Chapter 13 #2
She slips her arm in mine again, and the heat that suddenly flutters in my chest is jarring. I clear my throat as we breach the doors, into the large foyer. Smells like paste and old plaster, and old people, too. Ah, church.
“I’ll shut up now,” she whispers, but turns to me, doing the exact opposite.
“Screw him, acting like I’m so hung up on him and what he did to me that I’d be out here unfocused.
” Her nostrils flare and a little vein bulges on her temple.
“I’m going to make a film better than he can wrap his little pea brain around,” she hisses, whispering, her eyes kind of bulgy at this point, too.
Still sexy. “And he can take his condescending attitude, and his camel-toed girlfriend, and fuck off!”
A swift and gentle few steps and I’ve got her pinned against the wall, my hand over her mouth.
Her chest heaves as she acclimates to the movement, to me handling her after weeks of hardly any physical contact.
She looks up at me, mossy green eyes flaring.
“Don’t curse at church,” I warn her quietly, nearly ready to turn her around and swat her behind, because right now, she certainly earned it.
But I don’t, because I have restraint, and more than that, that isn’t how it is with us.
She’s temporary in my life. A season, I remind myself.
“And also, the doors are open, and your whisper ain’t that much of a whisper.
” Our faces are the closest they’ve ever been or will be.
I’ve got the strongest urge to grab her by those cute fucking cheeks and slam my big, filthy mouth against hers.
My dick wants that very much, because I've been fighting a hard-on since my boots hit the ground. “So please keep it down so Sable Sky doesn’t chase you out of here with a pitchfork.”
I slide my hand off of her mouth and step back, but I don’t get far. Because she reaches for me, filling her fist with my shirt, keeping me there. Near her.
Goddamn it.
My heart is racing.
I nearly killed myself on that bucking machine today. My back is one bad ride away from being shot, I’m sure of it, and my neck has seen better days too. The headaches. The headaches are so unreal.
But right now, my heart is racing, and I feel more alive than I do under those arena lights, more alert than I do with my whole body on fire from training.
“Would they?” she breathes, her eyes searching mine, fist still holding me close to her. Guh-gung. Guh-gung. Guh-gung. My ears throb from the echo of my racing heart.
My mouth is cottony and uncomfortable. “Maybe.” I half smile. “I wouldn't." I shrug. “Well, I’d give you a head start.”
She tips forward, her laughter bending her in half. The sound of her is so sweet to my ears, so gentle and melodic—and there goes my heart rate again.
“Stop. Okay. You’re right.” She rights herself, smoothing her hands down her tank top and skirt, making my eyes chase her beautiful hands.
She has very beautiful hands. I’d die a thousand times before I ever told her, because that’s not something you say aloud, but I love her hands.
I’d love to see them around my cock, oh Lord.
Look at me, lecturing her about being in church and cursing and I’m imagining the worst. My filthy hands all over her sweet, smooth body, all young and… too good for me.
Inevitably, guilt hits, because I know in my heart I’m roping this girl into a mess, and it’s not fair to her. Especially now that I know her a little better.
But she will make the perfect wife for the court, and I’ll do anything to keep Sadie. And it’s not like Sable Sky is crawling with single ladies. I mean, I was really considering Mabel.
Quinn snaps, and I jerk my head up. “Hey,” she whispers, actually whispering. Now I at least know that she can. “You zoned out. Are you okay?”
I nod. “Yeah.” Can’t tell her why I was zoned out or what I was thinking about, so I insist, while nudging her forward, toward the doors, with my hand on her waist, “I’m fine, c’mon, I don’t like walking in late and having everyone turn around and look at ya’.”
That part happens to be true.
We make our way inside, and my leg rests against hers for the entire service.
Didn’t hear a word of the sermon.
Quinn comes in through the back door while I’m in the kitchen fixing a salad and some sandwiches. She ditched her little red boots in favor of her bare feet, and the sight of a woman comfortable in my house makes me realize I want to do this again.
A relationship. Love.
I do, I just can’t wrap my head around wantin’ someone when my life is in such disrepair.
I cut her sandwich in half, then cut it in half again before I realize I’m making sandwiches for grown-ups and not three wild little girls who, among the group of them, don’t have enough teeth to chew a steak.
“Plannin’ my birthday?” Sadie bounces over, digging her hand into my pocket as she eyes me making food.
