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“Okay,” she conceded after a few minutes. “I’m in.”
Thank God, because I’d been watching the crowd outside grow steadily for about ten minutes, and I was ready to get the fuck out of this place and take Valen home so she could actually have time to process everything that had happened this afternoon.
“Good.” I shuffled out of the booth, holding my hand out to help her do the same. “Martha, we’re going to head to the jewelry store on the way home.”
“I’ll call them and let them know you’re on the way.” Martha’s smile was all that needed to be said.
It wasn’t tight.
Or anxious.
Or nervous that I was about to make a huge mistake.
But as I took Valen’s hand and headed for the diner’s doors, Martha’s smile actually grew bigger.
We paused at the doors, Valen suddenly spotting the handful of paparazzi outside, looking to get the most exclusive images to sell to tomorrow’s gossip magazines. Her fingers tightened around my hand, and she let out a shaky laugh. “You know, you only told me the other day that you didn’t really like lies,” she murmured as Karl met us at the front door and pushed them open.
“I like the way we lie.”
She turned to look up at me, eyebrow cocked. “Why?”
“Because it means I get to do this.”
With my free hand, I curled it around her jaw, the cameras flashing, people shouting as I dipped my head, hovering just a breath away from her lips. She grabbed my wrist, and for a moment, I thought she was going to pull it away, that maybe I’d gone too fucking far.
But instead, she held it tightly and pushed up on her toes, our mouths colliding in like what felt like a flame meeting a fuse—the explosion of fireworks instant and amazing.
And even as we stood there on the sidewalk outside Dolores’ Diner, I knew I was kidding myself.
I’d made a deal I thought I could handle.
One where I knew and was prepared for there to be an ending to this, which eliminated that fear of loss that usually ate away at me.
But I’d made a mistake.
Because as our lips moved together, and I swallowed the breathy little hums of happiness coming from Valen’s mouth, I suddenly realized the few feelings I already had for my fake wife were pretty fucking real.
And by the time this was all over, they would only grow.
And now, in short.
I was fucked.
Chapter Thirteen
VALEN
“You want some food?” Reed asked as we pulled up outside his house. “There’s a pizza place around the corner that’s pretty good.”
As if summoned by the talk of food, there was a loud grumble. “If you didn’t understand that, it was stomach forplease feed me.”
Reed chuckled, quickly typing on his phone for a few seconds before tucking it away in his pocket and throwing open the car door. I did the same, climbing out of the SUV and onto the curb, waiting while Reed spoke to Karl through his window. Reed’s street was pretty, especially at night. The avenue he lived on was a long, stretched-out O-shape. You drove in one side and out the other, with all the houses on the left. In the center to the right was a community park with trees, benches, and a little playground.
During the day, you couldn’t see them, but at night, the fairy lights hidden within the trees lit up the park, twisted around branches, and looped between trees—the people who lived here had created something special for sure.
I’d lived in Boston most of my life and had never seen another street like this.
Not even when we lived with my mom on the Upper East Side.
