Chapter 24
SASHA
When I tell Griff we should go a few minutes later, he takes me by the hand and mutters something like thank Christ. We’re gone in what feels like thirty seconds flat.
His sisters weren’t kidding.
He helps me into his truck. While he’s walking around the other side, I look through the photos of me holding Imogen. I send him one where we’re both smiling, our faces tipped together. She looks so freaking cute.
Griff pauses outside his door, pulling out his phone.
His face lights up, and for a moment, I wonder if my joke’s gone awry. Then he scowls and shoves the phone back in his pocket before getting in.
“You like it?”
“Very cute.”
“Thought you might. Seeing as you love babies so much.”
He glowers at me.
“You could have told me you wanted to go,” I say as he buckles up and starts the truck.
“You were having fun.”
“Weren’t you?”
Griffin makes his signature sound; the one that could mean yes or no. I still don’t know which.
I pinch my lips together, hiding the smile on my face as he shifts the truck into reverse.
He throws his hand over the back of my seat but pauses, narrowing his eyes when he sees my face. “What?”
“You’re really sweet, Griffin Kelly. You know that?”
Another grunting sound as he twists around and backs us out of the driveway. Why is seeing Griffin back up a truck so sexy? It shouldn’t be sexy.
He turns the truck with his palm on the wheel. Damn it, that’s sexy, too.
As he pulls into the road, I recross my legs and look out the window, surprised I’m not finding this man’s freaking breathing sexy right now.
Griffin stretches his neck and lets out a low breath.
“God dammit, Griffin.”
He looks completely confused.
A few minutes later, I sigh, turning toward him on the seat. “Cap really got you with that side tackle.”
Picturing Griffin playing with kids is sweet. Far from sexy.
He grumbles. “I’m going to be bruised for a week.”
“You loved it.”
This time I get the tiny lip curl. Paired with the darting of his eyes to meet mine. It’s sweet and sexy all at once.
Which, unfortunately, turns out to be my kryptonite, because suddenly all I want to do is jump him, right here in the truck.
I’d probably make him careen off the road.
It’d be worth it.
When we pull up to the cabin a few minutes later, the sky’s completely dark. Solar lights line the path, and under normal circumstances, I’d already be envisioning how the walkway would look with new landscaping—rosebushes and hydrangea maybe, with string lights on the porch.
But these aren’t normal circumstances. We were quiet for the rest of the drive home, and now that Griffin kills the engine, the silence envelops us.
Except there’s no silence inside me. I can hear the sound of my heart beating, the crashing of my pulse against my ears.
The soft pull of Griffin’s breath as he releases his seat belt.
This is the part we didn’t talk about, maybe because there’s nothing to talk about. This is a fake wedding, and fake wedding nights should just be like any other night.
Griffin jumps out, coming around to my side and holding the door open for me. After only a few days together, I know now that’s what he likes to do. Just like I know he likes to walk behind me when we’re walking single file to keep me in his line of sight.
Usually I jump out of the truck without his assistance, skipping past him to wherever we’re going.
But this time, he stands by my door, holding his hand out for me.
I meet his eye and take it.
A scorching heat burns through me as our hands connect, and when his other hand grazes against my hip as I jump the rest of the way to the ground, landing nearly pressed up against him, I can’t help the shiver that runs through me.
Not a real wedding night, I remind myself. Not a real wedding.
Still, I smile coyly. We’re only shadows in the dark, but I can see his face well enough. I see the way his eyes drop to my mouth.
I think of the way he kissed me at the altar—the urgency and gentleness rolled into one soul-scorching kiss—and for a moment, I’m sure he’s going to do it again. I pray for it.
But Griffin abruptly lets go of my hand, reaching into the cab to grab the presents people brought for us. There isn’t much—a few bags—and guilt surged through me even taking them home with us.
Not a real wedding.
Maybe if I say it enough times, I’ll believe it.
“You need help?” I ask.
“I’m good.”
Not a real wedding.
Tell that to the twinge of hurt that spreads where the butterflies were.
I decide right then that I’m not going to tease him.
I’m not going to make him go along with what I want.
Not tonight. I’m going to make this his call.
I want him to want me as badly as I want him, because let’s face it—I want this man.
If it were up to me, I’d strip my clothes off right here in the garden and tell him we might as well enjoy our time shacking up.
But I don’t want him just going along with me trying to corrupt him.
So I lift my chin up and stride toward the house.
I’m almost at the door when he calls out my name.
“Sasha.”
I whirl around, my heart in my throat.