I roll my eyes. “Your birthday was three months ago.”
“Well,” she bounces, ponytail swinging, “you never let me go to Petunia’s on Sunday!”
It’s true. Sunday we usually have lunch together here, and it’s a slow day on the ranch.
Sadie sits with me on Daisy, and we take a long ride of the property, enjoying short stops to collect flowers, pet Tate’s goats, and snap photos.
We cook dinner together after lying in the hammock under the oak tree, and in general, it’s our day to enjoy the ranch.
Only now I realize that there won’t be a ranch to enjoy if I don’t get this fake marriage going, and if I don’t push my body to the limit, train my hardest, and do my damnedest out there in that arena in two months, I’ll lose everything that matters and the only thing that matters.
“Well, me and Miss Quinn need to have a talk about the movie and… some other stuff,” I explain just as Sadie turns around, only just now realizing Quinn is already here.
“Miss Quinn!” Sadie beams.
“What a treat, I get to see you on Sunday. Twice!” Quinn says, smoothing her fingers through Sadie’s ponytail.
Sadie crawled over my lap and sat next to Quinn at church this morning, and Tate gave me the eyeball at that move, then sent me a text message that simply read ASK QUINN.
Fortunately, as Mabel was dragging Quinn around the lobby and introducing her to everyone, I was able to pull Tate aside and spill.
I explained that I had asked Quinn and that she has tentatively agreed, but that we needed to talk privately after service today to iron out the kinks. Tate agreed to take Sadie, because I believe with all of my heart he and Love feel just as invested in my success as I am.
If I lose Sadie, we lose Sadie. That’s how close we are.
Love pulls open the back door and pokes her head inside. “Who wants pizza?”
Sadie squishes Quinn’s cheeks in her hands, pressing a kiss to her nose. “Have fun with Daddy. I’ll see ya later!” And with that, she’s hand in hand with my best friend’s wife, traipsing across the lawn toward their place.
At the counter, I press a piece of toasted bread slathered in mustard into the other half of the sandwich against a fresh slice of tomato. Quinn braces one hand against the glass, watching Sadie go.
After another weighty sigh that sounds a lot like the one she did when Melvin was on her mind earlier, Quinn leaves the back door where she’d been lingering.
She comes to join me, helping herself to the pitcher of sweet tea in the fridge.
She fills two glasses in comfortable silence, standing right next to me all casual and natural.
It’s gonna hurt when she leaves, because she brings so many things I’ve missed, but still, it’s worth it at the moment.
She smells like flowers in the sun, sugar cookies, and all things good woman.
The crotch of my best denim gets hot and tight, and suddenly that jerk down the drain in the shower doesn’t seem like it was nearly enough.
“I liked the service today,” she announces, drinking from the glass then refilling it.
This time, she hops up onto the counter, her white skirt brushing the plate I’m making sandwiches on.
I pause for a moment, calibrating to the way she chooses to be so comfortably and casually close to me, how effortless it is.
Almost like the two of us together is the most natural thing.
“Yeah, it was good,” I agree, though I didn’t hear a word because my mind was working overtime on this lunch. What will her demands be? What will she want? What boundaries do I need to put in place to make this the best fake marriage?
I couldn’t come up with answers to any of those things, because I kept asking myself other questions like, will she move in? Will I get to kiss her in public to make people believe we’re really an in-love, married couple? Will she hold my hand at church?
And more than that, one question hovered in my mind: how will I explain this to Sadie?
“So,” she hedges, breaking me from my introversion. “Let’s talk about our impending nuptials, shall we?”
I work on the second sandwich, adding lettuce and sprouts. “Okay.” I glance at my ring finger, where a gold band still resides.
She must notice, because she softly adds, “You can keep that on. I totally understand.”
I look up at her, hands on the sandwich, and find her green eyes wide, full of understanding. “I mean, I don’t understand your loss, and I don’t mean to imply it, but more so, I understand the desire to keep that ring on, even for this.”
I lower the knife to the side of the plate, my eyes on hers as I drag the gold band down my finger, and set it on the counter. “I accept that Amelia is gone,” I tell her, having never said these words aloud, “and I know wearin’ that ring doesn’t make me any closer to her in Heaven.”
Quinn blinks at me, like she’s thinking over what I just said. “You feel close to her no matter what?”