Chapter 24
After hours of listening to medical advice, I didn’t have any strength left in me to be alone with my own darkening thoughts.
I convinced myself that Nicholas deserved a fighting chance, that he might wake up any moment, and if he did, I didn’t want him to think I’d given up on him.
So, I told the doctors to do whatever they could.
But what if I’d made the wrong choice?
What if I let my own selfishness, my own inability to let go, guide my decision?
My mind spun out of control, my stomach twisting in on itself violently as Elliott drove me back to his apartment.
It was a miracle that I hadn’t puked on myself yet. Though the lack of food in my system, having had no time to eat anything after Ursula’s impromptu drop in, likely was the only reason I managed to keep the empty contents of my stomach in place.
Thankfully, without even having to say it out loud, Elliott somehow knew I couldn’t face being alone right now.
I truly didn’t deserve him.
“Why don’t you take a long, hot shower, while I get us something to eat?” Elliott suggested when we walked into his place.
“Take a shower, here? In your apartment?”
“I mean, unless you want to go to my neighbor Pauline’s to shower? Though I will warn you, she will likely hold you hostage in there with tea and creamed cakes.”
A shower sounded heavenly.
But the idea of showering, being naked in my fake boyfriend’s apartment, seemed like a line that shouldn’t be crossed.
He disappeared into what I assumed was his bedroom at the back of the apartment and reappeared with fresh towels. “There’s a clean T-shirt and a spare pair of my sweatpants under the towels, if you want something comfortable to wear.”
I remained rooted on the spot.
Showering was one thing. Wearing his clothes was such an intimate thing, and exactly the sort of thing people in a real relationship did.
I knew I shouldn’t, but the mere idea of wearing his T-shirt, having his scent on my bare skin, sent a flutter from my heart straight into my stomach.
It was too tempting.
Behind his glasses, the edges of his eyes softened. “Trust me, a shower will help.”
Slowly, before I changed my mind, I took the bundle of clothes and towels and headed to his bathroom.
Hot water poured over me, the shower’s pressure working its magic and easing the tension knotting every muscle in my back.
Resting my forehead against the tiled wall, the water sliding down my spine, I tried to silence the negativity threatening to consume my whole mind.
If Elliott hadn’t been by my side at Meadowlands explaining exactly what the doctors planned to do to help Nicholas, I likely would have had a mental breakdown.
It wasn’t just trying to wrap my head around the possibility that my dad might never wake up; it also didn’t help that, the entire time we were there, my phone refused to stop vibrating.
Maya, my mother, and Ursula refused to give me one second of freaking peace.
Not to mention the five-minute voicemail I refused to listen to from Daniel waiting for me when we left the care facility.
After all this time, what the hell could he have to say to me?
Honestly, I wasn’t sure how much more shit my shoulders could carry.
Everyone had a breaking point, and if I didn’t start getting a handle on my life, I was about to hit my own.
Stepping out of the shower, I quickly towel-dried my hair and slipped on the clothes Elliott gave me. The T-shirt that smelled exactly like him was far too long, and no matter how much I tightened the string on the sweatpants, they remained a breath away from falling around my ankles.
Something hot burned into existence between my legs at the thought of Elliott watching them slipping down my legs, his eyes darkening at the sight of my bare, aching pussy.
No, stop that now.
Thinking of my fake boyfriend as anything more was too dangerous. But no matter how much I told myself that, my body refused to listen.
The butterflies in my stomach swooped into action, performing their audition for the freaking Olympics, as I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.
Staring at my reflection, I didn’t try to deny how good it felt being wrapped in his clothes.
Over the past month, Elliott made me feel safe; he made me feel seen. Hell, he’d done more for me in four weeks than Daniel did in three years.
And truthfully, if I dared let the guard around my heart down for a split second, I feared I was already stumbling down the path to falling for him—hard.
But it went against rule number one.
Whatever woman Elliott did end up falling in love with would be the luckiest woman alive, in my opinion.
I just knew it could never be me.
No one, and I mean no one, would ever be allowed to break me in the way Daniel did.
Not that the flutters in my stomach agreed, especially when I walked back into the living room and discovered two bowls of steaming tomato soup and a plate filled with grilled cheese waiting for me.
Like, seriously? How was this man even real?
Come on, give a girl a fighting chance!
Turning, I found Elliott standing frozen on the spot between the living room and his kitchen, his attention firmly fixed on me.
His nostrils flared, the muscle in his jaw practically bouncing to the surface. He almost looked pained, as if he was fighting with himself not to close the distance between us.
Nearly drowning in his clothes, I was certain I looked anything but hot. But the way Elliott’s eyes darkened and gaze devoured every inch of me, I felt like a goddess.
He, too, had changed clothes and had put on those freaking grey joggers that clung to his hips, and in the right light gave me the perfect outline of his thick cock.
Moisture vanished from my mouth.
The air between us grew heavy with tension.
“You cooked and didn’t burn the place down, I think you undersold your cooking abilities to me,” I joked, trying to distract myself from marveling at him and those freaking sweatpants. “You aren’t helping your ‘I’m hardly perfect’ case.”
He chuckled deeply, the noise travelling from the base of my feet right between to my aching center. “Heating canned soup can hardly be classified as cooking.”
“Not just soup, you made grilled cheese too.”
“Again, not exactly culinary expertise.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. After all, it’s the effort that counts, and the fact you didn’t burn off your eyebrows is an added bonus.”
“I’ve never cooked for anyone but myself, so maybe wait until you’ve tasted it before handing out any praise.”
