Chapter 10 Willow
ten
Willow
Itake a deep breath of cool air as we walk to Noah’s truck. There’s a conversation we’ve carefully avoided but it’s not like we can push it back much longer.
“So…What are we going to tell everyone? About why we got married?” By everyone, I mean our friends.
Noah takes my bag from my hands and opens the passenger door for me, sets our luggage in the back seat, rounds the truck, climbs in, starts the engine. “Whaddaya mean?”
“Noah,” I semi-snap. “You don’t even really like me.
” Before he can argue to the opposite (because he’s a nice guy), I proactively counter.
“You think I make rash decisions, have little consideration for propriety, am an airhead, have no education. Which is all true, by the way, but mostly—mostly—you like thin blondes. Which I am most definitely not.”
“What makes you think I like thin blondes?”
“Anika?” The name slides coldly out of my lips. It wasn’t her fault, but she’s who crushed my stupid hopes.
“Maybe I don’t like them anymore.”
My belly does a little something funny, but I shut that shit down right away. “Okay, you’re not superficial like that, but—”
“We fell madly in love, couldn’t wait to get married, so we eloped.”
What? My jaw slackens, my tongue trying to form words. Clearly, it isn’t working.
“It happened during Colton and Kiara’s wedding,” he continues. “We realized we’d had feelings for each other for a long time, just like them. Except we weren’t as clumsy, irrational, or immature as they were. Once we realized we were it for each other, we didn’t want to wait any longer.”
He takes my hand and brings it briefly to his lips, the gesture meant as part of the play but still making me all woozy. “You are now my wife, for better or worse. Of course the worse will come soon enough.”
I nod while he continues. “We’ll both realize we made a huge mistake and we should have waited for an eternity like Colton and Kiara before entering the sacred vows of marriage. Fortunately nothing is sacred anymore and we’ll get a speedy divorce. I’ll be too grumpy, you’ll cheat on me, and—”
“I am not a cheater!” I can’t believe this would cross his mind. “And no, I will not cheat to create a reason for us to divorce.”
He glances at me, his brow furrowed but his mouth twitching. “Okay, okay, chill. Nobody needs to cheat. We’ll just… realize we were better off as friends.”
“We were never really friends, but sure.” Why did I need to say that? It’s not a nice thing to say. “I didn’t mean it that way—I’m sorry. I guess I’m just rattled that you would think I could cheat on someone.” We stay silent for a while.
I try to picture us as a married couple in Emerald Creek. There’s lots we avoided talking about. Pushing the conversation out isn’t going to help. “We need to practice looking totally in love.”
He quirks an eyebrow, seeming amused. Funny, I used to think he was so serious and borderline stuck-up. “You’re really relieved you’re married, aren’t you?” I ask him. He does seem to have a huge weight off his shoulders, even if his worry frown seems to be deepening as we approach our hometown.
His grin broadens. “Honestly? I’m thinking I was pretty inspired when I chose you as my wife. You’re very resourceful. You’re making this whole fake marriage thing seem… doable.”
He keeps going on and on about stuff, but my brain is stuck on just a few words.
When I chose you as my wife. And I know he didn’t choose me in the sense that he didn’t spend days and months thinking this over.
No, he saw desperate Willow and figured he could turn that to his advantage while offering to help her out.
And kudos to him. I’m not complaining. Him taking care of Mom’s medical bills is going to be a huge help while I wait for the insurance to get their act together.
Regardless of how hard I tried to push back on that, I’m grateful.
But it’s nice to hear, “when I chose you as my wife.” I’m firmly rooted in the twenty-first century and I consider myself a strong woman, but who doesn’t want to hear those words, especially coming from the most eligible bachelor on whom I used to crush hard?
“So, what were you thinking in terms of looking totally in love?” he asks casually, although his voice catches on the last words.
I look out the passenger window. “Um, you know, holding hands and stuff.”
He clears his throat. “Right. You’re right. That seems important.” He clears his throat again. “And by ‘and stuff’ you mean… ?” His voice ends in a question mark, inviting me to go further.
Oh, you know, you could throw your arm on my shoulders on the regular, letting your hand graze my breast. Or French kiss me in the morning in front of the whole town as we casually stroll to Chris’s bakery for croissants.
“Just, whatever.” Like give me a shoulder rub at Lazy’s and bring my back to your front when all our friends show up and we need to huddle in a booth, or even have me on your lap and, like, let your hands casually glide up and down my thighs as we have a beer.
“Natural, you know. Everyday stuff newlyweds do.”
This time he full-on coughs.
I huff. “I mean in public. Jesus, Noah, your mind is in the gutter!” Oh that was nasty—Willow the prude. But I had to do something to offset what I’d just said. Because now we’re both thinking about the same thing. And it’s mortifying.
“Speaking of which,” Noah says, and his jaw clenches as he thinks through his next words. “Lane is staying at Lilyvale for the summer. And Beck technically lives above the barn, but he’s in and out. The place is large, but still…”
“I’m aware,” I say, my voice strangling a bit. I’m going to let him make suggestions about that situation. We probably need to share a bedroom.
