He shakes his head and starts to punch in numbers.

This is it. I can stand there while Mitch tells him to send me away, or I can do something for once in my life, instead of waiting for it to be done for me.

I dart around the corner of the desk and leg it for the set. Al calls after me—“Hey!”—and I keep moving, figuring it will take him a minute to stand and be after me. But my figuring doesn’t account for the fact that he’s trained security personnel, and within thirty seconds he’s hot on my heels, so close I can hear him breathing, as I swing around a corner into the Ratcliffe living room and run smack into Mitch.

He staggers back a couple of steps, I rebound backwards in the other direction, and Al catches my arm and starts pulling me backwards.

Mitch is silent, still. Is it just shock at seeing me, or is he really going to let security escort me off the set?

There are about half a dozen people milling around, but no one is in makeup. Blocking, then. At least I didn’t interrupt shooting. Martina is standing in the carriage house set in a robe, holding a handful of green sheets and just watching the bizarre scene unfolding in front of her.

Oh, shit, it’s love scene day.

But I can’t spare a thought for that. I look at Mitch, who just looks back at me, still not speaking, still not moving.

I pull against Al’s grip on me; he shifts so that he’s holding both arms now. This is really going to happen. He’s really going to haul me out of here.

“Mitch,” I say, trying to put everything, the entirety of what I feel and what I want, in my voice. Willing him to hear me. “Please.”

He runs a hand through his hair, looks away from me, then back. “You can let her go.”

I sag with relief. It’s actually kind of a good thing that Al doesn’t immediately obey, because for a moment or two he’s the only thing holding me up.

After a couple of seconds, Mitch repeats himself. “You can let her go.”

Al does. “I tried to stop her out front—I never thought—”

“It’s fine,” Mitch says, never taking his eyes off my face. “She’s … difficult.”

I feel like I should object or defend myself—but he’s not wrong. I am difficult. So I don’t say anything.

Al backs away slowly, then shrugs and leaves, returning to the front to stand once again between the cast of Midnight Confessions and the unwashed masses. Hopefully with more success than he had with me.

“Mitch,” I say again. “I have to talk to you.”

“I see that,” he says, but his voice is still as cold as it was in my apartment. “Let’s go somewhere private.”

He starts to turn away and I stop him with my hand on his arm.

“No,” I say.

He just looks at me.

“No,” I say again. “I don’t want to go anywhere private. I don’t have anything to say to you that I can’t say in front of the whole world.” And no matter how much I envisioned this triumphant moment on the way over here, no matter how brilliantly I imagined myself telling him how I feel about him, now that the time is here I can’t seem to formulate one sensible word.

All I have is the truth, which might not be enough.

He sighs. “Come on, Jenna. Let’s go to my dressing room.”

“I don’t want to go to your dressing room,” I tell him. “I want to talk right here.”

“In front of half the cast?” he says.

“I don’t care about that. I just want to stop this before it gets any more out of control, before we let another dumb misunderstanding come between us.”

“What misunderstanding would that be?”

“How about that time you jumped to conclusions, and assumed the worst of me because of some crazy thing you invented in your own mind?” I ask. “Isn’t that my job?”

“Jenna—”

“So if we’re switching roles, here I am,” I say. “You’ve put up with all my craziness, and everything I dragged you through, and you’ve always come back to try to work it out. It’s my turn.”

“Jenna—”

“And I have to make you listen to me, because what you walked in on this—”

He moves forward and grabs my wrist. “No,” he says quietly. “Not here.”

I drop my voice as well. “I need to tell you—”

“Not here,” he says again, and turns and pulls me behind him as he strides to a door at the other end of the set.

I try to twist free but I’d probably have to break my own wrist to do it; he’s not hurting me but neither is he letting me go. There’s a hallway, then another door, then another hallway, then one last door with three names on a placard beside it. One of them is his.

Inside, the room is spare: a couple of chairs, a small sink and counter. A little grimy, dude stuff everywhere, plain walls. I step across the room—it takes all of five steps—and put my back against the wall opposite the door. He’s not dragging me anywhere again. Especially since the only other place I can think of him dragging me is right out of here.

And I’m not going. Not without a fight.

He locks the door behind him and stands against it, looking at me with furious eyes. “Are you out of your mind?”

I shake my head. “I just wanted—”

“What part of you could possibly think that I want to stand there in front of my coworkers and listen to you make excuses for sleeping with Drew—”

“I didn’t!”

He’s obviously never going to let me get a word in edgewise, so I just steamroll over him.

He’s trying to be quiet; I’m not, so I win.

