Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Savannah
A sign outside the club announces the dress code—no athletic wear, bold and underlined. “I’m really not dressed for this place,” I say.
“You look fine.” Brayden marches us up to the bouncer, eyebrow raised like he’s spoiling for a fight.
The bouncer looks from him to me and back again. “Dress code says—”
Brayden cuts him off. “I hope you’re not telling me that my wife can’t come to this club.”
The bouncer looks at Brayden again. He’s a big guy with slightly weary eyes as if he’s seen everything and most of it’s hair-pulling fights. “Not a problem.” And unclips the rope to let us in.
Inside the club, people are dancing under the low illuminated ceiling or splitting time between the bar and booths circling the room. Brayden leads me over to a booth: large, leather, half in shadow.
I sit, scooting myself around; Brayden slides in after me.
He showered after the game, and he smells like fresh air and expensive cologne.
Ballpark scents. He drapes an arm around the back of the booth.
His fingertips brush the nape of my neck right above my shirt collar, playing with the chain of my pendant.
A cocktail waitress comes over. She’s dressed better than I am—a cute top that shows off her toned arms, a cute skirt that reveals the petite lines of her legs. A wide Southern grin that she aims right at Brayden. “What can I get for you?” she asks him.
Brayden nods to me. I haven’t even glanced at the menu. “She’ll have the Never Say No,” he says, “and water.”
I give him the eye. I can order for myself. What I can’t say with the waitress here watching us, clearly aware of who Brayden is. Even if the drink—a Scotch cocktail—sounds like a migraine trigger in a glass.
“You’ll like it,” Brayden says.
“And for you?” The waitress leans in as if she’s having an issue hearing Brayden, giving him a view down her low-cut top.
I’m sitting right here. I make a noise—definitely not a growl. Grab Brayden’s hand and thread our fingers together, tucking myself into his side. This is just for show. Yeah, I’m going to show her who Brayden is with, and it isn’t her.
Brayden glances at me, then down at the menu, studying it like he doesn’t have it memorized. Am I supposed to order for him the way he did for me as some sort of couple thing? I know what he drinks. Our kitchen certainly has enough of it: bottles and bottles of brown liquor.
Finally, he drops the menu. “I’ll have a club soda with lime.”
For a moment I think I misheard him. But I won’t show any surprise, especially when the waitress falters slightly. “Is that everything?” she asks.
“That’s what I ordered, isn’t it?” he says.
The waitress rights herself. “Be back with those in just a sec.” And she puts some sway in her hips as she leaves.
“She’s pretty,” I say after the waitress is out of earshot. Easier than, Why are you acting weird?
“Who is?” Brayden’s arm is still around my shoulders. He hasn’t removed his hand from mine.
I watch the people out on the dance floor. No one is in formal wear, exactly, but no one is wearing sweatpants and a sparkly Peaches T-shirt either. California casual is apparently Atlanta underdressed. A few phone cameras get pointed our way. Great.
Brayden must see me looking. “Do you want to dance?” he asks.
“In my sweatpants and sneakers? No thanks.”
“You really think people here will judge you?”
I lower my voice, trying not to let the words come out hoarse, but they do. “Girls like me get held to a different standard.” Because it’s too much to explain that straight-sized girls can be slouchy or casual in the same outfit in which I’ll be considered sloppy.
“Girls like you?” Brayden asks, as if he’s chewing that over. “I’d think the other women in here would be happy you aren’t all done up.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“Gives them a fighting chance.”
“You don’t have to…” I start. Because no one will hear him say that. But if this is what he wants—to be seen cuddled up with his wife in public—two can play that game. I slide my hand below the polished surface of the table, squeeze the muscle of his leg, high enough to make my point.
For a moment, his body goes stiff—thigh hard against mine, breathing uneven. The way he was right after that fake kiss at our wedding party. The one that doesn’t feel so fake right this second.
Then he laughs. “Good thing I’m not the one wearing sweatpants.”
I can’t help it. I dart a look at his lap. He’s in jeans. It’s dark. Is he…?
I move over, two inches away, where I can think better. We’re not flirting. This isn’t real. This is about getting our photo taken so other people will forget those older, worse pictures of him.
A minute later, the waitress returns with our drinks. “Do you want to start a tab or pay out now?”
I’m surprised he doesn’t just have an open credit line here.
“—we’ll pay out now,” Brayden is saying. “Gonna make it an early night of things.” His hand finds its way around my side, deep under the shadow of the table. For some reason, he’s giving the waitress a hard look.
