Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
QUINN
I’m a pretty put-together person. I like exactly two cups of coffee a day. I’d rather have a gummy daily vitamin than the hard ones that get lodged in my throat. I have to have matching pajamas sets at night. I like knowing that I don’t need to rely on anyone else to make any choice in my life. It’s my life.
Which is exactly why I hate that the moment Sully and Andy showed up, a sinking feeling hit my stomach. Like that first small instance when you think you’re going to be sick. Your body sits up in a jerk and your brain thinks, am I going to puke?
I hate even more that Miles picked up on my odd behavior in the snap of someone's fingers. I was going to tell him about my slip-up last summer, but I thought maybe I could wow him with my office skills and show him how valuable I could be or maybe even get a little further with this Cherry thing to show him how it works, and then he wouldn’t care that I had a plan, but now, I have to just rip off the Band-Aid.
That makes me nervous.
“Anyway, Andy’s parents are sitting on the other side of the bar near the bookstore, but we wanted to come say hi,” Sully says.
“We definitely need to do lunch or dinner, and oh gosh, you have to come to the wedding. Oh, and the festivals this town has. I hope we see you at all of them.”
I’m about to tell them I’m going to be busy, but it makes me even more sick to lie more than I have.
Miles clears his throat next to me. I glance at him at the same time Andy and Sully do, and we all catch the way Miles’s gaze falls to my hand on his thigh, his hand settled over mine.
“Oh my gosh, we are interrupting your lunch date. We will see you around.” Andy smiles, leaning in to hug me one more time before they walk away.
We all wave goodbye just as our lunch appears.
I ignore the way I can feel Miles watching me.
I can practically feel the heat of his questions breathing on my neck. I roll my shoulders as if I can shake them off.
“Care to explain?” he says, slowly turning to eat his lunch.
“Not really.”
He takes a bite of his burger, nodding.
Once he swallows, he says, “Let me rephrase that. Explain.”
I roll my eyes and dip my French fry into the mustard on my plate. I make sure he’s watching as I stick it in my mouth.
He cringes. “I want an explanation so much right now that I’ll suffer through watching you eat that nasty shit. I’ll watch you eat every single fry, Quinn.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Well, I won’t lie: you have the upper hand right now. I’m clearly in need of help in all areas of life and all of a sudden little Miss Perfect Quinn—oh, sorry, Quinny—shows up and saves the day. Yet, unexpectedly, it seems she might need some help of her own.”
“Are you saying that you enjoy seeing me uncomfortable? ”
He shakes his head.
“I like seeing that you’re not as perfect as I thought you were.”
I narrow my gaze at him.
What the hell kind of response is that? I’m opening my mouth to ask just that when he beats me to it.
“It’s a compliment, Quinn. Up until this moment, you and I have had zero things in common. You feel a bit more human than you did an hour ago.”
He might mean it as a compliment, but it doesn’t feel that way.
“Just because we’re different doesn’t mean I’m less human. You do realize people are meant to be different. To be their own person. To mold their own path. Being different from someone else isn’t wrong.”
He blinks but then he just keeps staring at me.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. But just so you know, if we are going to make this work, we need to be honest with each other.”
He just goes back to eating his lunch, as do I, and we fall into a silence that I can’t quite describe. It’s not weird, but it’s not good. It's like we both know that not talking is the right move right now.
Once we are finished and Hudson brings the bill, I try to grab it first.
“I’m paying,” Miles says in a clipped tone.
“I can buy my own lunch.”
“This was a work lunch, so it’s on me.”
“Just let me buy my lunch.”
“I’ll let you buy your lunch if you tell me what’s going on.”
I sigh and hop off the stool.
“Leave him a good tip,” I say over my shoulder.
I walk out the door and instantly spot Cherry across the street. I don’t think she sees me, but I feel defeated all the same .
Two months. I’m only here for two months. It shouldn’t be that hard to do this.
Miles steps out of the bar, and Cherry’s radar senses he’s nearby. Before I can think better of it, I slide my hand into Miles’s and start walking to the shop.
If we are going to make this work, he’s right—he should know as much as he can.
“Andy and Sully got engaged last summer,” I say as we walk. “Over the last few years, people I know have all been getting engaged or married, and when Sully proposed to Andy, that meant I was the only single one left in that group. I was tired of hearing them talk about how I needed to meet someone, so when they brought up my dating Danny, Sully’s brother, I panicked and said I did have a boyfriend. I gave them your name.”
“Jesus,” he whispers. “Why?”
“Because the chances of them ever running into you seemed highly unlikely. I had no idea they’d come here for their wedding.”
