Chapter 5 #4
My stomach flips so hard I nearly miss the next step, and his hand catches my elbow instantly, steadying me.
His fingers are firm, and for one ridiculous second, I forget about the cold path, the sleeping houses, and the fact that I am standing outside in the middle of the night discussing cat paternity with a man I have known only for a few weeks and somehow can’t stop wanting to touch.
“You okay?” he asks, voice lower now.
“Fine,” I say too quickly. “Just betrayed by pavement.”
“Pavement can be vicious.”
“Runs in the same circles as cats, apparently.”
His thumb shifts once against my arm before he lets go, and the loss of that contact annoys me more than it should. We stroll back toward our houses, my cheeks hurting from smiling and the night gone fully surreal around us. Brody stays close enough that every few steps our hands almost meet.
I should say good night, thank him, retreat inside, and pretend my pulse isn’t out of control. Instead, I hear myself say, “So.”
Brody looks over. “So?”
My brain offers me several reasonable options, including Thanks for helping with the cat and Please forget I entered your house with a stolen Persian.
“Want to come to a wedding with me?” My mouth chooses violence. The words tumble out, fast and clumsy, and the second they find the air, my whole body goes hot.
Oh no.
No, no, no.
That was the thought I was absolutely not going to say out loud.
Brody stops walking, and I pause alongside him, my cheeks on fire. His mouth twitches, but his eyes stay fixed on mine. “Like a date?”
Heat shoots straight up my neck. “Oh. No. Not a date date. I mean, not because you’re not…
obviously you’re…” I drag in a breath, then immediately regret giving my lungs that kind of responsibility.
“More like a fake date. A temporary, wedding-specific, please-stand-next-to-me-so-I-don’t-look-pathetic kind of date. ”
His eyebrow lifts. “That’s very specific.”
“It’s a very specific emergency.”
“How bad is it?”
“All of it bad.” The words come too fast now, tumbling over each other before I can shove them back down.
“My friend’s wedding. This Saturday. My ex is the best man, and by ‘ex,’ I mean ex-fiancé, which makes it extra humiliating because some of my family will be there and half of them still think I should have tried harder to keep him.
” I swallow, aware I’m not remotely improving my case.
“So I need someone to stand next to me for a few hours. That’s it.
No pressure. No actual date expectations.
No touching unless required for believability or emergency balance. ”
He just stares at me, his head tilting to the side.
Is he thinking of an excuse? Panic claws at my chest. “But it’s insanely short notice, and if you’re busy, that’s completely fine, and I shouldn’t have asked while covered in cat fur, so clearly this isn’t my finest pitch.”
His gaze drops briefly to the white fur clinging to my tank top, then returns to my face, and something in his expression shifts. “Claire,” he says, voice low enough to turn my name into a problem, “you don’t have to talk me into standing next to you.”
I stop breathing for half a second. “I don’t?”
“No.” His gaze holds mine. “You ask, I’m there.”
My stomach flips. “It’s Saturday. At four. Hyandra Park.”
“I’ll be there.”
“My family is a lot.”
“I can handle them.”
“My ex is genuinely awful.”
His smile comes slowly this time, sharper at the edges, and for a second, he looks nothing like the laughing man from the kitchen videos. Instead, he resembles an Alpha who knows exactly where to stand when something ugly comes too close.
“Then I’ll make sure he remembers what he lost.”
The breeze picks up and throws my hair across my face. I shove it back, and he watches me intensely.
“One thing,” he says. “Can I meet you at the venue? I’ve got a meeting just out of town that afternoon, but I’ll head straight over.”
“Of course. Yeah. Totally.”
“Good, then come over to my place now.” He tips his head toward his house like the matter is settled.
“I baked a cheese pull-apart an hour ago, and I need someone to eat it before Damien stages a counter raid. You can brief me on the details. Family members. The deal with your ex, our backstory we’re telling everyone. ”
He gestures toward the house, and I follow, but it’s only now, stepping through his front door under the porch light, that I look down and realize I’m in my pj’s.
Sleep shorts. Thin tank top. Flip-flops. I can see the outline of my bra through the fabric, and thank the gods I wore it tonight. Brody’s eyes travel down, unhurried, then back up.
“Nice outfit,” he says softly and holds the door open wider.
I walk into his house, while somewhere down the hall, Damien squeaks. And he said yes to being my fake date.
Don’t get excited, Claire. It’s pretend. One night.
Except my pulse hasn’t come down since the moment under the streetlamp, his sweatpants are suddenly drawing my attention, and he’s pulling the cheese pull-apart from the oven with his bare hands while grinning at me over his shoulder.
My entire body is humming at a frequency that has nothing to do with a fake date and everything to do with the fact that I’m standing in an Alpha’s kitchen at 10:00 p.m. and I don’t want to leave.
One night. That’s all this is.
Except, I’m such a liar.