Chapter 16
PEYTON
I’ve been locked in the bathroom for an eternity. Twenty minutes, maybe more. I’ve brushed my teeth. I’ve stared at my pores in the magnifying mirror. And I’ve practiced my “everything is fine” smile until the corners of my mouth started to twitch.
But hiding in the half bath won’t save me from what comes next: sharing a bed with my husband.
I splash cold water on my face, dry off on the extra-fluffy towel, and stare at my reflection. The person staring back is someone who made a series of questionable decisions and is now about to have to lie in the bed she made, literally.
I dig through the box of PJs, shoving past the clingy silk Matt liked and the lacy stuff I bought thinking I’d be honeymooning, until I hit the bottom where I find a pair of oversized red-and-black plaid flannel pajamas. They are comfortable, warm, and as sexy as a tax audit.
I change, trading the cursed bikini for proper underwear and buttoning up the shirt to my throat.
I grab my phone and sit on the closed toilet. I should call Emma. But the thought of rehashing tonight—the food, the interrogation, all his touches, and now the bed situation—is insurmountable. She’d add more questions that I don’t know how to answer.
I chicken out and type a quick text instead.
Peyton
Meeting the parents went okay, but I’m exhausted. Talk tomorrow?
Emma
Okay? That tells me nothing. Let’s FaceTime when you’re in bed. I won’t keep you up
Peyton
Long story, but I can’t bring the phone into our room. Full debrief tomorrow, I promise
I lock the screen. Her reply comes up as a preview banner.
Emma
OUR?! room
I don’t respond to that one and activate the Do Not Disturb setting.
I drop my discarded clothes in the box and pick it up, to not leave evidence of me not using the primary bathroom.
As I step out, the house is quiet. Is he already in bed? My socks slide on the polished floors as I climb the stairs.
At the top of the landing, the hallway is dark, save for a rectangle of light spilling from a doorway on the left. I creep closer, hugging the wall, and give a quick peek through the doorframe to assess the threat level.
Liam is in bed, on top of the covers as promised. He’s wearing a black T-shirt that hugs his shoulders and gray sweatpants.
Gray. Sweatpants.
The internet jokes about the power of gray sweatpants do not do the reality justice.
But that’s not the worst part.
He’s holding a book. And he’s wearing glasses. Black-rimmed, rectangular frames perched on his straight, arrogant, aristocratic nose.
Oh, come on.
It’s unfair. A low blow. A tactical nuke of hotness deployed directly against my core.
He looks like a sexy professor, or the villain in a movie who everyone roots for despite his gray morality.
He turns a page, his brow furrowed in concentration, unaware that I’m lurking in the corridor having a hormonal crisis.
I jerk back behind the wall, pressing my spine against the plaster and hugging my box.
I can’t; it’s too much.
The book, the glasses, how good he looks in loungewear—it’s weaponized attractiveness. Assault by aesthetic.
You can do it, Peyton, it’s just sweatpants on a hot guy.
I left a man at the altar yesterday; I can handle sexy pajamas.
I go to step forward, then remember my phone.
With a heavy exhale, I turn back to the console table in the hallway, shift the box in my arms to get the device out of my pocket, and leave it on the cold surface, screen down.
I fix my face into a mask of indifference and walk into the room.
Liam doesn’t look up immediately. He finishes the sentence he’s reading, marks his place with a finger, and then slowly lifts his head.
His gaze sweeps over me, taking in the flannel ensemble in all its anti-seductive glory. The perusal starts at my fuzzy socks, travels up the shapeless plaid pants, lingers on the buttoned-up collar, and lands on my face.
One corner of his mouth quirks up.
“Ah.” His voice is dry. “Flannel. Nature’s most effective deterrent.”
I drop the box at the foot of the bed. “Would you have preferred silk?”
He lowers the book into his lap and considers me with those gray eyes that are even more striking behind the frames.
“Depends.” He tilts his head. “What’s the objective?”
“The objective is to behave.”
His gaze drops to my mouth, then flicks back up to my eyes.
“Then the fabric doesn’t matter.” He shrugs. “If I didn’t want to behave, flannel wouldn’t stop me.”
He pushes his glasses up his nose and resumes reading his book as if his words haven’t just seared me from head to toe.
I stand frozen, my face burning.
“I’d be careful, though.” He turns a page without looking up. “All that flannel… one spark between us and you’ll go up in flames.”
