Chapter 6 Don’t Catch Feelings
DON’T CATCH FEELINGS
DEREK
What the hell was I doing?
It was past two in the morning, and I was sitting at my kitchen island with my laptop open, a tumbler of Macallan beside me, trying to draft what had to be the most insane contract I had ever written.
A fake engagement agreement.
I could have been passed out beside Alessandra, but instead I was enjoying smelling like baby-formula and grilled cheese.
I took another sip of the scotch and stared at the screen, where I had typed out four basic rules:
1. Lily is the priority.
2. No kissing unless Jack is around.
3. Wearing rings is a must (after the engagement.)
4. Stay friends. Don’t catch feelings.
That last one made me laugh. It’s not like I haven’t loved Paige Mitchell for almost twenty years. My heart was telling me to be honest with her, to tell her the truth instead of hiding behind the fake engagement bullshit.
But I couldn’t.
She was vulnerable and barely holding it together. The last thing she needed was me dumping my feelings on her like some pathetic idiot who had been pining on her for decades.
I closed the laptop and downed the rest of my scotch, then made my way upstairs. But as I passed the guest room, I saw the door was slightly ajar. I should have kept walking and gone straight to my room and given Paige the privacy she deserved.
Instead, I paused.
Through the gap, I could see the makeshift nursery we had hastily thrown together. Lily was asleep in the center of the bed, surrounded by pillows we arranged as bumpers to keep her from rolling. She looked so tiny and peaceful. Her little chest rising and falling in a perfect rhythm.
And Paige.
Fuck. Paige.
She was passed out beside Lily, one arm stretched protectively toward her daughter. My old t-shirt swallowed her frame, and her blonde hair was still damp, spread across the pillow.
She looked exhausted. But beautiful in a way that made my heart ache.
Looking at her in my bed, in my clothes, with her daughter sleeping peacefully beside her, I felt protectiveness stir in me.
But I forced myself to step back. To close the door gently and walk away before I did something stupid like go in there and—what? Tell her I had been in love with her since we were kids? That I let Jack have her because I was too much of a coward to fight for what I wanted?
No, I couldn’t do that to her. Not now. Not when she was barely keeping it together.
I made it to my bedroom and closed the door behind me, leaning against it like it could somehow keep all these feelings contained.
My mind was already spiraling as memories flooded back to when I first met Paige.
Flashback
The playground was my least favorite place in the world.
I was sitting alone on the swings while other kids ran and screamed and played together like it was the easiest thing in the world. For them, maybe it was. For me, it was torture.
Because every time I tried to talk, the words got stuck. And when they finally did unstick, they came out wrong.
Maybe that’s why my dad hates me.
“Hey, D-D-Derek!”
I looked up to see Tommy and his gang of third-grade jerks approaching. My stomach sank. Tommy was the worst kind of bully, because he was stupid and thought he was hilarious.
“W-W-What’s wrong?” Tommy stuttered, his face twisting to mock me. “C-C-Can’t talk right? My dad says you’re s-s-s-stupid.”
His friends laughed. My face burned hot, and I looked down at my shoes, willing myself to disappear. I tried to say something, anything, but the words wouldn’t come. They never did when I needed them most.
“Leave him alone!”
The voice came out of nowhere, high-pitched and furious. I looked up to see a girl I had never met before marching toward us like a tiny general going into battle.
She wore a yellow sundress covered in daisies, and her blonde hair was pulled into pigtails that bounced with each angry step. She was small and shorter than me, but she moved like she was ten feet tall.
“Who are you?” Tommy said.
“I’m Paige,” she said, planting herself between me and Tommy. “And you’re being mean. Say you’re sorry.”
Tommy laughed. “Or what? You’ll tell the teacher? Go ahead—”
He didn’t finish the sentence because Paige punched him in the face.
Not a push or a slap but a full-on punch. Her little fist connected with his nose with a crack that made everyone gasp.
Holy crap.
Tommy stumbled backward, clutching his face, and when he pulled his hand away, there was blood. His eyes widened, then filled with tears, as he started crying.
“You hit me, crazy girl. Y-you hit me!”
Paige shook her hand with a wince, but her chin stayed high. “Yeah, and I’ll do it again if you don’t leave him alone!”
Before she could make good on that threat, I grabbed her hand and ran. If I didn’t, she would fight everyone, because she seemed unstoppable.
We didn’t stop until we were two blocks away, both of us breathless and panting in someone’s front yard. Paige bent over, hands on her knees, laughing between gasps for air.
“Did you see his face?” she asked. “He cried like a baby!”
I wanted to laugh too, but I was too busy staring at her scraped knuckles. They were red and already starting to swell.
“Y-Y-You’re hurt,” I said, my face burning with embarrassment at the stutter but also something warm.
Paige looked down at her hand as if she had forgotten about it. “Oh. Yeah, I guess I am.” She shrugged. “Worth it though.”
I pulled out the Spider-Man Band-Aid I always carried. My mom made me keep one on me ever since I had fallen off my bike last month and scraped my knee.
“H-Here,” I said, holding it out to her. My hands were shaking, and my cheeks felt like they were on fire. She’s so pretty. “For y-y-your hand.”
“Spider-Man!” Her face lit up. “He’s my favorite!”
She took the band-aid and pressed it onto her knuckles. Then she grinned at me. A huge gap-toothed grin that made my heart do something weird and jumpy.
Wow, she gets even prettier when she smiles.
“Th-Thank you,” I said, scratching my ear. “For s-standing up for me.”
“That’s what friends do, silly,” Paige said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Then she grabbed my hand again, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. “Come on! Let’s go and play in the treehouse. I’ll show you my Spider-Man figurine.”
She started pulling me along, chattering about superheroes and how she was going to be a superhero when she grew up, and I followed her like a lost puppy. I was hers and utterly gone for the fierce little girl in a yellow dress who stood up for me.
“Hey, Derek?” she said, slowing down to walk beside me instead of dragging me. Her hand was still in mine, warm and a little sticky from the playground.
“Y-Yeah?”
“Don’t worry about your stutter, okay?” She squeezed my hand. “My grandpa stutters too, and he’s the smartest person I know. It just means you think faster than your mouth can keep up. That’s what he says, anyway.”
“R-Really?”
“Really.” She bumped her shoulder against mine.
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to explain that she had just given me something no one else ever had. The feeling that maybe I wasn’t broken after all.
Even if my dad thinks so.
So I just held onto her hand and let her lead me to the tree house, where we spent the rest of the afternoon reading superhero stories.
And somewhere between the laughter, I fell in love.
I opened my eyes, pulled back to the present by the ache in my chest. That little girl in the yellow dress had grown into the woman sleeping down the hall. The woman who had married someone else. The woman I had spent years trying to get over.
The last thing she needed was me complicating things further with feelings she might not even return.
She deserved better than that. Better than me.
So, I’d stick to the plan of our fake engagement. Help her divorce Jack, give her the space and safety to heal, and when it was over, when she was ready to move on with her life, I would let her go.
I pulled out my phone and added one more rule to my mental list:
5. Don’t tell her the truth. Not yet. Maybe not ever.