Chapter 28
Devyn
A lexa, connect to Devyn’s Galaxy and play Motivation Mix,” I shout, picking up a fifth sock from the living room floor. Warmth settles over me in the form of a rare, genuine smile. Ellie and Hunter toss their socks at the end of the day almost identically. All of it solidifies my notion of who they are to one another. Hunter very much is Eleanor’s father. And she’s got him wrapped around her little rebel fingers.
“Playing Motivation Mix,” Alexa replies. I marvel, still in disbelief that I’m living in a place so fancy that there’s built-in surround sound through the whole house. He’s certainly impressed me with his renovation of the farm. Of the whole town, really.
Dustin did try to tell me.
Dustin. Who still isn’t speaking to me because I ‘always rush into things’ or whatever.
I roll my eyes, sashaying to my phone to shoot a quick text to my brother who made it very abundantly clear, via a long series of voicemails, that Hunter and I were the most impulsively stupid people he knows, and he wants no part of the “shitshow” he predicted.
Like he’s not the one who told me to admit my feelings. I huff a frustrated sigh that blows my bangs away from my face as I type.
It’s time he stopped sulking about it. Hunter and I are together. It’s been almost a month now, and it doesn’t seem like a fake marriage. Not anymore.
Truth be told, I miss my brother. I’ve only seen him twice since I’ve gotten home, and once was when Shana and I blindsided him at the Sugar Stable on his birthday with a cake. Thankfully, Shana knew what time he’d be there, her dance studio being directly across from it and all. Maybe I can get her to tell me when he’s in and just blindside him at work again.
On the other hand, only two visits with my favorite and only brother is just not gonna cut it. I’ll simply have to use my little sister powers. Splinter my way under his skin until he has no choice but to deal with me.
DEVYN : Are you still mad at us?
DUSTIN : …
DUSTIN : Just Hunter.
DEVYN : That’s not fair. It takes two to say I Do.
DUSTIN : We had an understanding. “Ease into it” doesn’t mean “Marry my fucking sister.”
DEVYN : I’m a grown adult. You don’t get to have “understandings” about me with my husband.
DUSTIN : If you keep saying husband, I will vomit in a bag and mail it to you.
DEVYN : Husband.
Dustin has blocked your number
I smile, sliding the phone back onto the bookshelf. He’s too easy. My splinter is already working its way in, and he doesn’t even know it.
Dustin will come around. He just has to see Hunter and I are…different now. It hasn’t been long, but it has at the same time. We’re falling into a routine together. Ellie, too.
Tomorrow, we post our first couple’s video. We’ve posted a few on our own pages over the last few weeks, mine about the pageant program, and his…humping an excavator…anyway, this will be the first cohesive one with ‘glam,’ as Hunter calls it. Beats me. The most glam I use on my posts are those free filters that make you glittery. Miss American Rodeo and Channel 5 curated most of my content before now, and it feels a bit eye opening. I’ve never considered the work that goes into these influencers’ posts when you realize they do it all from scratch.
Hunter has a friend coming by to film, since Dustin’s still being a grump and all. I know it’s eating away at him, Dustin being mad. I also don’t think he likes having to advertise our relationship online like this. It makes my brother that much more skeptical about our intentions with this marriage thing, but we both agreed we would do the bare minimum for the job.
Neither of us asked for the shenanigans; it just happened this way.
In other news, Hunter’s been working with his group on two rodeo challenges for the fair. We decided to combine our efforts. Marriage perks and all, like filing taxes together, right? And we’re doing one event.
Together.
The first ever Friendly Farms Fair, my pageant and his rodeo being the main events. We’ve met with the interested families a few times already, and now we just have to figure out a stage of some sort here on the farm grounds.
It’s a good thing the property is huge. I’m not sure how busy this place gets in the spring and summer, but the number of kids and parents coming to and from youth lessons and events is mind-blowing.
And I think the truth I’m finding is I love it here. I love being married to Hunter Isaac. Even if it is fake.
There’s at least five times a day when I wish it were real.
He makes me feel safe, effortless, like when we were kids. Everything with Hunter is perfect.
But it isn’t all the same.
He has this way of taking something totally ordinary, something perfectly imperfect, and bringing out the beauty and vibrance from within.
Like burned ravioli.
“It’s pan-charred,” he’d told Ellie, so it would seem like I’d done something special. In moments like that, it’s his inherent, natural chivalry, wrapping me in a tight embrace and promising the world.
This man has me under a spell, and I know why.
I’m beginning to trust him.
For once in my life, I’m trusting someone. And isn’t it crazy that it’s the one person I always trusted before? Wholeheartedly. Full circle.
I love him.
It’s not cliché, either. It’s precisely what Jeremy said. The Ex to Ho Ratio…minus the ho part. The longer you’ve been with someone, the easier it is to love them, even if years have passed between the conception and the rekindling of that love. And If I’m being completely honest with myself? I don’t think that flame ever died for us.
It got dim, but never gone for good.
Like any fire, it just needs to be fed.
I grab the Swiffer from the hall closet where I’ve seen Hunter tuck it away and begin tidying the floors. With the film crew coming tomorrow morning, and the pageant meeting I’m holding with my friends that same afternoon, I feel the need to make this place look like the beautiful piece of art Hunter has crafted it to be. I feel somewhat prideful of the home he’s made. And something about being in it, cleaning it like it’s mine, too.
All of this feels right.
My cleaning spree continues, as I spot a pink fleck behind the couch. I lean over to see if it’s Ellie’s missing sock, leaving my butt sticking straight in the air in my tiny dance shorts.
