AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Here, here,” Orin says, laughing.
Fiona says her goodbyes. I steer her from the room and out of the building. Liam’s not around, but the car’s idling nearby, waiting to take us home.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, frowning at me as I put an arm across her shoulders protectively. “You seem off.”
“Liam cornered me not too long ago.”
“Liam? He’s here?” A hint of panic in her voice.
Not that I can blame her.
I lean down and kiss her cheek in case anyone’s watching. I whisper in her ear, “He’s onto us.”
We pile into the car together and head back to Dallas.
Chapter27
Fiona
Coming back to Dallas feels like returning to the real world.
If the real world is also a total mess.
Gareth heads back to work. We don’t talk about Liam Crowley. We barely mention the move to Boston. It’s like what happened at the beach didn’t follow us home, and now the tension between us grows worse every day.
I hate it. I don’t understand this backslide. I want to go back to that Sunday morning, lying out on the beach with Gareth, watching Orin and Molly playing in the water. I want to feel that sun. Feel his eyes on my body. I want to think about his taste in my mouth.
Most of all, I want to feel good like that, something that’s been missing from my life for a long time.
Instead, he throws himself into his job like he always does while I lounge around his apartment. I don’t bother pretending like I’m still his assistant. That was never going to work out—especially not now that Liam’s sniffing around us. It wouldn’t make any sense, not if Gareth and I were really married.
Which leaves me with nothing to do for a week except call Cait.
“Tell me again why you two have a no-sex clause?” she asks, wandering through the woods near her house with her dog and her baby. “Because it seems like you don’t want a no-sex clause anymore. Your contract isn’t actually legally binding, right?”
“Good point,” I say, running my fingers through my hair. I need a wash day.
She grins at me as the camera pans around the woods. She’s always out walking. It took me a little while to figure out why, but now it feels painfully obvious.
There’s nothing else for her to do.
It’s either go for walks in the woods or sit around her house watching screens. She opts for walks.
I thought she had the dream life—big house, lots of property, middle of nowhere, gardens and babies and barking dogs.
Reality isn’t always so beautiful.
“So why keep it?” she presses.
I groan, stretching my legs out. I got back from the climbing gym twenty minutes ago and I’m feeling pleasantly tired. “At first, it was to avoid complicating things. Also because I wanted to piss him off.”
“How’d that go for you?”
“Things are definitely complicated,” I say with a sigh. “Mostly it backfired.”
“Have you talked about Boston at all?”
I pause, chewing my lip, then shake my head. “He hasn’t brought it up and I haven’t either.”
