Chapter TwentyThree
Thanksgiving dinner turned into the Spanish Inquisition.
Shame coated my tongue with each mouthful of food.
I hated lying to Samantha and Harry, but I hated the sharp twist in my gut more as I listened to Jaxon and found myself craving the lies he weaved. He never shied away, openly giving details about our fake relationship and portraying the illusion that we were deeply in love.
He made us sound real.
“We are sorry that we couldn’t make it to your wedding party.” Samantha placed an obscenely large slice of pecan pie on my plate. “The pictures Lola showed us were out of this world.”
Harry tucked into his dessert. “Unfortunately, my knee was giving me hassle. Doc says he didn’t want me risking it swelling up on the flight to New York.”
Samantha rolled her eyes with a smile.
Harry was born and bred in the state of Kansas. He owned a lumberyard, while Samantha ran her own hair salon. He never so much left the state, never mind been on an airplane. I knew that he and Samantha weren’t likely to attend the wedding party when the invites were sent.
“I have to say, the two of you in the photos—” Samantha waggled her eyebrows. “—you make a fetching pair standing side by side.” She laughed when my face no doubt matched the color of my Merlot. “All I am saying is you look good together. Happy.”
“Happier than you were last Thanksgiving, that’s for sure,” Mal said between mouthfuls of pie.
Lola slapped her brother around the back of the head. “Don’t be so fucking rude.”
“Don’t swear,” Samantha scolded her daughter. “And don’t hit your brother.”
“Good to see the whole no-swearing thing comes before assaulting me,” Mal muttered.
Jaxon’s arm rested on the back of my chair. “What happened last Thanksgiving?”
Utter silence fell across the table.
“Nothing bad happened,” Mal finally spoke. “Evie brought Laurence last year, after him avoiding it like the plague the last couple times. He just put a dampener on the whole holiday. He didn’t want to toss pumpkins or help out with anything. Hell, he didn’t want to spend time with anyone.”
“It wasn’t that bad.” Samantha tried to act as a peacemaker. “It’s always hard meeting families for the first time.”
“They were together for four years,” Violet interjected. “The fact it took him that long to meet the important people in Evie’s life speaks volumes.”
“Exactly!” Mal lifted his glass of water toward Violet. “Nice to have someone on my side for once.”
“Merely an observation.” Violet met my gaze. “You loved him, so we did, too. His energy last year, however, was not on the level it should have been.”
“He was a total douche the entire weekend,” Mal said.
It was true. The only reason Laurence finally caved in was because his golfing friends were otherwise engaged with a wedding he wasn’t invited to. He was furious at his lack of invitation. He begrudgingly agreed to come with me to Kansas after I pretty much begged him.
He spent the entire holiday sulking and watching golf.
Honestly, the whole thing was embarrassing. He knew how important the Junipers were to me, yet he made no effort with them.
Hell, even Jaxon tossed a freaking pumpkin. It was one of the most wholesome and hilarious things I ever witnessed, and damn him, if it didn’t make my heart freefall faster.
“Now that the two of you are over, I can finally say it. That guy was an egotistical asshole. He wasn’t good enough for you, Evie. Everyone knew it, they were just too scared to say it.” Mal dodged Lola’s incoming slap. “Marrying him would have been a mistake.”
Fingers delicately traced the nape of my neck.
“God, you’re such a prick.” Lola shook her head.
Mal shrugged. “It’s called honesty, dear sister. We all knew how much of a damp cloth Laurence was. Over time, he would have smothered Evie’s light.”
“It doesn’t matter now,” Samantha said. “Because you have found someone who makes you happy, and someone who truly loves and respects you. That is all that matters.”
My dinner turned sour and twisted violently in my gut—if only she was right.
After eating and drinking our weight in food, we played a couple rounds of Scrabble—which turned out to be pointless with Jaxon. The man was scoring triple word points left and right, leading to the usual cheating allegations from Mal.
Once everyone gave up trying to outscore the French dictionary sitting beside me, his hand on my leg stroking dangerously close to the hem of my skirt during the other’s turns, we all retired for the night.
I stood under the heavy pressure of the shower, replaying the conversation at dinner in my head like a broken record.
Was I truly that blind not to realize how much everyone disliked Laurence?
No one ever voiced their concerns to my face.
Over the past couple months, I realized the Laurence I fell in love with was not the same Laurence toward the end. The charming young man, who made every gray cloud in my life disappear with a simple smile, vanished over our years together.
There were flickers of doubt as time went on, but when Dad got sick, my mind was too focused on him to give Laurence a second thought.