Her face falls like she’s watching her tip crater. Then she puts on a smile as fake as the lashes I’m wearing—as fake as her interest in him probably was. She’s just trying to get paid. And how is that any different from you?
“Not a problem,” she says, and turns on her high heel and heads to the next table to repeat the same process.
Which leaves me and Brayden and his club soda and my cocktail. “I don’t know if I can drink this.” I take a small sip—it really is delicious—and then another. I need to stop, so I put the glass down.
Next to me, Brayden is frowning. “I thought it was sugar that was a problem.”
What the hell? Is he monitoring my food the way Barb does all of a sudden? “If you felt that way about what I eat, and how I look,” I whisper fiercely, “why’d you marry me?”
For a moment, Brayden’s dark blond eyebrows knit in confusion. “Sugar is bad for your headaches, right?” He lifts my drink, sips it assessingly. “This isn’t sweet.”
I blink a few times. So this was about my migraines. “Yeah, sugar can be a trigger for some people. Mine are mostly dark alcohols and certain smells.” And stress and… and… and…
“Which smells?” He brushes his nose against his own shirt collar as if sniffing for traces of cologne.
“No, you smell good—I mean, your cologne doesn’t bother me.”
His lips curve up at the edges. “What else bothers you?”
“I could write a list out—”
“I’ll remember if you tell me.”
Like he’s my real husband. Like I’m his real wife. Like anything between us is genuine and not just because we’re both using each other. “Don’t,” I whisper. “Don’t do this if you don’t mean it.”
He turns to me, close enough that his nose drags up the suddenly sensitized skin of my neck. “Who says I don’t mean it?”
I raise my hand to his chest to push him away, except I don’t quite manage it and my fingers tangle in the fabric of his shirt. “This isn’t a joke. This isn’t—” My voice catches. “This is serious.”
Brayden reaches up and catches my fingers in his own. His hand is dry and slightly rough at his fingertips—I shouldn’t enjoy the feel of it or the sincere way he’s looking at me now.
This is just an act. It has to be. Our marriage certificate came with coupons to a local casino.
But right now, I don’t want to be lied to.
I don’t want to fake it. I want to be out with my husband having one drink and exchanging secrets in our little corner of the universe.
“Dark alcohol is my main trigger—clear liquor is better. Sometimes sugar, but usually not so much I have to give up chocolate.”
“Liquor’s bad. Chocolate’s good. What else?”
“The cleaning supplies they used at the hospital I volunteered at were the worst.”
“Is that why—” he begins. “You were a nursing student, right?”
“Brayden, were you stalking my LinkedIn?”
That gets me another smile. “Maybe. Can I tell you something?”
“Uh, sure.” Though my heart starts beating a little faster.
“I don’t really understand what bioinformatics is. Guess I’m not smart enough to have you for my wife.”
Men have said the same thing to me over the years. Or what they’ve said is, You’re too smart for me. Different than I’m not smart enough for you.
I drop my hand back down to his thigh. Run my fingertips along the seam of his pants. “Did you want me to explain it right now?” I say.
His throat clicks as he swallows. “I don’t know how much I’ll get—” and oh, here it goes, him telling me that what I’m studying is just so complicated “—so you’ll have to go slow.”
“Is that the pace you normally like?” I tease. “I’ve seen your games. Usually, you play hard.”
An instant later, I’m pressed against the back of the booth, Brayden leaning over me, a hand at the back of my neck, another at my jaw, focusing my gaze up at his. “Don’t test me, Sav,” he says, and his breath is coming quick. “Because I don’t have the self-control.”
For a moment, we breathe each other’s air. His eyes are stormy in the dim bar light. My hand finds its way to the front of his shirt, gripping the soft cotton. I hear a distant thump—the music. Maybe my pulse.
Then he lets me go. Turns. Picks up my abandoned drink and swallows it in one go. Laughs a little to himself then rolls his shoulders as if he’s shrugging off the moment.
I can’t stay here. Not with the lazy smile he puts on, different from the one he was just wearing. This smile is like a billboard: an advertisement for something he clearly doesn’t feel.
“I should go home,” I say. No, that’s too indefinite. “I need to go home.” I point to the lights above us even if my head is, for once, clear of a headache. And clouded with whatever that was. “You don’t need to come with me.” As if that wasn’t clear from my tone.
For a moment, Brayden looks like he’s going to argue. He could argue. He has every right to argue. I wish he would argue—not by yelling, but by putting his arm back around me and keeping me here.