“Yes?” I wait for him to come to me on the porch. I won’t give him any reason to think this wasn’t his idea. My heart beats wildly in my chest as he walks up the path. He looks so handsome with his bowed head and broad shoulders.
I tilt my face up as he jogs up the steps.
I want Griffin Kelly to kiss me so badly I might just explode. My fingers twitch, wanting to reach for him. But when he gets to me and pauses, he stops a whole foot away from me and hands me something he’s got in his hand instead.
“I thought you should have this.”
I look down. It’s a key, on a plain strap of a key ring.
I have to swallow down my disappointment. “Thanks.”
“You okay?”
I let out a little laugh. “Yeah. I’m fine. I think.”
Gripping it too hard, I try my key out in the door. It slides smoothly open, because of course Griffin Kelly wouldn’t have anything that didn’t work perfectly. He wouldn’t suffer a sticky door lock or a book out of place on a shelf.
He wouldn’t sleep with a woman who’s so lonely she just fake-married a near stranger.
It’s not about being lonely, I remind myself. The threat of Vincent Creelman is very real. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say I love the idea of being married.
The domesticity. The close family. The cozy small town and the cabin I’m brimming with ideas about, ones that’ll probably make Griff’s head pop off.
“You hungry?” Griffin asks inside the door.
“Not at all.”
“Right.”
It’s weird that he’s asking me that. He saw me stuff my face earlier.
I slip off my sandals, setting them carefully on the shoe rack. Then I stand in the foyer a moment, spinning the ring on my finger.
“Well, I guess I’ll go to bed then,” I say when he doesn’t say anything.
“Sasha, I…I don’t really know what I’m doing.”
I laugh, short and too loud. “You think I do?”
He runs a hand over the back of his neck. “I know the wedding night is a big deal when it’s real. But…” He makes a frustrated sound.
Oh God. Now that he’s said it out loud, it feels so awkward. “I know. It’s not real. So don’t worry about it, okay? I’m not going to try to seduce you.”
Griffin looks down, shifting his hand over his jaw. “It’s not that I don’t think you’re…fuck. I just can’t get involved like that. Feelings…they don’t work in this job.”
Now that stings. “So you’ve said.” I know my words sound bitter, but they’re out there, and my feelings are, too. “Since we’re saying what’s on our minds, though, I’ll say it’s funny, because that kiss today—it didn’t feel like a chore. Unless it did to you?”
He gives me a heated look. “No.”
“It didn’t to me either. Because this isn’t a job over on this side. This is my life. I think it’s normal to have some feelings.”
“I’m not saying you shouldn’t have feelings.”
I laugh. It’s a little unhinged sounding. “No, just you shouldn’t. It’s only me we need to worry about.”
Griffin doesn’t say anything to that. And why should he?
It’s crazy. He’s right; this is not about feelings.
This is for protection only. But I can’t stop being mad about it.
“You know what? Don’t worry about it. Your whole life, you’ve done a great job of tamping down feelings and operating on logic, so why stop now? ”
“Sasha—”
“You know what I think, Griffin? I think you’re afraid of what might happen if you let yourself feel anything. That’s what I think. I think the last time you let yourself feel something, someone got hurt, and you haven’t stopped blaming yourself.”
Griff bristles. I see it happen. He goes from frustration to stone. “Are you done?”
His words are hard. Maybe they should scare me. But he doesn’t scare me. Instead, anger shimmies over me. “No, I’m not done. I think you like me, Griffin Kelly.”
The only reaction I get is a muscle popping in his jaw.
“Maybe I annoy the hell out of you, but I think you care about me, at least a little more than a job. I know you want me. You told me yourself. And I don’t see what’s so wrong with us indulging in that so long as we’re pretending to be husband and wife.
There’s nothing really permanent about what’s happening here. ”
That last sentence scrapes at something painful, but it’s easy enough to ignore it with the furious standoff going on between us.
Griffin takes a step closer to me, making my stomach drop. Did I go too far? Is he going to pick me up and set me in his room? Slam the door in my face?
“I’m going to ask again. Are you done talking?”
“Why?”
“Because you talk too much.”
“That’s because there’s so much fucking space to fill.”
Griffin lets out a low growl. A warning. “Stop talking, Sasha.”
“Why?”
“Because if you don’t, I’m going to have to do something to get you to shut up.”
My stomach flips so hard and fast I have to press a hand to the wall to keep myself steady. “Like what?”
Griffin’s hand clasps itself around my throat—gently enough that I can breathe, but hard enough I can’t move. “Like this.”