Page 30 of Avenged

“Are you okay?” she asked.

No. “Yep, all good. Just responding to Mac and Eli.”

When I finally risked looking at her, there was a frown between her eyes, and I felt like an ass. She may not be thinking what we had just done was a mistake for the same reasons I was starting to think it had been, but I was sure she was still nervous about it, too.

I forced a smile on my face. “Lunch?”

“Yes, I’m starved!” Violet said. I stared as Jersey seemed to take in every little tick of my cheek and every flicker of my eyes.

“I have to be at the bookstore at two,” she finally said.

“We still have time for lunch. Where would you like to go?”

“Crab Shack,” Violet said. “We always go to the Crab Shack when we’re celebrating.”

“We’re not celebrating,” Jersey and I both said at the same time, and it clutched at my heart, but I couldn’t remove my eyes from her face yet. She started playing with her thumb ring. The nervous habit that told me her brain was whirling as much as mine.

“Whatever. You know what I mean,” Violet said as she climbed into the back seat of my pickup. I held the door for Jersey. We stared at each other for another long moment, still assessing each other, still trying to read the other’s mood.

I gave up, shut the door, and went around to the driver’s side.

By the time I got to the Crab Shack and we’d ordered and found a seat on the outdoor patio, my phone was buzzing again with a call instead of a text. It was Eli.

I excused myself from the table, stepping away from the patio into the parking lot.

“Hey,” I said.

“What the fuck is going on?” Eli demanded. All leader. All the time. He’d been that way since the moment I met him our freshman year as cadets at A&M.

“It’s sort of a long, complicated story.”

“I’m all ears.”

“I don’t really have time right now to tell you about it.”

“But you really got married. To who?” he asked.

“Jersey.”

“Jersey, as in my mom’s boarder and employee, Jersey?” The frown in his voice was apparent all the way from Rockport to New London over the cellular waves.

“Like I would know more than one woman named Jersey?”

“My mom is going to go apeshit on you.”

That brought the first laugh I’d had since saying I do. It lightened the tension in my chest ever so slightly. I looked up at the vibrant blue sky. The waves of humidity were almost visible, swirling through the air. I took off my jacket and rolled up my shirt sleeves, letting the sun and the heat make their way into my bones. I breathed in deeply and sent away the tension and doubt.

“I have a feeling she’s going to be hugging me instead. Let’s just say this marriage is more partnership than relationship.”

“Partnership. You got married to be in a partnership? Whose bright idea was this?”

“Dawson’s.”

Eli laughed. “Well, that explains it. But why the hell would you agree to it?”

“Like I said, sort of a long story, and I have Jersey and Violet waiting for me at the restaurant table, so I kind of have to go.”

“Fine, but I need the entire long story before this day is over.”

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