Chapter Eleven
Theo
By Sunday night, I was pretty sure Esther did not have faith in our ability to pull off the dating charade. She answered the door looking scorching hot in a sheer black blouse over a dark purple tank top and skintight black jeans, but her eyes were wide and panicked.
“I’m sorry, I just need a second,” she said in a rush, bolting back toward the bedroom while I stepped inside the guest house and closed the door.
A minute later, she returned wearing dangly, glittering earrings and boots with heels that brought the top of her head nearly to my chin. Before she could reach for her coat, I caught her hands in mine and waited for her to meet my gaze.
“Hey,” I said gently. “It’s going to be fine. Even if we leave after twenty minutes, that’s fine. Breathe for a second, okay?”
The breath she sucked in was shaky, but the panic slowly leached from her expression. “Sorry,” she whispered.
“Nothing to be sorry about. As your fake boyfriend, am I allowed to tell you that you look outrageously beautiful tonight?”
She wrinkled her nose at me. “Yeah, yeah. Let’s go before I decide this is a terrible idea.”
I laughed and helped her with her coat, pleased to note that the tension in her shoulders eased while she tied the belt at her waist. When I offered my hand, she rolled her eyes but took it, holding onto me like I was a lifeline.
The drive, fortunately only a few minutes through town, was mostly silent. I’d never been to Botticelli’s, but Oliver told me it catered to a slightly older crew than some of the college bars nearby, offering craft beers from local breweries and cocktails with pop culture references in the names.
“Should we come up with a signal in case one of us needs to hightail it out of there?” I asked as I pulled into the parking lot.
“Yeah, I’ll run screaming toward the door.”
Laughing, I parked the truck and turned to face her. “I’d like things to not reach quite that level of emergency.”
“It’ll be fine,” she said quietly. “It can’t be that much different than dinner with the crew, right?”
“Right. Let’s go.”
In theory, it wasn’t much different—in reality, it seemed likely that walking into a noisy, crowded bar the last weekend before Thanksgiving was Esther’s worst nightmare.
And mine.
People I only vaguely recognized stopped us every few feet from the minute we walked in the door, which meant the trek to the back corner where Sofia, Chase, Ollie, and Julian had secured a high-top table took a solid fifteen minutes.
Esther smiled politely, murmuring noncommittal responses to direct questions, but her fingers tightened painfully around my hand until we broke free of the final group of interested citizens.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered against her ear, catching a hint of vanilla and peppermint drifting up from her hair.
“It’s fine.”
I knew enough to recognize it was definitely not fine, but this wasn’t the place to argue, especially when one of her conditions for this entire act was that I trust her word. We eventually reached the table, greeted our friends, and ordered our drinks from a passing server.
Esther perched on the tall stool beside me, so close I was afraid I’d elbow her in the ribs.
I wrapped my arm around her waist to avoid that and rejoiced when she relaxed against my side.
Both Sofia and Ollie were watching intently—I wouldn’t have been surprised if little hearts came floating out of their eyes.
Fortunately, no one asked any personal questions. Sofia dropped a few pointed hints about us hooking up, including a comment about a handyman calendar that left me baffled but drew a fierce blush and a choked giggle from the woman at my side.
When I sent a questioning look in her direction, she just burrowed under my arm and muttered, “Tell you later.”
I was ready to declare the entire outing a success when an older man wearing a bolo tie passed the table on his way back from the bathrooms and did a double take when he saw Esther.
She went stiff and my entire body snapped to attention.
“Esther, how lovely to see you,” he cooed, his pale blue eyes lingering on the hint of cleavage above her tank top. When she didn’t respond, he smirked. “If I’d known you were going to settle for a loser like this, I’d have made a move sooner.”
“Do I know you?” I asked, striving for a polite tone and falling short by a mile.
He sneered at me. “No, but everyone in Spruce Hill knows about you and your little…accident.”
Anger pulsed through my veins at this asshole making light of the moment that changed my entire life, but I forced down my reaction. Esther deserved a peaceful night out, not her fake boyfriend throwing down with a stranger in a bar.
The tension radiating from her shifted in a way I couldn’t quite read until I glanced down and saw fury written across every inch of her face. I opened my mouth to reassure her that nothing this jackass said was worth expending any energy on, but she beat me to it.
“Now is when you take your sleazeball ass far away from here, Tyler,” she spat, “unless you want the whole town talking about how you’ve spent your entire life enabling abuse. I’m sure the truth won’t impact your career.”
I looked back toward the man just in time to see the blood drain from his face, then he stormed past us to grab his date by the elbow and propel her out the door.
Every one of us stared at Esther, who heaved a sigh and threw back the rest of her drink.
“I think it’s time to call it a night. This was fun,” she said in an even tone, as though the disruption had never happened. “Let’s do it again sometime.”
Sofia blinked in surprise as Esther hopped down from her stool. “Yeah, for sure.”
I followed suit, clasped hands with Ollie, Julian, and Chase, kissed Sofia’s cheek, then looped my arm around Esther’s waist to shelter her as we pushed through the crowd.
