Page 72 of Love You Truly

I take a shaky breath and try to steady myself. I need to get a grip if I’m falling for the playacting we’re doing up here. She’s my wife in name only. And only for one year. I’d do well to remember that.

My knees buckle, and, for a second, I worry I’ll be the subject of future stories about the groom who face planted after saying his wedding vows.

I regain my standing and swallow hard.

Mallory squeezes my hand and begins reciting her vows, voice clear and soft at the same time. I don’t care if anyone else can hear her words because I want them for myself.

“In my business school program, they taught us to research, run through all the possibilities, and come up with the best course of action. But I didn’t need to do any of that with you. I just had to spend an hour with you to know that marrying you was the right and best choice. I knew it in my bones when we met. I felt something that day in the grocery store that was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. It was the kind of magic I didn’t believe in, but I knew it was real like I knew my own name.

“This is the easiest decision I’ve ever made, and I know it will make me happy for the rest of my life. Because I love you.”

My heart jumps into my throat. People say “I love you” all the time with varying degrees of seriousness—they say I love you to a friend who needs an extra bit of support or to a coworker for bringing a cup of coffee when they’re dragging. I’m under no delusion that the words have deep meaning just because someone says them.

But this is a new level.

Those three words sound so damn good winding their way from Mallory’s lips to my ears that I want to hear them again. And again. Fuck.

Even if she doesn’t mean them, even if she’s just doing what’s expected at her wedding, her words hit me like a wrecking ball.

It’s my heart that’s getting destroyed. Because I love this woman for real, and I have no business telling her any time except for right now at our fake wedding…much less feeling like they’re the truest thing I could say.

“I love you. Truly,” I tell her. She smiles and squeezes my hand.

We exchange rings.

The minister says, “It is my honor to pronounce you husband and wife.”

And I kiss the hell out of my wife until our guests whistle and applaud, and I don’t regret it one bit. Not one fucking bit.

CHAPTER 27

Mallory

“We’re planning to take our honeymoon in a few months when we have time to do it right,” Dash says to a college friend who asks.

“So much going on right now for both of us at work. We’re gonna honeymoon in a few months,” I tell my parents’ friends, a nice couple who’ve lived in Calistoga longer than I’ve been alive.

He and I have been saying versions of the same thing all night long. No one seems to think it’s strange that we’re not hopping on a plane to some tropical honeymoon destination in the morning, so we keep spouting the party line. And dancing.

So much dancing.

I had no idea how fun it would be to dance with my new husband until Dash spun me around on the dance floor and dipped me at the end of each song. I can’t get enough. Of him.

“Is it wrong to say I’m having the best time of my life at my fake wedding with my fake husband?” I ask as Dash pulls me into his arms for a slow ballad. I admit I’m fishing, wanting him to tell me that it’s not all fake, that some of what we feel for each other is real.

“It’s not wrong. This is an amazing night.”

“It is.” I want to say more. I want to tell him that I can’t imagine dancing with anyone else or loving it this much. But I can’t.

Our guests clap and give us room in the center of the dance floor, but after a few seconds, he’s all I see.

Or rather, all I can hear are Dash’s wedding vows. They play over and over again in my mind and it takes all my wherewithal not to ask him if he meant any of them. Of course he didn’t.

He may like me as a person, and our sex is off the charts, but he was very clear from the get-go about where he stands on relationships. I would be asking for a very uncomfortable thirteen months ahead if I brought up the idea of our fake relationship turning real.

So instead, I let my eyes drift shut and concentrate on Dash’s large, reassuring hand on the small of my back. And I dream about an hour from now when we can leave our fake wedding and have very real sex in the honeymoon suite.

“You have outdone yourself, husband.” I sigh in an orgasmic haze. I’m pretty sure my hair is tangled like a bird’s nest with strands plastered to my face. My cheeks feel hot, and I’m lazy and pliant.

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