Chapter Nineteen
ARIA
The morning after sleeping with your contract husband is, apparently, an exercise in selective amnesia.
Everett is already in the kitchen when I come downstairs.
Board shorts with coffee made and his phone already in his hand.
His hair still damp from a shower I didn’t hear him take, which means he was up before the sun again, swimming or working or doing whatever it is he does when his brain won’t let him stay in bed beside me.
He glances up.
"Morning."
One word. Delivered with the same distance he’d use to greet someone he didn’t have naked against a wall hours ago.
"Morning," I say back.
Neither of us mentions last night.
Or the pool.
Or the bedroom.
Or the fact that at some point around two in the morning I woke up half on top of him with his arm locked around my waist like he was keeping me from leaving, which for the record, I was not trying to do.
I pour coffee and focus very hard on not looking at his hands.
His hands that were… no.
Coffee. Focus. Do not think about this morning and his very gifted hands.
He’s not ignoring me, exactly. He’s moving around the kitchen like a man who has decided that proximity is manageable as long as no one acknowledges what happened in it.
I know this version of Everett. This is the one who builds walls out of routine. Coffee at this temperature. Reports assembled in this order.
I open the pastry box that was delivered this morning and start arranging croissants on a plate like this is my job now.
He watches me for half a second and then looks away but I catch it in my peripheral.
Then his phone buzzes and he looks down at it, and his whole face does something that I can only describe as resigned suffering.
"Everly," he says, like it’s a diagnosis.
More like his excuse not to talk to me.
"What does she want?"
He turns the phone toward me.
The photographer will be in position by 10.
I need you both by the pool looking like you actually like each other.
Everett, take your shirt off. Aria, wear something that looks like you’re on a hot honeymoon with your husband.
I'll be sending positioning notes throughout. Do NOT make this difficult.
I stare at the screen, then back up to him.
"She hired a paparazzi photographer," he says flatly. "For the trustees."
"She told you this days ago. Why am I just hearing this now?"
"I was hoping she'd been joking."
I roll my eyes. "Has Everly ever joked about photo proof?"
His silence is answer enough.
Another text arrives while we're both still looking at the screen.
Also: TOUCH EACH OTHER. You look like business partners who accidentally booked the same resort. Fix it.
I press my lips together very hard so I don't laugh.
Everett locks the phone.
"This is going to be unbearable," he says.
As if unbearable means pretending to be in love with the woman you just married and had hot honeymoon sex with hours ago.
"Completely," I agree, though he doesn’t catch the sarcasm.
And that's how I end up lying on a lounge chair by the pool in a white bikini at ten-fifteen in the morning, pretending to read a book I'm not absorbing a single word of, while my husband, who obviously wants to pretend nothing happened, sits shirtless in the chair beside me looking like a cologne ad that wandered out of a magazine and forgot to put on sunscreen.
Everly's texts arrive right on time.
10:22 — Closer. You look like you're on separate vacations.
I scoot my chair six inches toward his.
10:31 — Aria, lean into him. Hand on his arm. Make it look casual.
I reach over and rest my hand on his forearm.
His skin is warm. The muscle underneath tightens at my touch.
Neither of us acknowledges this.
10:38 — Better. Now Everett, put your arm around her.
He reads the text, exhales once through his nose, and extends his arm along the back of my chair. His fingertips brush my bare shoulder.
My entire nervous system lights up like a switchboard.
This is fine. Completely fine. We are just two adults performing a task.
10:45 — Good. Hold that for a few minutes. Photographer is getting great angles. You almost look like you don't want to murder each other.
"Your sister," I say through my teeth without moving my smile, "has a god complex."
"I've been saying this for years."
10:52 — Okay now do something CUTE. Kiss her forehead. Feed her a grape. I don't care. Just make it look like you've touched a woman before, Everett.
He reads that one and I watch his jaw tighten so hard a muscle jumps.
Then, without warning, he leans over and presses his mouth to my temple. His lips warm against my skin and his breath stirring the hair at my ear. My hand clenches around the book.
"There," he says quietly, pulling back. "Happy?"
I am not looking at him because if I look at him right now I will do something stupid, like reach up and kiss him.
"I don’t know, ask your sister," I manage.
His phone buzzes.
PERFECT. That's the one. I'm literally tearing up. More of that energy.
His phone buzzes again.
Also: sending these to Pacific NW Monthly AND forwarding the best ones to Aunt Genevieve’s office. If the board wants proof of a happy marriage, we’re giving them a goddamn magazine cover. You’re WELCOME.
We hold the pose for another twenty minutes while I slowly lose my mind.
His arm stays along my shoulders. My hand stays on his arm.
The photographer is apparently somewhere in the landscaping getting shots of us looking like a couple who didn't just agree to pretend last night was a contractual obligation rather than the best sex of my entire life.
I guess he can check consummation clause off his list.
Not that I'm thinking about it.
At some point, the sun shifts and the shade disappears from his side of the pool.
11:30 — Okay I think we got enough. But STAY by the pool in case he circles back. Look natural.
"Natural," Everett mutters, leaning his head back against the lounger. "She wants natural."
"Maybe if you stopped looking like you're at a board meeting, it would help."
He doesn't open his eyes. "I'm relaxing."
"You look tense enough to snap in half."
"That is my relaxed face."
I almost laugh but swallow it because the photographer might still be lurking and I refuse to give Everly ammunition of me laughing at something Everett said. She'd have it framed.