“Wedding and summer vacation,” Miles adds. “So, you didn’t come back to my shop yesterday because you wanted to help me.”
“Not entirely. I knew I could help you and help myself at the same time.”
Miles groans.
“This is going to turn into a mess.”
“I know, but please don’t change your mind. It’s eight weeks. Once the summer is over and we go our separate ways, we can tell everyone we broke up and be done with it.”
Miles doesn’t say anything as we get closer to the shop.
“What else do you need to know?” I ask.
“What’s the deal with this Danny guy?”
Now it’s my turn to groan .
“One could say he’s my very own Cherry.”
“You hooked up with him?”
I slug Miles’s shoulder.
“Shit, you can hit.” He rubs his shoulder.
“It was two summers ago, and it was supposed to be a fling that was never going to last. I knew it, and I thought he did, too. It wasn’t a secret that I was going to Madrid next to meet up with my parents and he was coming back to the States. I just thought we both knew what we were getting into. Turns out I was wrong. And I never slept with him. He was too … polite.”
“Ah, so you like a good dick,” he says and laughs. “Noted.”
I move to slug him again, but he jumps back with his hands up.
“Okay, okay, not a joking moment, got it. So I’m guessing you didn’t tell him to fuck off.”
I do my best to contain my smile—Miles needs to learn how to joke—before I answer him.
“Nope.”
“How did you end it?”
I take a deep breath at his questions.
“I may have assumed we’d never run into each other again. Heck, at that time, Andy and Sully were fighting, so there was a good chance I’d never see him again.”
“What did you say?”
“I said something like if we were meant to be, then fate would find a way to put us back into the other’s path.”
Miles gags, and I laugh a little.
“That’s awful.”
“I was trying to let him down gently. I fully thought I’d never see him again.”
“And now your friends think we’ve been dating for a year.” He turns to glare at me. “And some guy who thinks you two are soulmates is here for the summer and … ”
“A woman who thinks she should wait for you is also here for the summer and …”
“We are fake dating so that no one gets hurt and so your friends won’t hound you to settle down,” Miles finishes our conversation.
We stop outside Miles’s shop, and he squeezes my hand twice. It happens so fast that I almost don’t notice it.
But I do.
It reminds me of when my family, back before Mom, Dad, and I started traveling, would eat dinner together and hold hands, squeezing them three times for I love you before we began eating.
But twice?
It must have been some kind of muscle reflex.
“What does this say about our characters?” Miles asks.
“It says we both know what we want in life and what we don’t want, so we’re going to help each other out for the next eight weeks to make those things happen.”
He turns and walks backward into the shop. “I guess it does.”
Leaving the conversation at that, I make my way into the office and sit down.
I lied to make my life less complicated, and now that lie has complicated my life.
Talking to Miles is all fine and dandy, but I need someone who can talk this out with me who isn’t invested the way I am.
I need Sadie.
As soon as the clock hit four, I left the office and went straight for B’s Bakery. If I keep this to myself the entire summer, I’m going to lose my mind. I need someone who is familiar with this kind of thing .
The obvious answer is my brother. He writes romance novels with fake dating as a trope. But it’s not for real life.
Which is exactly what he would tell me, and that’s the reason I’m not going to him. I could go to Natalie, but she’s Team Tobias all the way, so that’s a no-go, too. Grandma Betty would read way too much into it, so I can’t do that to her.
Sadie just makes sense because she owns a bookstore based on romance, possibly loves this trope and knows what we need to do, and of course, the obvious reason: she overheard enough yesterday that she knows something is up.
I clutch my purse tighter when I see the bakery’s closed sign.
Shit.
She hangs out here so much that I assumed she’d be here. I turn to my left and go to the bookstore attached to Hudson’s Bar.
I don’t see her when I walk in, so I start to browse the books. If I can’t talk to her, getting a couple of books on fake dating seems like a smart move. Again, I could just borrow books from my brother, but no thanks. Reading the spicy books he writes is a big fat no for me.
I scan the shelves for the fake dating section. I grab the first book I find and start to read the back when a body down the row blocks the sunlight from the front window.
“Ah!” I say and drop the book.
“What are you doing?” Miles asks and then looks around like we are doing something illegal.
I squat to grab the book and start looking for another one.
“I’m doing research. What does it look like I’m doing?”
He marches over to me, takes the book from my hand, and shoves it back onto the shelf.
“Hey now, what did that book ever do to you?”
“Whatever you’re doing here, it looks like you're about to give us away.”
“By reading romance? ”
“By being in this section. The big words fake dating are above you, and this town is just learning about our new relationship. If anyone were to see you, that’s it. Deal done.”
