“I just don’t know how everything is going to go with Marlowe. That’s all.”
“All right. Fair.”
“I just want to make sure I have the… time and space and everything.”
“Sure.”
“You go to bed kind of early.”
“We go to bed kind of early when we have a bed to go to together,” he said.
Her face got hot. “True. Well, I guess I’ll text her back.”
“You said that already.”
“I guess I did. But I don’t have any precedent for this, and I feel…” She didn’t know what to feel. They had shaped this relationship around a secret. And it made it easier to pretend that it wasn’t happening. But now it was out in the open. Or at least, the people who were most important to them knew. And that meant that she had to somehow explain this tomorrow. To articulate what was going on between the two of them, and she didn’t know how to do that.
Because it felt like something sacred and secret, something that might have to be torn up from inside of her soul.
She took her phone out and typed in a response.
Marlowe’s answer was swift, and then she had a dinner date at six. That meant driving back to town, because she had to get dressed. She couldn’t go wearing what she had for her horse-riding lesson, and everything else.
She had brought some nice things up to Zane’s, but it didn’t seem like the thing to do right now. Going up there.
Instead, she went home for a little bit, stood under the spray in her shower, and tried to gather her thoughts, tried not to rehearse the conversation she was going to have with Marlowe later, because that seemed like overkill. But, she didn’t know how to handle this kind of situation. Not even a little bit.
She chose a burgundy dress to go to dinner, because it seemed a little bit sedate and demure, and she didn’t know what kind of image one should project when they were admitting to being in a secret sexual relationship.
The real worry, she decided as she drove out toward the hotel, was that Marlowe would be angry that she had kept the secret.
She drove up the familiar road that led to Painted Ridge Ranch and took an unusual turn, away from Juniper & Sage, and toward the Painted Ridge Resort. The building was beautiful, modern, and rustic all at once, with large windows, compelling angles, and black paint on the exterior that contrasted beautifully with the natural wood beams and ceiling paneling. The lot was nearly full, and she parked far from the front doors, then walked up and pulled them open before taking a breath and heading into the lobby.
Marlowe was standing behind the front desk, her red hair pinned into a loose bun, her white blouse with billowing sleeves and fitted vest would have been at home in a high-end hotel in a city, and looked almost overly put together here. But then, that was Marlowe. She was confident,always put together, and if there was another person in this world that Cara sometimes wished she could be, it was her sister-in-law.
Even when her life was falling apart, there had been a certainty to her.
She had been angry, and she had considered not coming out to Oregon when she had found out that Aiden was leaving the marriage, and not joining her in Mustang River like he had planned, but even then, Cara had known that she would decide to come, because Marlowe was determined. She wasn’t the kind of person who backed down, and she certainly wasn’t the kind of person who would let somebody else make a decision like that for her.
She stood firm. She had boundaries. Things that Cara hadn’t had for a very long time.
And she realized that feeling like she might’ve disappointed Marlowe was one of the worst things that she could even consider.
But Marlowe didn’t look upset; instead, she just smiled. “Hey. Cody texted and said that you wanted to talk.” She had a puzzled look on her face because, of course, that was weird. For Cody to reach out instead of Cara was weird.
“You didn’t talk to him?”
“I’ve been running around all day. I haven’t actually seen him. I’m probably going to end up sleeping here tonight.”
“Oh, what about…”
“He’s fine, and if he’s not, he’s welcome to come here and sleep with me. I’m not opposed. He has a key, and I kind of like it when he breaks in in the middle of the night and joins me.”
Her smile got a little bit wicked.
Cara would’ve been mystified by this only recently, but now, thinking about Zane sneaking into her house, into her bed, surprising her, she suddenly got it. She understood a littlebit better than she wished she did. Because it would be nice to be confident that she was maintaining her good sense.
She was not confident in that. Right now, she didn’t feel all that confident in anything.