When we reached the parking lot, she shifted away, though she took my hand instead of retreating completely. Her fingers were cold, trembling against mine, and the tiny puffs of her breath in the night air came at unsettling intervals.
“Let me guess, he’s a friend of Steve’s?” I asked as I opened the passenger door.
“Business partner. Do snakes have friends?”
I laughed, releasing her hand so she could climb into the seat, then jogged around to the driver’s side. “Other serpents, maybe.”
“God, I hate that guy.”
“Has he messed with you before?” I swallowed back a ball of hot fury at the thought.
“Pretty much on a weekly basis during the length of my marriage. Steve had him over all the time, probably because he knew I hated the guy.”
My jaw clenched hard, but I managed to loosen it enough to ask, “Did he ever touch you?”
“Besides trying to grope my ass at the grocery store a couple years ago?”
I watched my knuckles turn white as my fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “Please tell me you’re joking.”
“Nope. He said Steve told him how hot I was before I stopped ‘putting out’ and he’d been waiting for his turn. I believe he offered to remind me what a real man is like.”
“He’s the one who needs a reminder,” I growled.
Her hand settled on my thigh and I glanced at her in surprise. Under the street lamps, I saw her lips twitch into a tiny smile.
“Please don’t get into any fistfights on my account.”
I laughed, covered her hand with mine, and said, “If he gets near you again? No promises.”
She left her hand there until I pulled into the driveway and I felt its absence like an icy dagger between my ribs. When I shifted into park and turned off the engine, she made no move to get out of the truck, so I stretched my arm along the seatback and rotated my body toward her.
“Tyler aside, that was less terrible than I expected,” she said quietly.
I grinned at her. “Just once, I’d like one of our dates to be better than not terrible. Think we can make that happen?”
When she turned her head, the smooth silk of her hair slipped across the back of my hand, tantalizingly lush and soft. I lifted my left hand to cup her cheek and watched her fight back a flinch. Dropping it back to my lap, I sighed.
“Can I ask you something?”
Esther’s nose wrinkled. “If you must.”
“You don’t owe me any information and I won’t ask for anything more, but even as a fake boyfriend, I feel like I need to know one thing.” I waited for her to tell me to piss off, but she just gave a quick nod, so I steeled myself for the answer and asked, “Did your husband hurt you?”
Surprise washed over her features. “Oh. No. Not physically.”
It wasn’t the reassurance I’d hoped to get, so I just repeated, “Not physically.”
Esther sighed. “He was…manipulative. He isolated me from my friends, even somehow managed to win over my parents so they wouldn’t help me get a divorce.”
“Are you shitting me?”
“No. He spent years systematically breaking me down, criticizing everything about me, flying into a rage over anything he perceived as a mistake.”
I wondered why she hadn’t left him, hadn’t gone to Sofia for help if her parents weren’t willing, but I stopped myself before I could make the mistake of speaking that aloud.
Hell, I’d read enough about the psychology of abuse to know it wasn’t that simple.
Esther was brilliant and resourceful—if she’d felt trapped, it was because of what her asshole husband had done to make her that way.
Even without speaking a word, she caught the look on my face and shook her head like she was disappointed in me for thinking it.
“You’re right. I should never have let it get to that point.”
“That’s not what I was going to say, Esther.”
She made a disbelieving sound. “It doesn’t matter. He’s dead, and I’m free. Dickheads like Tyler have no power over me anymore.”
“Esther,” I said softly, “I’m sorry I brought it up. Even if he wasn’t abusing you physically, emotional abuse is still abuse.”
“Yes, it is. Does that answer all your questions?”
Briefly, I closed my eyes. “I’m sorry for asking, but I needed to know.
This doesn’t have to be real dating to involve real issues and I don’t want to hurt you with some misstep.
I had a girlfriend years ago who’d been in an abusive relationship.
She didn’t want to tell me about it, but her roommate mentioned it once a few weeks in. I wished I’d known sooner.”
“Right. Well, it was a long time ago, but I appreciate your concern,” she said, unbuckling her seatbelt.
“Esther, hang on. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
She flashed a bright smile that was so clearly fake, I felt my chest cave in a little. “I’m fine. I’ll touch base with you in a few days about our next public appearance. I should get to bed, I have a lot of work to get done this week.”
Fuck.
“Please wait,” I begged, but before I could even open my mouth to continue, she shook her head.
“It’s fine, Theo. Really. I’m just tired.”
Though I wanted to take back every word of the last five minutes, it was too late for that. I was a fool for pushing her so soon and the worst kind of hypocrite, given that I hadn’t opened up to her in the same way.
With a sigh, I waited until she finally glanced at me again to offer the gentlest smile I could manage.
She didn’t smile back, not even a fake one, just gave a jerky nod and practically fled from the truck, disappearing into the guest house before I even set foot on the driveway.
All I could do was hope the memories of the rest of the night—apart from the interaction with her dead husband’s asshole friend—would outweigh the debacle of its ending.