15. Trace
TRACE
“Y ou were talking to all the right people tonight,” Dad says as the two of us walk into the house. We’re later than everyone else who went with us, but I’m guessing it’s because we had more luck schmoozing than they did. “Seemed to get a lot of good information, appointments made?”
I hold Katie’s hand as she has a seat on the couch, and reaches down to take her shoes off. She sighs with relief, and the sound goes right to my gut.
“Tired?” I look down at her.
Her gaze meets mine. I notice the makeup under her eyes is smudged. She looks exhausted.
“Yeah, it’s a lot to be ‘on’ and interact with a bunch of people you don’t know.”
“Welcome to our lifestyle, honey,” Mom says as she takes a drink from a wine glass.
“My parents are just like you, and I don’t recall them ever sending a young girl out to do their bidding for them.” She gives Mom a little bit of the same attitude back she gets, which gives me hope for the two of us.
“We do things a little differently in the valley,” Mom says, taking another sip from her wine glass.
“Especially if she’s had a few,” I add under my breath.
“Don’t act like you’re superior, Trace.”
“I’m not, but I think myself and my wife have done enough for the family tonight. We’re gonna head on upstairs.”
I reach my hand out to her again, helping her off the couch. Bending down, I grab her shoes, and together we make our way up the stairs. We’re quiet as we head up to our room. I think we’re both exhausted after the whirlwind of the past few days. It’s like we’ve lived an entire lifetime in this short amount of time.
“You did good tonight,” I praise her as I shut the door and turn the lock. I don’t want to speak to anyone else who isn’t wearing my ring tonight. “I wasn't expecting you to handle it as well as you did. I definitely think we’re going to get some hits off of what we were requesting, all because of how hot you are, and how charming you were. I appreciate what you did.”
She shrugs, trying to play off what she did as nothing special. But I’ve seen women come into situations like this, and the first outing they had was a disaster. They’d never been able to come back from it, in their marriage or in society.
“Can you help me? I can’t reach the button.” She turns so that her back is facing me.
I try not to look at the smooth skin exposed from the top of her neck to where two dimples peek out above her ass. The increase in my breathing says more about how she affects me than anything else.
We’re playing with fire—or more specifically, I’m playing with fire, and I’m close to getting burnt. With everything I have, I know I can’t get close to this woman. She’s a means to an end; that’s all she can ever be. If I show that I care about her, my parents will use her and whatever feelings I may develop against us both. Moving so that she’s within arm’s reach, I try to ignore the heat of her body so close to mine. It’s harder than I imagined it would be.
“You sure you want me to touch you? Last time I did, we ended up in bed together.” I tease, hoping it breaks some of the tension I’m feeling between us.
“We may have ended up in bed together, but you sure as fuck didn’t touch me,” she retorts.
Her words aren’t ringing true, at least not that I remember. “What do you mean?”
“Should I be worried about your memory? The only time we had sex, we did it in your truck. There was no bed involved. Hoped we would change that, but you didn’t touch me. Does our wedding night ring a bell? I woke up by myself.” She puts her hands on her hips, staring straight at me.
It occurs to me, this woman is different than the one I thought she was when I first met her. That night at the bar, I’d thought maybe she was the type of woman who didn’t care what others thought of her—that she lived her life a minute at a time, throwing caution to the wind. Little did I know she was really living a life so much like mine. Being manipulated by her family, and then pressured into the type of marriage no one wants to be in.
All of that should make me want to feel close to her, should make me want to be in this with her in a way that we can survive the next fifty years together. But I resent her, because she’s fulfilling the promise our families made the moment we were both born. If she hadn’t been a girl, and I hadn’t been a boy, we’d never be in this situation right now.
“You sound annoyed. I thought we agreed this would be a marriage in name only.” Although she said she wanted the messy after Cain and Marissa stopped to talk to us, I didn't fully believe her. I turn from her, run my hands through my hair, and then turn back, hoping she doesn’t look as beautiful as she has all night. In the span of a few seconds she’s grown a second nose, or her eyes aren’t clear pools of emotion that tells me everything she’s feeling.
Hardening my voice, and myself, I do my best to push her away. If I let her get too close, I have the potential to get hurt. I’ve been there before, but I’m unsure of how I’ll cope with it when I’m expected to be with her for the rest of my life. This is going to take work, and while I’m not afraid of hard work, I’m afraid of losing.
Losing what little bit I have left of myself. Losing what little bit I have left of my heart, and hope that we don’t destroy each other in the process.
She steps closer, not put off by the tone of my voice or the unspoken physical act of me pulling away. Her chin tightens and she looks at me head on, not backing away.
“Maybe you thought we agreed, but I never did. If we’re going to stand as a united front, we have to be close with one another. I need to feel like you’re in it with me. For me? I want physical intimacy with you. It’s something my mom has always held over my dad, and I swore to myself that when I got married, I’m going to have a relationship with my husband. I refuse to live the entire rest of my life without learning about you. We may have been forced into this situation, but there’s no reason we can’t make the best of it. The stronger we are, the harder it’ll be for others to come between us. You know what I’m saying is true. As soon as they figure out they aren’t breaking us, they’ll do their best to press us apart. They’ll do it as hard as an elevator that’s not opening.”
I place my hand on her chest, pushing up as I begin speaking to her. “I’m a hard man to get to know. I might have looked jovial and approachable that night in the bar. That was the man who had a small amount of hope still that his life could be different. He was interested slightly in finding love and maybe starting a family. The man standing before you? He has no hope. He’s lost his chance to be something other than what the four generations before me were. He’ll make you fall in love with him…”
She scoffs, a little tilt of her lips splaying against her mouth. “Doubt that. You’ll have to work harder than just trying to reverse psyche me into it.”
Her heart is pounding under my palm. My mouth goes dry with the way I affect her. It would be so much easier if we weren’t attracted to one another, if I didn’t know what she looked like underneath the dress she wears. Perhaps if I was the type of person who had so much anger and resentment toward his parents, I’d be able to have a healthy marriage with this woman, but I’m scared the resentment will reach her.
“I’m an asshole, but I’m loyal,” I give her a self-satisfying grin.
“You think loyalty will make me fall in love with you?” She raises an eyebrow, and huffs. “Loyalty is attractive, but it isn’t the flex you think it is. If we’re going to be stuck in this together, I’d like for us to be able to count on each other.”
“Isn’t that what loyalty is? You’re the only person I have on my side right now. My parents may act like they care, but they don’t. Not about us, anyway. They care about keeping the ranch in the family. Which means after we secure the funding for the new program, they’ll want grandchildren, whether we do or not. If we don’t give them what they want, we’ll never hear the end of it.” I throw back at her.
“That is what loyalty is, but it’s not going to make me fall in love with you. And if we’re going to give them grandchildren, we’ll have to have a marriage that’s physical. You realize that, right?”
“You’ll fall in love with me,” I insist. “You’ll go to bed thinking about me, wake up wondering where I am, you’ll have to have me at all times, and you’ll not be sure how you managed to live your life before me.” I tilt my head to the side and look deeply into her eyes.
“Prove it.” She purses her lips before running her tongue over them.
It’s a maneuver she does when she’s