“Good thing we aren’t touching, then,” I manage.
I march to the empty side of the bed and change the subject. “I didn’t know you wore glasses. Is that why you almost ran me over? Because you were half blind?”
“They’re just for reading.”
“You look like a stern librarian.”
Liam glances up at me over the rims, his gaze dark and amused. “Is that a fantasy of yours? Because I can shush you, if you like.”
My face flames hotter. I yank back the covers and slide underneath, keeping as far from him as the admittedly large bed allows.
True to his word, Liam stays on top of the comforter. He has a heavy blanket folded at his feet that he’ll presumably use when he’s done reading.
I curl up on my side, facing away from him, staring at the wall. Despite the layers of fabric separating us, his heat reaches me. And the mattress dips under his weight, shifting gravity and threatening to roll me toward the center. Toward him.
I squeeze my eyes shut. Then open them. I’m too weirded out to sleep.
“So,” I say to the wall. “Is this the part where we do pillow talk? Discuss our hopes and dreams?”
“My hope,” Liam says, “is to finish this chapter.”
“Don’t let me stop you.”
I roll onto my back. The ceiling is painted a crisp white, but the molding near the corner is chipped. I stare at the imperfection. Then get bored again and look at Liam immersed in his book.
I wish I had something to read. But my e-reader is lost somewhere in the boxes downstairs. Without a book or my phone, I have nothing to do but lie down and marinate in the awareness of him.
Liam sighs. “I can feel you staring.”
“I’m waiting for you to turn the page.” I shift onto my side to face him, propping my head on my hand. “It’s the only entertainment I have.”
“There are two hundred pages left.” He lifts an eyebrow. “It’s going to be a long night.”
“Couldn’t agree more.”
Another sigh escapes him, this one long, exasperated, resigned. He closes the book with a snap and turns to face me.
“What do you like to read?”
“Mmm… Anything with a crumbling British manor covered in ivy or a fog-drenched island off the coast of Maine, and I’m hooked.
Better if it has gothic vibes and a ghost, or a murder.
Or a ghost solving a murder. Oh, it could be its own murder.
And I love psychological domestic thrillers with a messed-up marriage where you’re reading thinking ‘why is she even with this guy, he’s awful to her,’ but then—boom—plot twist, unreliable narrator, she’s the psycho.
” I tap my chin. “Or straight-up romance always works.”
Liam stares at me, jaw working, but he doesn’t comment on my literary taste. He swings his legs over the side of the bed and limps out of the bedroom.
His footsteps echo down the stairs, followed by scuffling sounds. Then the footsteps return.
Liam reappears in the doorway, carrying a stack of paperbacks. He crosses the room and dumps them onto my nightstand.
“Knock yourself out,” he huffs, standing by the bed, hands on his hips, looking put-upon and grumpy and… somehow incredibly thoughtful.
I pop my lips. “Ah, books, that’s why I married you.”
Liam scowls and returns to his side of the bed. He throws the second comforter over himself and picks up his book with pointed determination.
I shuffle through my new treasure stack, reading the back covers one by one.
He brought me a dog-eared thriller about a wealthy, dysfunctional family, a black-and-red paperback promising a shocking twist ending, a suspense novel about a wife spying on her neighbors, and a spooky romance where two feuding writers end up on a retreat at a haunted castle in Scotland.
I make a surprised noise.
Liam’s head snaps toward me, irritation flashing across his features. “What now?”
“Have you read this one?”
“Yes,” he grits out.
“How come?”
“Lila gave it to me. She says I should read more romance to get a better understanding of women.”
“Ah.” I press my lips together to suppress a grin. “So this is where all your charm comes from.”
He doesn’t reply. Just turns his page aggressively.
I ignore his irritation and crack open the romance novel. The first chapter draws me in, and I get lost in the fiction, forgetting about my bleak reality.
I read. He reads. The only sound is the occasional whisper of paper against paper. The tension in my shoulders dissolves the more chapters I get through. My breathing slows. The words on the page blur as my eyelids grow heavy.
I forget about Matt. About the lawsuit. About tomorrow’s complications and the five-year sentence I’ve agreed to serve. I forget about the man beside me, his sweatpants, his glasses, his hands on me.
I forget to turn off my lamp.
I pass out with the book on my chest, and somewhere in the space between dreams and reality, the darkness turns… safe.