Chapter 24
Fact or Fiction?
Moist isn’t always a gross word.
Luke
Cake tasting with your wife and mother sounds like a fairly innocent experience on the surface. Sitting in a cute little bakery
in downtown Boulder. Light snow falling outside the picture window. Your mom prattling on and on about each cake’s consistency,
frosting texture, and the “moistness.”
I always thought the word moist was disgusting, but hell if it isn’t eliciting some indecent thoughts in me today. Was my wife moist the night we kissed?
Is there a chance she could be moist now? How many times has she been moist since we locked lips? Am I a fucked-up deviant
for contemplating these thoughts with my mother seated right beside me?
The answer is yes.
But fucking hell, I can’t help it. Every time I watch Roe’s lips wrap around the metal tongs of the fork, her tongue darting
out to lick a dollop of frosting off the edge of her mouth and the way her cheeks flush when we make eye contact . . . I realize that moist cake tasting might be the most erotic thing I’ve ever done.
The past two weeks have been a mind fuck. Kissing my wife was quite possibly the worst and best thing I could have ever done.
Best because it was life-changing. It confirmed everything I thought to be true about my best friend. We fucking work. The
chemistry is there. The physical oneness is next level. The desire is goddamn mind-blowing.
However, it’s the worst because we went from comfortable, fun-loving friends who have dinner together every night to two ships passing in the night.
Roe is avoiding me and I’m in hell.
And the most frustrating part is she’s not obviously avoiding me. She’s doing that annoying customer service thing she does
where she speaks to me like I’m a client instead of her best friend.
Her husband.
She still shoots me a text before she goes for a run in the trails behind our cabins. She still makes dinner and does all
the normal things she did our first week together, but now she chooses to eat in her room without giving me any reason why.
Just mentions it like it’s totally normal for her to not eat with me, which fucking kills me. It feels like a form of rejection,
like the kiss was bad or what I said to her afterward was too far.
Why did I have to call her a fucking good girl?
Because my penis had clearly taken over my fucking brain.
Roe isn’t a woman who can be told what to do. She isn’t a woman who takes orders. She’s a woman who gets things done. Like
finding a guy to marry her for a year so she can take over the family business. That’s the kind of determined badass she is.
And that’s why she’s here. That’s the only reason she’s here.
And I know Everly’s big mastermind plan was to get my wife to fall in love with me, but that’s going to be really hard when
I can’t even figure out how to get my wife to spend time with me.
“Which one is your favorite, Addison?” my mom asks from her seat plunked right between the two of us. She’s got her binder
spread out in front of her and has been taking notes through this entire tasting.
Addison yanks her eyes away from me and gives my mom her full attention. “I’m going to level with you, Jo. I love them all.”
My mom laughs and I notice Roe’s tense mood lightening just slightly.
“You and me both. Gosh they don’t make it easy, do they?
” She makes a note and then pulls her pen to her mouth.
“What do we think about cupcakes? The baker said most of these cakes can be made into cupcakes so we can do a variety that way.”
“I love the cupcake idea.” Roe smiles warmly, her hazel eyes striking against her silky black hair that’s tied into a braid
down one shoulder. My fingers itch to feel the nubs of that braid, to drag my coarse thumb over the strands, twist it around
my fist and give it a little tug until she gasps in shock and submits to me. What I wouldn’t do to see my powerful, irritating
wife on her knees, naked, panting, and taking orders from me for once.
“Luke!” My mom’s voice is loud, and I jerk my head to look at her, and the irritation on her face is obvious. “I asked what
do you think of cupcakes?”
“Um . . . sure . . . whatever Roe wants.” I frown and stare down at the cake sitting on my fork, my face hot with shame over
where my thoughts were going right in front of my mother.
When I look up, Roe’s eyes are tight on me, and I swear it’s like she can read my fucking mind.
I have to get control of this situation.
After saying goodbye to my mother outside the bakery, Roe turns to head to her car and I follow, my heart hammering in my
chest as I approach her from behind. “Hey, can we talk for a second?” I ask, falling into stride with her as her boots crunch
over the snow-packed sidewalk.
“Sure, what’s up?” she chirps in that irritating singsongy voice that she’s been using.
“Are we okay?” I ask, pulling my hat off and facing it forward.
“Of course, why wouldn’t we be?” She laughs and it grates on my nerves.
“Don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what?” she chimes back, picking up pace.