“Gotcha!” I say to myself, triumphantly snatching up the rogue garment. But before I can right myself, his voice stops me.
“When I prayed for Heaven on Earth, I didn’t think it would come in the form of your backside stretched across my couch.”
Heat and lust spread across my body in sharp waves as I shoot upright. His voice seems to kiss the tips of my nipples, the hardened points poking through my—I look down, taking in my appearance.
His shirt. I put it on earlier without realizing.
Okay . I one hundred percent realized and loved every damn minute of smelling like him all day.
His eyes meet mine as I turn to face him, and his lips curve just slightly.
“Is that my shirt?”
His voice is rich, a thick, heated tease. I shift on the couch, pressing my thighs together to relieve the throbbing pressure building between them.
“Yes.” I bite my bottom lip, watching his eyes narrow on my tight, hardened nipples pressing against the fabric where the words Pine Forest Rodeo are spelled out in green. He presses his lips together and shakes his head, his eyes undressing me where I kneel on the cushions. The way he watches me, like someone just popped the hood to a vintage sportscar…it’s intoxicating. It makes me feel alive.
I want him to watch more. I sit up straighter so there’s no mistaking what I’m pressing against the shirt that covered his own chest only hours earlier. The one that smells heavily of sandalwood and pleasure. The one I snagged when he wasn’t looking, so I could feel like he was on me even when he wasn’t.
He groans in approval, tilting his head and running his teeth over his bottom lip as he inspects me.
“You haven’t the faintest what this does to me, do you?” He licks his lips, stepping so close that my body yearns for him. His breath mixes with my own, hot and needy. “Seeing your naked body draped beneath my clothes?” He fists the fabric, tugging me closer so our torsos are flush, my nipples rubbing against the fabric and sending chills across my skin.
“What does it make you want to do?” I ask him breathlessly, hating how cliché I sound, but hoping to God his answer is to shove me face down against this couch and take me from behind, slap my ass again like he did before I put the brakes on the sexual side of things. And fuck it, I don’t care anymore. We did things slowly. Slow was great. We talked over our problems, and we seem to be loving life together so far, but I can’t take it anymore. I can’t stand to be in a room with him, admiring his muscles with my eyes and never tracing them with my fingers, listening to him say he loves me and not climbing in his lap to say it back.
Unashamedly and irrevocably.
And I’m tired of waiting for the other boot to drop.
Hunter cups my cheek and kisses me, but as soon as it begins, it’s over. My heart protests with each quickening beat, but he backs away, a light sparking in his eyes, like he’s remembered something very important, and a sly smile curves his lips.
“It makes me want to respect your boundaries.”
“Seriously, Hunter?”
But before he can reply, Alexa cuts through the air.
“Playing I Seriously Miss Hunter Playlist.”
Oh, my God, this is not happening.
My gaze darts to the shelf where my phone is nestled and about to expose years’ worth of secrets to Hunter, but his eyes beam.
“My God, Dev, your phone is a goldmine full of secrets, isn’t it ?”
His smile grows, and all I can do is bury my heated face into my hands as Jung Kook’s “Seven” bursts through the surrounding speakers. Hunter’s eyes widen in recognition, laughter pouring out of him endlessly, as he swings his hips and gyrates to a song that promises him I’ll be fucking him not one through six…but seven days a week.
On a playlist that is about missing him.
And that’s a recent song. I can’t even lie and say it’s an old playlist. I meet his gleaming eyes and turn away as quickly as I can.
“Oh, Ponygirl, you don’t get to hide from me that easy.” He twirls me around, but I keep my other hand over my face, like a child at a scary movie. I don’t want to look him in the eyes, don’t want him to see I’m half smiling.
He pulls my hand off my face and replaces it with his lips crashing down on mine while he sways us across the floor in time to the music, our tongues doing a dance of their own.
I rest my head on his shoulder, enjoying the caress of his fingertips along the hem of my Hunter-shirt, brushing my thighs, teasing me until I’m a wet, dripping mess in his arms.
“To be fair, the edited version just says ‘loving’ you seven days a week.”
I’m sure my cheeks are pinker than the sock I threw to the floor. I remind myself to grab it before I do laundry, like a total housewife, and not exactly hating that idea.
Of being his real wife.
“What’ll it be, then?” he asks, a playful twist to his lips. “Do you want to love me or fuck me, Mrs. Isaac?”
“What if I want to do both?”
I close the distance between us, cocking my head to the side and twisting my smiling lips.
“Are you being coy with me, wife ?”
My breath hitches as he places two fingers beneath my chin, lifting my lips to his in a total panty melting move that there’s no way he’s not doing on purpose, and I say a little thank you prayer for my personal thirst trap before I flutter my eyelashes.
“I think you know what I want, husband. ” I trace the collar of his shirt and lean in for a kiss, but he stops me, putting a finger to my lips.
“Nah, that’s not gonna cut it,” he teases. “You wanted me to take things slow, and you had no problem being explicit with me about what you didn’t want then. Don’t deny my right to hear it come straight from those pretty little lips of yours now. Tell me what you do want, Dev.”
“ You’re kidding, right?” I cross my arms, but he isn’t budging. He just runs his tongue over his bottom lip and throws me back that same cocky smirk I fell in love with.
Stupid smirk.
He really is gonna make me say it.
I roll my eyes as dramatically as possible just so he knows how I feel about his little game.
But I must admit, there’s something extremely sexy and empowering about having total control over my body and desires.
And knowing he’d respect that entirely?
“Tell me what you want, Dev.”
It’s everything.
“I want you to fuck your wife.”