“We’ll just move to the crypt,” he drops casually.
“The what now?” I didn’t know the mansion had… a crypt. I thought those were under churches.
“The crypt. Where the vampire is buried.”
I laugh. “Nice try. Lilyvale doesn’t have a crypt. The vampire is buried under The Green.”
He looks at me sideways. “You don’t believe that shit, do you?”
“Course I do. It’s the truth. My gramps was there when the high schoolers tried to unearth him and The Green froze over in the month of June. So don’t tell me it’s a bunch of crap just because he was your ancestor.”
“He was not our ancestor.”
“Was too.”
“Willow! He died at the age of thirteen! He was not our ancestor.”
Ha! Got him. “Oh. So you know exactly who I’m talking about.”
“Of course I know who you’re talking about. He’s just not our direct ancestor.”
“Don’t get all technical on me. He was in your family, therefore he lived at the mansion, and, by the way, we never finished that conversation but I would very much like to have his bedroom if that’s at all feasible. Since we both know Lilyvale doesn’t have a crypt.”
He shakes his head but his mouth twitches right as his gaze slides to me, then back to the road. I wonder what he sees when he looks at me. Beyond the curvy brunette who doesn’t give much of a fuck about what people think about her.
“My wife sleeps in my bedroom.”
Lust zings through me, a sharp stab in my center, warmth all around me making me temporarily unable to speak.
“Don’t worry, there’s a couch there. Or two,” he adds after a too-long pause.
Two couches in a bedroom? How big is this room? I cross my arms to hide the confused state of my body. “Were you planning on having a lot of arguments with the previous future Mrs. Callaway?” Somehow the mention of his wife summoned Anika in my mind.
He pulls abruptly over to the side, stopping the truck and facing me. “One thing I won’t allow, is my wife to be disrespected by anyone—including you. I won’t tolerate any of my exes names to be brought up in front of you, or by you.”
Why so upset? I soften my tone. “This is a fake marriage, Noah. There’s no need to be so protective.
” Although I can’t say it’s not making me all hot and bothered.
Whoever becomes the real Mrs. Callaway is in for a treat.
For the millionth time, I wonder what happened with Anika.
“She really did a number on you, didn’t she? ”
“Who?” he frowns.
“She who shall not be named.”
Surprisingly, he laughs lightly at that, and not even in a bitter way. “Nah. She was okay,” he says, looking away from me and getting us back on the road.
I nod tightly, trying to let my whole being relax. After a few beats, I can’t hold it anymore. “She dumped you. Right after your dad passed away.” Everyone in Emerald Creek was shocked at the news.
He shrugs. “She realized we weren’t meant to be together. She was right.”
I breathe easier. “You believe in soul mates?”
He glances my way. “No.”
That was a stupid question to ask, because now he’s going to ask me if I believe in soul mates.
And what am I going to answer? That I had an inkling there might be such a thing when he helped me tie my shoelace at school, my first day living with Aunt Angela?
That I started really believing in soul mates when he helped me pick up my books when he was in high school and I was in middle school and for some reason he was right there the only time all my books slid out of my grasp?
That besides the time he appeared out of nowhere to help me haul bags of topsoil at the school greenhouse, what really cemented my belief was when he let me use his phone—his cellphone—to call Ms. Angela and let her know I’d be late because a bunch of us were at the river and we were going to start a bonfire and who knows when that was going to end.
I’d been twenty-one at the time, and I had run out of minutes on the cheapo plan I had for my cheapo phone, and Noah had—
“You don’t understand,” Noah interrupts my dangerous train of thought, bringing me back to the present where reality is a bitch that can still hold a certain appeal. “Things are going to get nasty. People are going to question our marriage.”
I try to backpedal from memory lane. “How do you know that?’
He huffs. “Tell me again how your mother reacted?”
“I handled her,” I say.
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Pissed and hurt with a generous sprinkling of judgmental.” I understand she feels hurt and left out, but for some reason she got bent out of shape over me marrying a Callaway.
I don’t know what her problem is with this family, and I don’t care.
She gets no say in how I live my romantic life—because as far as she knows, this is my romantic life.
“Pissed and hurt comes from the heart, and judgmental can come from being a mother, I suppose,” Noah volunteers, and my anger at my mom vanishes with his words. “What I’m worried about is greed. Most people will do way worse things to protect their wallets than their hearts.”
“We’re talking about Gail?”
“Yes.”
What could she possibly do? She doesn’t even live in Emerald Creek. “What did Lane say about us getting married?” I’m more concerned about her. Will she be angry at us? At me? She was a cool kid. I’d like to stay friends with her.
Noah raises his eyebrows. “None of those little shits answered my messages,” he says as a huge grin spreads on his face. “They might be planning a prank.”
But it doesn’t seem that they did. As we pull into Emerald Creek, it’s already night and the mansion is dark. We enter through the kitchen door and Noah shouts, “Anybody home?”
But only the grandfather clock answers us, and we make it upstairs.
“So this is the bridal suite,” I chirp, sounding way more happy-go-lucky than I feel. And the minute I walk in, I can tell Noah has no idea what to do now.