“I know it looks bad, I know how it looks,” I say, “but look at me. I’m here. I’m here because you’re wrong, you’re so wrong, and I can’t let you go one more minute thinking—”

He crosses the room and traps me against the wall with a hand braced on either side of my head. He smells so good I could weep. “Do I look stupid? I saw what I saw.” His eyes are locked on mine, and there’s a storm brewing in them. He’s furious, but there’s genuine suffering layered under the fury. The air between us is charged with everything that’s happened—all the misunderstandings and missed chances, all the mistakes we made.

Well, mostly the mistakes I made. There would be more trust between us if I hadn’t been so stupid for ninety percent of the time we’ve known each other. One night, no matter how amazing, doesn’t cancel that.

But I’m not leaving here till he believes me, so that’s just going to have to be that.

“No,” I say. “You’re not stupid, I know what you saw.” I reach up, take his face in my hands—this face that’s changed my life completely in four short weeks. I speak softly, to ward off the storm, but firmly, so he knows I mean it. Every bit of what I feel for him has to be in this. Nothing held back. No fear that I might look dumb, no worry that putting myself on the line is too dangerous. “But you need to listen to me now, okay? I know I’ve been crazy. I know I’ve hurt you. And I know that what you saw this morning—”

He turns his head away.

I wait a moment, then gently turn it back, make him meet my eyes again. “I didn’t sleep with Drew. I know how it looked. I know that it couldn’t possibly have looked worse, but I didn’t. He showed up at my door drunk as hell, and passed out in my living room, and I left him there instead of tossing him out the window—which I very much wish I had done, actually, all things considered. That’s it. That’s all of it. I swear, I promise you, I wouldn’t—I couldn’t. Okay? I could never, not after you. Not after us. And I’m going to keep telling you until you believe it.”

“He put his hands on you,” he says, and his voice actually cracks. “Right in front of me. Like he had a right to.”

“He doesn’t have that right, and he never will again. If you’d waited five seconds before threatening him with bodily injury, I would have taken care of it myself.” I let myself smile, just a little, because wouldn’t that have been fun? “I only want one person to put his hands on me.”

The storm breaks. He closes in all the way, pinning me against the wall and sliding an arm around my waist, a hand into my hair. His mouth comes down on mine, and his kiss is rough and dangerous, nothing like any way he’s ever kissed me before.

It’s a claiming, and I know that; it seems that all Ryan’s tutoring on the mysterious and territorial ways of the red-blooded American male has actually made an impact on me. Mitch is telling me—telling himself—that I’m his. Which is exactly what I want, anyway, so I slide my arms around his neck and kiss him back, hard, because that’s what he needs.

He pulls back and drops his forehead against mine. “It broke me,” he says, his voice uneven. “I felt something inside me break.”

“I know. I saw.” I kiss him, softly. “I’ll fix it. Let me fix it. I—” I falter, stumble over it. It’s scary. But I take his face in my hands again, keep my eyes on his so there can be no doubt. “I love you. I love you so much I can’t think straight. I don’t even know when it happened, but I’m crazy, head-over-heels in old-fashioned love with you. When you walked out this morning, and I actually thought about what the rest of my life would look like without you in it? I wanted to be dead. I have never felt like this with anyone in my whole life, and I can’t even imagine ever feeling this way about anyone ever again.”

He doesn’t move, doesn’t blink. For a couple of seconds, he doesn’t even breathe.

“Jenna,” he says. Just my name.

“I love you,” I say, “and there’s not going to be anyone else for me, not anymore. So unless you plan to let me grow old and die alone, and be eaten by my fourteen cats, you have to let me make this okay.”

I was hoping for a smile, but instead he wraps both arms around me and buries his face in my hair. His “I love you” is muffled, but that doesn’t matter.

“Good,” I say. “You’d better.” I rub the back of his neck, his shoulders. “After I came all this way, and in my best dress, you’d better love me.”

He lifts his head; the storm is gone from his eyes. “I think I’ve loved you since I saw your face at Jacks that first night. Literally from that moment.”

“I think I fell in love with your voice that night,” I say. “The rest of it took some time to catch up, so I’m going to have to love you harder to make up for it.”

My hands are shaking a little as I reach out and start unbuttoning his shirt. I almost lost him. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d lost him.

And I’ve got to do something with all this adrenaline.

He slides his hands down my sides, rests them on my hips. “Is this really your best dress?” he asks. “I’ve never seen it.”

I nod, opening the last button and sliding my hands inside his shirt. His skin is warm against my palms. “I’ve been saving it for a special occasion.”

“I’ll be careful with it, then,” he says. His voice is low, rumbly—the exact sort of growl that frazzles my nerve endings—and his fingers brush the skin of my back as he slides the zipper down slowly. “You should wear it more often.”

“I will,” I say. And I pull it over my head and let it drop to the floor.