I press my lips together because I’m dangerously close to revealing how deep my own emotions run for him. Dangerously close to blurting out something stupid like, yes, you are secretly a marshmallow, and I love marshmallows.
For one, it sounds cutesy and vapid. And two, it sounds a little too close to I love you. Which would be the stupidest possible thing I could say in this moment.
This is still a fake marriage. One with real sex now, but the terms of our original deal haven’t changed. He’s still going to Denver after this. I’m still staying behind in Marble Falls. There’s no future here.
“I don’t know how you are as a boyfriend because we skipped that stage,” I tell him instead. “But I can tell you this. You’re an amazing husband.”
Silence.
Awkwardly, I add, “Fake husband, of course.” The term tastes bitter on my tongue.
He brushes my hair away from my cheek so he can kiss it. There’s a pause before he says, “Lila. I know our situation. I know this has an end date. I know we said no complications, but the truth is, I’m crazy about you.”
“Same.” The admission slips out of me, but I don’t take it back. Not when his eyes crinkle at the corner with genuine pleasure when I say it.
“I know we don’t have forever,” he says. His hand covers mine against his chest, his wedding ring gleaming, almost in mockery of his words. “But I don’t want to spend whatever time we have left on opposite sides of a hallway, pretending like we’re not husband and wife. I want to make the most of this.”
I ignore the sirens ringing in my head that warn: Danger. Heartbreak ahead. This man is leaving in less than a year and it’s going to devastate you and you know it.
Whatever emotional damage is coming my way, I can’t help but think in this moment that it will be worth it.
“I’d like that,” I say.
“But,” Slade continues, “for as long as we’re together…”
I get nervous because he’s getting nervous. I have no idea what he’s going to say next.
He takes a deep breath. “Will you move in with me?”
I blink, turning in his arms to face him. “Um, Slade. I’m already living with you.”
His cheekbones turn a little red. “I mean, into this bedroom. It’s been killing me, sleeping in a separate bedrooms from my wife.” His fingertips stroke along my arm. “I’d like to go to sleep holding you. Wake up in the morning with you. If that’s okay.”
Slade just confidently fucked me into the mattress and now he’s getting shy asking me to sleep in the same bed with him?
The affection I feel for him surges up inside me like a tidal wave. Right before reality comes crashing down.
I mean, what he said is part of what I want to hear. Like, twenty percent of it.
The other eighty percent goes something like,fuck the deal. Stay. Be my wife for real. Forever.
Because that’s what I actually want. To keep the ring and the dog and the house and the man who leaves wildflowersby the door and checks my ankle even in the middle of wanting me.
Because I don’t think there’s a better man out there than Slade Rhodes. A better husband. Protective, devoted, generous… and the man who just gave me the hottest sex of my life.
Yeah, I want to keep that ring he put on me.
But there I go again, wanting too much. Being too much.
That’s what my family has always said to me: that I’m too much. Theirs are the voices I can never fully silence, even after years of therapy and thousands of miles of distance. That assessment of me, delivered in a hundred different ways over twenty-five years: too much. Too emotional. Too needy.
Intellectually, I know that I’m allowed to want things. That it’s good and normal to want to be loved, not a character flaw.
But the part of me that still believes my mother’s words says otherwise.
I’ve spent weeks wanting Slade to touch me, to kiss and hold me, and now that I’ve got it, I’ve instantly set my sights on getting even more.
Maybe someday I’ll be brave enough to ask for everything I want. But not tonight. Tonight I’ll take what he’s offering and be grateful for it.
