Page 77 of Would You Rather

Why did that suddenly feel disappointing? Did she want him to hold her hand, or something?

The wedding—thatkiss—had knocked her off balance.Get it together, Adrian.

Noah barely looked at her as he headed for his car. “See you tonight?” he called over his shoulder. When she didn’t reply immediately, he stopped and turned, his eyes meeting hers, a question in his gaze.

“Yeah,” she said. “See you tonight.”

“Let me get this straight.”

Mia kept her back to her new, now ex-roommate, Reagan, who lounged on her bed while Mia did some last-minute packing. She’d been too nervous about the wedding—wondering if they’d really go through with it—to get everything done beforehand.

But they had gone through with it.

They were married, and tonight she’d move into his house as his wife. His house was fully furnished, so all she needed to take were clothes, toiletries, and most important, her KitchenAid mixer.

“You and this guy Noah have been secretly dating for months, decided on a whim to get married at the courthouse, and now you’re moving out?”

“Yep.” Mia thought it best to give as little information as possible. It helped that she and Reagan had only known each other for a month—she could say almost anything about her and Noah’s history and Reagan wouldn’t know any better. But she had spent enough time with her new roommate that before last week, Reagan thought Mia was single. She was glad she and Noah had gone with the “secretly dating” thing. It seemed the most plausible.

The thing that would make things look less plausible would be getting married andnotspending her wedding night with her husband. Without thinking, she’d suggested she make the move over the weekend, but he’d pointed out how odd that would appear.

He was right. The safest way to go about it was to treat this like the real deal from the outside.

What will it be like on the inside?

She had no idea what it was like to live with a man. With her firm “not looking for anything serious” outlook on dating, she’d never gotten that far. And while she enjoyed meeting new guys and casually dating some of them for a few weeks, she’d never been tempted to amend her rule.

It had never been hard to walk away.

Something told her it wouldn’t be so easy to leave Noah at the end of this ruse, but she would.

She had to.

She finished cleaning out the drawer and her gaze snagged on the sealed envelope sitting there. On the front was her name, printed in her mother’s neat handwriting. She should have read it well before now, but some mixture of fear, guilt, and anger had so far kept the letter unopened, contents unknown. She hesitated for a beat and considered leaving it, but grabbed it and stuffed it in with her socks.

“I heard you talk about him a few times. Did I ever even meet him?” Reagan wondered aloud.

Mia thought back. “I’m not sure he’s come over since you moved in,” she said. Noah had always been more comfortable in his own space. “But he and I work together. And we’ve been friends since we were seven.”

“That’s adorable. It’s like it was meant to be.”

She glanced back at Reagan, who had a wistful look on her face. Mia forced herself to smile like a newlywed should. “It was.”

“I wish I had a man.” Reagan tucked her feet underneath her. “What’s he like?”

Mia zipped the duffel bag and turned around. She put her hands on the edge of the dresser behind her and leaned against it.

There were so many words to describe Noah.

Protective.

Observant.

Gentle.

Disciplined.

Intense.

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