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On the way home, Holden drove through the familiar streets of Hyde Park, slowing slightly when we passed a modern, high-rise apartment building near the lake. “That’s where I was living until I moved in with you. What’s this neighborhood like, anyway? You grew up here, right?”
“I did. Well, until I was seven, at least,” I replied, glancing out at the park my parents used to bring me to after work. “My folks bought the brownstone when they got married, so it was the only home I’d ever known until the accident.”
Holden kept his eyes on the road. “Shit, that must’ve been tough.”
“It was, but I got through it. I begged my aunt and uncle to let me stay at the house. I tried insisting I could take care of myself, but…”
When I trailed off, he nodded like he understood, then reached out and gave my hand a quick, gentle squeeze. It was basically nothing, the same type of thing old ladies gave a child to calm them down, but coming from him, it was practically an open-mouthed kiss for all the emotion it displayed.
“Do you still talk to them?” he asked quietly a moment later. “You aunt and uncle, I mean.”
“Sometimes.” I shrugged. “On holidays, mostly.”
Holden didn’t push, simply reaching out again and taking my hand firmly in his much larger one. Realizing that he meant to comfort me with the gesture, and that it was actually working, I wrapped my fingers around his and finally let myself imagine what it might be like to stay married to him.
Ever since the moment Alex had made his pitch to me that first time after I’d run into him at the bank, I’d felt like I was stuck in limbo. Like all of this was some weird, temporary twilight zone I could be yanked out of at any moment.
While I’d never intended on reneging on the agreement or asking for a divorce, I couldn’t pretend like I’d felt married after signing those papers. I hadn’t felt like I was starting to build a life with someone. I certainly hadn’t felt like I had a husband I could rely on.
But slowly, that was changing.
With every minute Holden and I spent together, I was realizing more and more that he didn’t see this arrangement between us as temporary either. It was weird as heck, sure. Unexpected. Unconventional. Hell, probably even unsustainable, but on the other hand, Alex and Jane’s marriage had apparently been arranged too.
It was a little known fact, but she’d told me the day Holden and I had gotten married. They’d started the same way we had and they were deliriously happy now, completely in love with two children running around.
Maybe it can be the same for us. Who knows?
When we finally got back home, I was quietly optimistic. Holden and I unloaded our groceries and he wrestled his towering spaceship of a coffee machine into the kitchen. As he tried installing it, I got started on dinner.
Meanwhile, Tasha sat at the kitchen counter, still nursing what she claimed was a truly spectacular hangover. A pair of dark sunglasses covered her eyes despite the fact that we were indoors and she was wearing her softest pajamas with her bathrobe.
“It requires a direct water line, Thayer,” she groaned, evidently not too hungover to bully him. “You can’t just plug it in and expect it to work, but our plumbing is older than the entire state of Illinois, so we don’t have what you need.”
Instead of arguing, he took off his royal blue sweater and rolled up the sleeves of the fitted white t-shirt he had on underneath, then dragged a toolbox out of the pantry. It used to be my dad’s and it hadn’t seen daylight in twenty years, but minutes later, Holden was flat on his back on the floor, half-hidden inside the lower cabinets, surrounded by loose screws, wooden brackets, and a cloud of sawdust.
I sat on the opposite side of the counter watching him work, so incredibly happy right now that it felt like I could just start floating. While the kitchen was in absolute shambles, cabinet doors leaning against the fridge while more and more bits and pieces appeared on the floor, I’d genuinely enjoyed spending time with him today.
On speakerphone with his brother, apparently an engineer who lived in Egypt, of all places, Holden kept arguing about water pressure and copper pipes. Tasha groaned every time he banged a wrench against the metal, muttering about the sanctity of her eardrums.
But to me, this felt like family. It felt like a future. It felt like the beginning of something that could actually be good, so I smiled and I kept doing it for much too long.
Holden suddenly grunted and shimmied out from under the sink, wiping a streak of gray dust from his forehead before he grabbed his car keys from the island. “I need a brass compression coupling, so I’m going to the hardware store. Alone. No girls invited. A hardware store is a sacred, silent place for men and neither of you can handle the energy.”
Tasha let out a weak laugh and flipped him the bird, but I just kept smiling and shook my head. “A sacred, silent place, huh? I’m sure what you mean is that you’re going to need advice and you don’t want us to hear you asking for it.”
Holden brushed past me to the back door, so focused on plumbing schematics that he completely slipped up, bending down to press a warm, lingering kiss to my forehead. “Do you need anything while I’m out, baby?”
The words weren’t even cold yet when he froze, his eyes flying wide open like he’d just stunned himself as much as he’d stunned me. My heart fluttered like a trapped bird, but I didn’t move away from him. “I, uh, no thanks. I think we’re all good.”
He nodded but didn’t say another word as he spun and practically sprinted out the back door, slamming it shut behind him. Tasha slid her sunglasses down the bridge of her nose, her bloodshot eyes finding mine.
“Oh, you are so completely fucked, girl,” she groaned, letting out a gravelly laugh before she buried her face in her hands. “Now, where the hell did the Tylenol go? I don’t think I’m going to survive the rest of the soap opera your life has become without it.”
CHAPTER 23
HOLDEN
After spending the entire night waging war against that godforsaken espresso machine, I still hadn’t gotten it to work yet. By five this morning, I’d flooded the area beneath the sink, so the water was definitely working, but the touchscreen kept mocking me with a flashing error code about low water pressure.