“You know what.” I stop walking and she keeps going until she realizes I’m not beside her and pivots to turn around and look
at me.
We’re silent for a few seconds before I lift my hands up. “I miss you, Roe.”
Her brows furrow. “What do you mean?”
“I just . . .” I exhale heavily and grip the back of my neck. “I miss you. Things have been weird since I kissed you and I
hate to think I fucked this all up for us.”
“Things haven’t been weird. I’ve just been busy! Things at the yard are crazy and my dad is coming back next week and has
some meetings set up that I don’t know anything about. It’s just a lot. It’s not you.”
The polite smile on her face gives me a pit in my stomach. She has this fucking wall up that I hate. She usually never has
this with me. I see her have it with her dad, with the guys at the yard, with my mother.
Never me.
I narrow my eyes and eliminate the space between us. “If we’re good, then can we hang tonight?”
She shrugs her shoulders and says, “What do you mean, Luke? We live together.”
“I know but can we just not do the thing where we both come home, eat by ourselves, and then hide out in our bedrooms?”
“That’s not what—”
“Cut the shit, Roe. I miss my best friend.”
Her cheeks flush and finally I see a glimpse of my old friend poking through the hard outer shell. Her throat contracts before
she says with a sigh, “I miss you too.”
“So let’s hang out tonight. Watch a movie,” I state firmly, tilting my head down to catch her downcast eyes. “I promise I won’t kiss you.”
Her cheeks flush and when she looks up at me, I swear I see disappointment flicker across her face. But she nods and says,
“Okay, sure. Let’s hang tonight.”
“Good.” I exhale a sigh of relief. “I’ll bring home takeout. Any requests?”
She shakes her head. “Surprise me.”
“You got it, babe.” I make a move to brush her cheeks with my lips, but then think better of it. So, I step back and offer
her a sideways smile instead. “See you tonight.”
I turn on my heel as her voice calls back, “See you later, husband.”
And that one word sends a flutter of need through my entire fucking body. Either she really is clueless about how I feel about
her, or she knows exactly what she’s doing.
“Ew, I can’t handle the feel of his beak!” Roe squeals, dropping the walnuts out of her hand and back into a small glass bowl.
“I know,” I reply with a laugh as I rejoin her on the sofa. “It’s why I never hand-feed him. That sensation freaks me out
too much.”
“Like tiny little pinches,” Roe confirms as she slides her hand down Rufus’s back. He’s standing on her lap as she sits on
the couch. Our leftover sushi is on the coffee table, and we’ve been barely watching Yellowstone for almost two hours because we can’t seem to stop talking long enough to listen.
It’s been nice. Like the old days. The awkwardness from before seems well and truly gone, and I feel like I got my best friend
back.
Roe yawns and stretches, the hem of her shirt riding up to reveal her soft stomach, which I would really like to touch like I did when we were kissing two weeks ago.
She looks so good tonight in her baggy T-shirt and tiny shorts, her muscular legs hidden under the blanket that Rufus is now nuzzled into.
If it were up to me, I would put that damn bird outside and get under that blanket with her.
But that’s not what tonight is. We’re not kissing. We’re not touching. We’re just . . . being friends.
Rufus jumps down off Addison’s lap, which usually means he needs to go to the bathroom, so I pick him up and set him out front
for the night.
When I walk back into the living room, I glance at the clock, surprised how late it is already. “I didn’t realize what time
it was. Do you want to go to bed yet?”
I pause when I realize how that sounded. It sounded like a husband asking his wife if she’s ready for bed. It sounded like
we’d go to the same room and sleep together. God, would I love that. I’d even love to just stay on this couch all night with
her if it meant I got to remain near her, breathing in her sweet familiar scent.
She shrugs. “You can crash if you want. I’m good here.”
I drop down on the sofa next to her again. “I’ve noticed your late-night bread baking is next level these past couple weeks.”
She glances at the fresh loaves sitting on the counter all bagged and ready to go. “Well, since I got the new bread pan from
the yard guys, I’ve been trying to get a fresh loaf to all of them as a thank-you for the gift. I’m just about done.”
“That was really cool of them to give that to you,” I reply, stretching my denim-clad legs out, and stare at the crackling
fire. “They all must love you.”
“Yeah, I guess, but I’m glad we got your mom to put ‘no gifts please’ on our wedding invitations. I feel super guilty accepting
that pan from them considering this is all temporary.”