But he cooked for me.
Grinning like a schoolgirl fool, I plonked myself down on the sofa and patted the cushion beside me. “Trust me, I can safely say this is one of the best dinners anyone has ever made me.”
Pink tinged his cheeks, and freaking hell, it was adorable.
Elliott sat beside me, and despite trying to stay on his half of the sofa, his thigh pressed against mine, and our knees touched, yet neither of us moved away.
Hardly the sofa’s fault when Elliott was six-foot-two and the sofa barely fitted him alone.
His throat bobbed, his hand curling into a fist as he subtly attempted to adjust the front of his sweatpants.
My teeth skimmed my bottom lip, unable to stop myself from noticing the twitch and sudden tightness around his crotch area.
It would have been so easy to reach for him, to free him from those devilish grey bottoms. It’d been even easier to swing my leg over and straddle him and grind down on his thickening cock.
I’d already felt his hard cock against my back and stomach; now my body screamed to feel it pressing exactly where it belonged.
My core pulsed in desperation.
God, I needed to get laid. Like properly toe-curling, mind-boggling, unable to walk straight for a week laid.
Whatever it took to get Elliott out of my freaking system.
He shifted, bringing his arm to rest on the back of the sofa. The heat of his skin radiated into the back of my neck, the tips of his fingers a breath away from touching me.
It took every inch of my weaning restraint not to lean back.
A phone vibrating in my pocket snapped me out of the haze of lust clouding my rationality.
Elliott’s voice was thick with need as he said, “You going to answer that?”
“It’s my sister.” I turned my phone off, silencing the outside world. “She’s already called me twenty times. Apparently, she can’t take a hint.”
“Is everything okay?”
Apart from her being a major cockblock right now?
“Yes and no,” I sighed. “She wants me to fly out this weekend to Daniel’s family ranch in Montana and help her ‘envision’ the big day.”
His molars crunched together.
“Trust me, I’d rather swallow rusty nails than spend the weekend there, but if I say no, my mother is going to pull her usual bullshit and blackmail me into going.”
“Tell her that you’ve got other plans.”
“It’s not that simple.”
He hummed unconvinced.
“Elliott, you know I hate lying, even when it comes to my mother, because in my experience, lies always find a way to come back and bite you in the ass.”
“Well, what if you weren’t lying? What if you genuinely did have a reason not to go?”
Arching a brow, I tore off a piece of grilled cheese and popped it into my mouth. “Keep talking.”
“Come with me to Monaco this weekend.”
The piece of cheesy bread nearly choked me.
“It’s my off-duty weekend, and I’m visiting my Grand-mère,” he said. “You can tell your sister that I’ve planned a surprise romantic weekend away for us, which technically isn’t a lie because I have just surprised you with it.”
“You want me to meet your family?”
“It’ll only be my Grand-mère there.”
“Still a huuuge deal. Are you sure you want me to meet her?”
“Why not?”
It wasn’t a horrible plan. In fact, it was sort of the perfect plan to keep me the hell away from Montana.
But meeting Elliott’s grandmother felt like another too intimate for a fake girlfriend sort of thing.
“Though there’s a good chance my father will be there too.” Hardened lines masked his face. “If he is smart, he will make himself scarce while we are there, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“I’m guessing you don’t have the best relationship?”
He scoffed. “You could say that. Unfortunately, my father picked vodka over his own sons. He spent my entire childhood drunk.”
“Oh, Elliott, that’s horrible.”
“He couldn’t handle my mother dying, and rather than pulling himself together for the sake of his children, he drowned his sorrows and left our Grand-mère to pick up the pieces.”
“Losing your mom is one thing, but having to deal with your father—freaking hell, I’m so sorry that you had to go through that as a child. No child should ever have to see such things.”
“It is what it is.” He failed to hide his disdain. “He claims he’s in recovery right now, though I don’t believe it. You know what they say, once an addict, always an addict.”
I winced.
This was the first time I’d heard Elliott speak with such hatred and anger, yet there was something deeper that I couldn’t quite place.
Sadness? Reluctance? Acceptance? Fear?
Exhaling deeply, his shoulders relaxed and the gentler version of Elliott that I knew resurfaced. “It’s an option, one I’d love for you to consider, but there is no pressure.”
I tore off another piece of grilled cheese and rolled it between my fingers.
“Though I won’t lie to you, my Grand-mère is dying to meet you.”
Snapping my attention to him, my eyes widened. “Why?”
A blush crept past his neck. “I may or may not have told Jaxon we were together, which of course has gotten back to my Grand-mère. She has been pestering me for a week now to meet you.”
“Couldn’t you tell her the truth?”
He refused to look at me. “My Grand-mère has been through a lot. As you can imagine, raising four boys wasn’t easy, and it still isn’t. But all she has ever wanted is for us to be happy, and when she found out we were together, the happiness in her voice…I didn’t want to take that away from her.”
We’d already lied to so many people about this relationship; what was one more?
Popping the piece of rolled-up bread into my mouth, I said, “So, what you’re telling me is that if I go, we will have to act like we’re a couple while we are there?”
“For the whole weekend, yes.”
So, I had two options.
Either I went to Montana, spent time with my ex’s family and endured two days of bullshit surrounded by people who cared very little for my feelings.
Or I flew to Monaco and spent the whole weekend pretending to be Elliott’s girlfriend. Or rather, acting like my brewing feelings for him were anything but fake.
Well, shit.
It looked like I was going to the South of France.