He closes his eyes properly after that. A minute later, he shifts, rolling onto his stomach with his arms folded under his head and face turned toward me.
I go back to pretending to read.
The sun beats down. The pool glitters. And time stretches.
I don't notice him actually fall asleep until his breathing changes. It slows, deepens, and his face, resting against his forearms, loses that permanent tension. The line between his brows smooths out and his mouth relaxes.
I go back to my book. Actually read a few pages this time. Get absorbed enough that I don't track how long the sun has been sitting directly on him without the shade of the umbrella.
By the time I look over again, the entire expanse of his back is pink.
And then on better inspection… Not pink. Red.
I sit up. "Everett."
Nothing.
"Everett."
His head turns. One eye opens against the glare.
He moves, and then hisses through his teeth so sharply it makes me flinch.
"Oh no," I say.
He pushes up onto his elbows and looks over his shoulder at the damage—angry red from his shoulders to his waistband, across his arms, and the back of his neck.
"Fuck," he breathes.
"You fell asleep."
"I can see that."
"In direct sunlight."
"Thank you, Aria. The obvious facts are very helpful right now."
I press my hand over my mouth because if I laugh he might actually murder me.
He tries to sit up fully and stops. Winces. Drops back down.
"You need aloe," I say, already standing. "Or—the villa probably has something. Don't move."
"I wasn't planning to sprint anywhere."
I find the after-sun in the upstairs bathroom. It’s a thick, cooling gel that smells like aloe and mint. When I come back down, he's managed to sit upright on the edge of the lounger with the umbrella opened up, forearms braced on his knees, head tipped forward.
His back is the worst of it.
Lobster red from his shoulders to his waistband. The kind of burn that's going to peel spectacularly in three days and hurt like hell for the next twenty-four hours.
"Okay," I say, unscrewing the cap. "Turn around."
He turns… slowly.
I squeeze gel onto my hands and touch his shoulders and he tenses immediately.
"Sorry," I murmur. "Cold?"
"It's fine."
It is clearly not fine. Every muscle in his back is locked tight, not from the burn but from the fact that my hands are on him and we both know what happened the last time they were.
I smooth the gel across his shoulders in long, careful strokes.
His skin is hot. Not just from the sun.
The silence gets thick fast.
I work the aloe down his spine, over the broad planes of his back, across the muscles that shift under my hands every time he breathes. The sunburn is angry—radiating heat back at my palms.
Then I see it.
Just below his left shoulder blade. A crescent of small, dark marks pressed into his skin—teeth marks, half-hidden under the red of the burn but unmistakable once you know what you’re looking at.
Mine.
From last night.
From the moment he drove into me so deep my back arched off the mattress and I bit down on whatever part of him was closest because the sound I was about to make would have carried through every open window in the villa.
My hands still.
Heat floods my face—not from the sun. From the memory. From the very specific, very vivid recollection of what I was feeling when I left that mark on him and the sound he made when I did.
"Sorry," I murmur, tracing just above the mark with my thumb. "About that."
His head turns slightly. Not enough to see it. Just enough to know what I’m talking about.
"It’s fine," he says.
Then his hands reach back, find my thighs, and pull me closer.
Not rough. Not sudden. Just his palms flat against the outside of my bare legs, fingers gripping gently, drawing me forward until my chest is inches from his burned back and my thighs are pressed against his hips from behind.
My hands freeze on his shoulders.
"Everett."
"Don't read into it." His voice is low. "You needed a better angle."
"I had a fine angle."
His fingers flex on my thighs, the feeling of metal from his wedding ring against my skin.
Neither of us moves.
His thumbs start tracing small circles on the outside of my legs—absent, almost unconscious, like his hands decided to do something his brain didn't authorize.
"You don’t have to do that. The photographer is done," I say. My voice comes out breathier than I want.
"We're not doing anything."
"Your hands are on my thighs."
"You're applying medication."
"That is the thinnest excuse I've ever heard."
His head turns slightly as if trying to glance back at me.
"Then stop me," he says.
I don't.
My hands resume smoothing aloe over his shoulders, slower now, more deliberate.
His grip tightens on my thighs, pulling me another fraction closer.
The heat between us has nothing to do with the sunburn and everything to do with the fact that this man has been pretending nothing happened all morning and is now holding me against him like his body didn't get the memo.
His phone buzzes on the side table.
We both look at it.
Everly.
These will be perfect. You are now officially off duty for today.
Everett's hands slip from my thighs.
The moment breaks.
I cap the aloe and climb off the lounger, putting distance between us that feels necessary and yet not what I want at the same time.
"You should stay out of the sun for the rest of the day," I say, falling back on practicality because it's the only thing keeping me upright.
He nods once without looking at me. "I know."
I gather the bottle, my book, my dignity, and head inside.
At the door, I stop.
"For what it's worth," I say without turning around, "the photographer probably got some great shots of you looking like a boiled shrimp."
"Don’t you have some painting to do?"
I smile all the way up the stairs.
Behind me, I hear his phone buzz again.
Then his groan.
Then Everly's name muttered off his lips with a level of annoyance usually reserved for sworn enemies.
I shut the bedroom door and lean against it, still smiling.
Still feeling his hands on my thighs like a brand. His ring against my skin reminding me that in the oddest way, we’re bound to each other for the next year,
Still thinking about the way he said then stop me like he was hoping I wouldn't.
Shouldn't happen again.
Right.
Sure.
We'll see how long that lasts.