I look up at the sign, then turn to a different section. The single dad and nanny section shouldn’t set off any alarms.
I sigh and grab a book, but now I’m not reading. I’m just trying to look busy.
“Why are you really here?” Miles asks, hovering around me.
“Why do you assume I’m here for something other than a book?”
“Because I saw how you snuck out of the shop, looking over your shoulder, all suspicious. You didn’t want me to see you leave.”
“Are you stalking me?” I shove the book into his chest before moving to another section.
“No, but I’m learning to read you fairly well, so spill.”
He crosses his arms and steps into my space, waiting for me to speak. His gaze locks onto mine, flickering to my lips for the quickest moment.
I’m a little taken back at how much my body responds to his closeness. Well, how my nipples react anyway.
They like it.
Too much. So much that now I’m wondering why he looked at my lips. Did his body react the same way just now?
Like some weird electric current struck us both, since we were just inches apart.
Is he thinking of me in ways that the two of us should not be thinking of each other?
Did he think about kissing me? In the romance section no less. Now, that would secure our little secret.
I take a breath and then roll my eyes as to not give my real thoughts away. Thinking of Miles as anything more than my current accomplice would not be smart .
I’m about to tell him what Sadie overheard, then Sadie herself and Hudson step into view. They clearly don’t see us, because before we know it, Hudson pins Sadie to one of the bookshelves and starts to kiss her.
Mile instantly clears his throat.
“This is a bookstore, not a live movie.”
Hudson barely moves, as if the thought of taking his hands off Sadie is unbearable, as he turns to his brother.
Sadie is grinning, but her cheeks are rosy.
She looks wildly in love.
Those are the moments I want. Yeah, the moments my friends mentioned last summer were great, too, but the little moments like when he can’t keep his hands off me or just looking at him makes me melt—that’s what I want.
“Is there ever a part of your day where you two aren’t touching or kissing? Jesus, it’s getting to be a bit much,” Miles adds.
I roll my eyes. Of all the things I want, this is what I get for the summer.
“Fancy seeing you two here,” Sadie says. “I was actually going to go by your brother’s later to talk to you, Quinn.”
“Oh, yeah, um, I’m actually staying in the apartment behind the shop now.”
“Oh, really? Miles, that’s great that you stopped being a jerk long enough to do something nice for Quinn.”
“It sounds like he’s doing a lot more than being nice,” Hudson says with a coy smile.
Sadie nods as if she doesn’t need any more detail.
“Yes, well, it’s about time.”
“They’re dating,” Hudson adds.
“What?” Sadie snaps, but then she smiles. “Is this—” She rushes toward me and grabs my arm. “Come with me. ”
“No, no,” Miles says quickly and grabs my hand. “Anything you have to say can be said in front of me, too.”
“Oh, this is great,” Hudson says, leaning onto a bookshelf.
Sadie looks from me to Miles to Hudson and back to me.
I toss up my hands.
“Sadie knows.”
“What?” Miles snaps.
“She was at the bakery yesterday when Andy and Sully came in and asked about my boyfriend.”
“To be fair, I’m the one who mentioned you first because you were being all sour, Miles, and not letting her stay in the apartment. Your name must have triggered something for them.”
“Yeah, it triggered the fact that last summer, Quinn here told everyone that the two of us were dating,” Miles says in a hushed tone. He barely has the words out before Hudson starts to crack up.
“It’s not funny,” Miles says quickly, but that doesn’t stop Hudson. “I guess we can just call the whole thing off now.”
“What? No?” I say quickly. “Why?”
“People know it’s a lie.” He holds his hand out to Hudson and Sadie.
“We won’t tell anyone,” Hudson says quickly. “Hell, if she takes things off your plate and all you have to do is hold her hand a few times and take her to a festival here or there, I’d say that’s one hell of a deal.”
“It’s complicated, is what it is,” Miles replies.
“It doesn’t have to be,” I cut in. “We can make this extra simple. If people ask, we say that we are dating, but we hate PDA, then we show up places to be seen and go back to our homes at the end of the night.”
“Sounds easy enough,” Sadie says.
She shares a glance with her fiancée, and he nods. No words, just a look, and even though it makes me suspicious, I love that unspoken bond thing, too.
“Fine, but let’s go before we run into anyone else who just happens to know the truth.” Miles grabs my hands and rushes us through the store to the front door.
“Aww, he’s stealing you for alone time,” Hudson calls out after us.
I can hear Sadie’s laughter as the door shuts.
Miles’s steps don’t slow as we make our way back to the shop, which makes me laugh.
To any prying eyes, we look as Hudson just said.
Heck, we might be able to pull this off after all.