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“You’ll have more kids, right, Beth?” Clyde looked from Beth to Trey and back. He had no idea what to do or say, and he felt his defenses slipping into place.
A mask to cover how he felt. His jaw locked so he couldn’t speak. He folded his arms to make himself appear bigger and tougher.
Didn’t her father get how awkward this was? Mick had basically brought up Beth and Trey’s love life too. Did they want a play-by-play?
There wouldn’t be one, Trey thought. What part offake marriagedid they not understand?
All at once, understanding flooded his mind.
She hadn’t told them the marriage was fake.
He stared at her, silently screaming at her to look at him. The silence in the house pressed against his windpipe, and it just went on and on and on.
“Daddy,” Sally said. “Let’s go around.”
“You didn’t tell them,” Trey said, and that brought every eye to his, including Beth’s. “Tell me you told them.”
Chapter Twelve
“Told us what?” Hugh asked, and Beth wanted to stuff socks down her brother’s throat. Next to him, Trey fumed, and Beth needed to get him out of there before he exploded. Her legs felt like logs as she tried to get them to move, her joints and other bendy parts refusing to do their jobs.
“Can I talk to you outside?” she asked, pushing her good palm against his chest. Her left hand was almost all the way healed now, but she was technically only on week ten out of twelve. Her doctor said it was looking amazing though, and if she could stand it, to not keep it wrapped all the time.
Trey resisted for a couple of long moments that had Beth’s mind wailing at her. Then he finally relinquished, spun, and stomped away from her and everyone else.
“Wow,” Hugh said. “Your first lover’s spat.” He grinned at Beth like she and Trey were a cute teenage couple.
She was a widow, for crying out loud, and Trey had done her a huge favor. He still did, every single day. She made sure he had food for when he went to the indoor track in the middle of the night.
A couple of times, she’d waited up for him on the couch in the office he’d started using when he’d moved in. He’d told her she didn’t need to do that. That there was no sense in both of them being zombies the next day.
She sat with him while he worked on his schedules and invoices. She did all the laundry for him and TJ. She was doing everything she could to make his life easier and more comfortable, rationalizing all he did and all he paid for because it would end in just two and a half months. He didn’t have to live like this forever; there was an end in sight.
An end to the busyness. Then, she’d been hoping and praying they’d have more time for each other. She wanted the marriage and relationship to be as real as her family thought it was.
Outside, she found Trey pacing at the mouth of the garage, his hands on his hips. When he heard her footsteps, he turned toward her. “They don’t know,” he said. “Do they?”
She hurried past her father’s broken-down motorcycle, resisting the urge to shush him as if he were the five-year-old in her life. “No, okay? I didn’t tell them it was fake.” She was whispering by the end of the sentence, and she still cast a look over her shoulder to see if anyone had followed them outside.
“Why the devil not?” he demanded. “We agreed we’d tell our families, so we didn’t have to have embarrassing conversations like that one.” He gestured wildly to the house, not even bothering to keep his voice down.
Beth wanted to shrink before him. Instead, she raised herself to her full height and squared her shoulders, a fire igniting inside her that always glowed a little bit. “Don’t you dare talk to me like that, Trey Chappell. Maybe I’m not perfect, and maybe I made a mistake, but you can still respect me.”
He drew in a breath through his nose, his eyes almost wild. “This isinsane,” he said. “I called my brothers together for a meeting, fed them, and admitted everything. You think that was easy for me?”
“I never said it was easy for you.”
“I told my parents about your little proposal before I even knew if I was going to do it. You should’veseenmy mother’s face.”
Beth could imagine. Or maybe she couldn’t. Julie Chappell scared her half to death, despite the bit of sassy fire inside her. Beth felt it going out as pure helplessness washed over her.
She sucked in a breath as the panic descended, and she stepped away from Trey to balance herself against the nearby brick wall of the house.Breathe, she told herself, trying to find a rational thought and seize onto it.
She’d learned breathing exercises in her therapy sessions following Danny’s death, and suddenly, she could both see and hear Dr. Shirley as he taught her some deep breathing exercises to help her find the right train of thought.
Trey’s footsteps wandered away and came back, and finally he put his hand on her elbow. “Are you okay?”
She’d managed to ward off the impending panic attack, but she couldn’t open her eyes just yet. The chill in the air actually helped her find a deeper part of her center, and she focused on the point of contact between her and Trey.
