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“Maybe we should have set some boundaries before we actually did this marriage thing. Because I don’t understand how parts of you can still be off-limits to me after I have...put my mouth on almost every single place on your body.”
“That’s sex,” he said.
“You know... You’re right. It’s sex. I thought that it changed things. I thought that it really changed them. That it changed you and me. But it didn’t. Not really. We’re friends, and we have sex. We’re friends, and we said the marriage vows to each other. But if you won’t share this with me...then what are we?”
“Go to bed.”
“Do you love me, Lachlan?”
“I love you more than I’ve ever loved anybody else.”
And hell if he knew what that meant. Hell if he did. If it was a lot, or if it was barely a thimbleful of what a normal person could feel.
He just didn’t know.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHARITYHADGONEback to bed alone. Lachlan had never come back to bed, and then he was gone when she got up.
She’d wanted to do something nice for him by giving him the birthday party. She’d had no idea he had that much trauma associated with it all.
She did just always think they knew each other. Now she felt suddenly like she married not her best friend, but a stranger.
Marriage was hard, and it had only been two days.
They were invited to family dinner that night, and she supposed neither of them felt there was really a way they could say no, in spite of the fact that they were both still twitchy with each other.
It was at Gus’s house, and Gus, Elizabeth and Brody were there, along with Alaina, of course.
Charity took solace in spending time holding Gus and Alaina’s baby, Cameron, because that was at least a bright spot in the middle of all this. They ate, and everything was fine. But...the frost between her and Lachlan just wouldn’t fade.
After dinner Gus took his brothers out to the shop to show them something, and that left Alaina, Elizabeth and Charity in the kitchen.
“So how are things?” Elizabeth asked, smiling.
“Um...difficult?”
“Really?” Alaina asked.
She shouldn’t have said that. She shouldn’t have said anything about the situation with her husband. It wasn’t loyal. Back when she and Lachlan had beenjust friendsshe never would’ve done that. But back when they had beenjust friendshe would’ve been the one she would’ve gone to when she was upset, and now he was the one that had upset her, so what was she supposed to do? That made things a whole lot more complicated, and she didn’t really know how to navigate them.
“But you two are best friends,” Alaina said. “I would’ve thought that the adjustment for you guys was easier than it was for just about anybody. I mean, you know each other so well. Gus and I didn’t know each other at all when we got married.”
“I know that,” Charity said. “I thought the same thing. Foolishly, it turns out. That it would just be the same relationship that we had before, except that we lived together and slept together and...” She felt her cheeks getting warm.
“But it isn’t the same,” Alaina said, gently.
“No,” she said. “It’s not. Not at all.”
“Well, what’s different?”
“I want... I want toknowhim. In a way that I didn’t before. And there are things that he doesn’t want to tell me.”
“Men,”Elizabeth said. “They really don’t like the emotion part of all this.”
“Even Brody?”
“Especially Brody,”Elizabeth said. “He’s got such an easy facade, you would think that he’s this easygoing guy, but he is one hundred percent not.”
