They don’t retreat.
“You can let go now,” I inform him.
He doesn’t.
“Grayson.”
“I’m looking.”
“At what?”
“How it looks on you.”
My mouth turns dry, and I say hoarsely, “I mean it, Grayson. I have no problem with some cheap ring. You don’t have to—”
“I know.” His lips twist into something that is anger but not quite. “You’re always happy with the bare minimum.” His hand tightens around mine, and my eyes lift to meet his gaze. “But I’m not satisfied with that.”
His other hand comes up slowly, giving me all the time in the world to step back. He doesn’t touch my face. His fingers hover a breath from my jaw, close enough that I feel the warmth of him near my hairline.
I don’t move.
I hate that I don’t move.
My pulse is loud in my own ears, his proximity doing things to my brain. “I—”
Ethan’s voice carries up the stairs. “MIRANDA! Are you here?”
The moment shatters.
I step back. Grayson releases me without a sound. I duck past him through the bedroom, into the hall. Three steps down the corridor, I stop. I press my palm flat against the wall and breathe.
I look down at my hand.
The ring is heavy. The band is warm from his fingers. I can still feel where his thumb passed across my knuckle.
This is fake, I tell myself.
My body is having a stupid reaction to a man paying me to wear his grandmother’s ring.
This is a contract.
Tonight I sleep in his bed. That does not have to mean anything.
“Miranda!” It’s Ethan again, closer to the bottom of the stairs.
“Coming.”
I find him in the living room with a picture book about a duck who has misplaced his hat. I sit on the couch beside him and read the book three times. Reading aloud to a four-year-old is something I can do with shaking hands.
The ring catches the lamp light every time I turn a page.
I make myself stop looking at it. Twice. A third time.
Linda walks past with a basket of folded laundry. She gives me a small private smile that I decide immediately not to interpret.
By dinner, the engagement story is live.
My phone, face down on the kitchen counter, buzzes once. Then again. Then it keeps buzzing in a rhythm that will have me throwing it through a window if I let it. Brooke. Brooke. An unknown number. Brooke. Two more unknowns. A name I haven’t seen in three years. Brooke again.