He was already pulling away, but I was too preoccupied to notice. Maybe if I hadn’t been so focused on looking after Dad and Flynn, I wouldn’t have been so blindsided by him ending things.
Thinking about it used to bring me to my knees in tears. But staring at my reflection in the mirror, I felt weightless for the first time in a long time.
I believed I had Jaxon to thank for that.
Back in the bedroom, Jaxon sat fully dressed on the edge of the bed.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to hog the bathroom.”
His eyes traveled the length of me. The intensity, the fire burning in his eyes—it was as if he were trying to see right through my towel. “I was waiting for you to get into bed for the night, that way, I don’t have to worry about you standing on my head.”
We both stared at the makeshift bed of blankets and pillows. The first night, Jaxon slept on the floor without question, and I let him. I guess I could say it was because we weren’t truly in a relationship, and sharing a bed was too much. But the truth was, I feared what sharing a bed with him might lead to.
We already crossed the line twice more than what we should have.
“You don’t have to sleep on the floor,” I said against my better judgment. “I am sure your back and joints must be killing you.”
“Is that your way of calling me old, ma douceur?”
“You are basically an old man compared to me.”
His eyes narrowed. “You realize I am only seven years older than you? I’m thirty-three. That hardly qualifies me for old man status.”
I shrugged. “All I am saying is that sleeping on the floor isn’t doing any wonders for your aging back. You can sleep in the bed. But be warned, if you so much as steal the duvet during the night or snore too loud, you will be straight back on the floor.”
Dimples pinched his cheeks.
It was impossible to get sick seeing them.
By the time I slipped my pajamas on, Jaxon had undressed and was making himself comfortable in bed. My attention was instantly drawn to the lack of a shirt, giving me unlimited access to his toned, tattooed chest.
Sweat broke across the back of my neck. The simple thought of running my hands across his chest, down his abdomen following the patch of hair below his belly button, blossomed a seed of desire between my legs.
Sliding into the bed beside him, every part of me was on fire.
My pulse drummed in my ears. A heavy ache settled in the depths of my stomach as my mind replayed the day in the office, the feel of his fingers pressing into my thighs as his tongue worked me into overdrive.
“I hope dinner wasn’t too much for you.” I tried to refocus my thoughts.
“Dinner was good,” he said. “The Junipers are good people. They care about you. I can see why you enjoy being in their company.”
I smiled. “They are my second family. They’ve done so much for me over the years. I know they can be a little much for some people.”
“Truthfully, I enjoy being here. It’s been a long time since I spent the holidays doing anything other than working.”
“I’m sure you would have much rather spent the day at work than throwing pumpkins with a makeshift slingshot.” I chuckled. “Or better yet, you probably would have preferred being with your own family?”
“You’re my wife, aren’t you? You asked me to come, so I came.”
My body went rigid. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Pretend like our marriage actually means something to you. It’s not fair.”
I heard his jaw click.
“We said we’d try and at least be friends during our year together. And I am your friend. But you’ve said time and time again that this marriage is strictly business. Then in the same breath, you’re all over me and I think something’s changed. And before I know it, you are back to looking at me as if I am your enemy again.”
He remained silent.
“So, please don’t say things you don’t mean. Don’t tell me that I’m yours when, in nine months’ time, you will walk away. Don’t act like I mean anything other than business to you when we both know you see me as nothing else.”
“What if I do mean what I say?”
My heart stuttered. “Do you?” A beat of silence. “Because if something has changed, if this isn’t business anymore for you, Jaxon, I deserve to know.”
“What difference does it make?” he sighed. “Like you said, in nine months, this is over. We both walk away with what we want.”
He may as well have slapped me across the face.
“Is that what you still want?”
He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”
I was so damn stupid for thinking anything was changing between us.
I should never have invited him to Thanksgiving. Having him here, amongst people I loved most in the world, seeing him interact with them—it was messing with my head. Reshaping the reality of what we truly were.
“It matters to me.”
“You have to understand,” Jaxon exhaled. “Wanting you complicates things far more than you will ever know. But the mere thought of anyone else touching you, wanting you, having you—it makes me sick.”
I tried to process what he was saying.
He wanted me.
He didn’t want to want me.
I didn’t think about it as I sat up and pulled the thin pajama top over my head.
My nipples drew taunt as he inhaled sharply. “You want me.”
“Yes.”
The pajama trousers joined its pairing top, baring me completely to him. “Then what’s stopping you?”
A beat of strained silence was all it took for his final threads of restraint to snap. “Fuck it.”