Page 59 of Marrying Mr. Majestic

“She’s upset.”

I glanced at him, marking the fact he’d said it as a statement of fact rather than a question.

“Yeah, ’cause she heard about it secondhand, like I said.”

Silas glanced off the edge of the trail and into the trees. “M’kay.”

“What? Silas?”

He shrugged and kept walking. I tried to drop it by reminding myself Silas didn’t know her. If Eden had been upset about something else, I would have known.

After a few minutes, he opened his mouth again. “She seemed possessive… or jealous. It made me wonder if there was something more between you than an old high school thing. More than a couple adults who’ve hooked up.”

“Well, I thought… I mean, the whole town probably thought… we’d eventually settle down together. That’s partly why I proposed to her when she thought she was pregnant. In my mind, it was only bringing the inevitable forward a few years. I knew she wasn’t ready to settle down yet, but if she was going to have a baby…”

“You’d get married and be Mr. and Mrs. Majestic. Are you in love with her?” Silas’s deep voice cut through the dappled sunshine, sucking the warmth and brightness from our surroundings. The way his jaw flexed made me feel slightly nauseous. Like I was disappointing him.

“You already asked me that,” I reminded him. “That night in Vegas.”

“Yeah, and you said you weren’t. That you loved her, but you weren’t in love. But that was right after she shot down your proposal. And now you’re telling me you always knew you’d end up with her. So I’m asking you again.”

“Well, I mean, obviously I… I…” Had anyone asked me that question two weeks ago, a year ago… the answer would have been an automatic yes, spoken with the confidence of someone who didn’t know better. Now, the very idea seemed… wrong, somehow.

When I thought of all the incredible memories we’d shared, all the hours we’d spent confiding secrets in each other, how much we wanted the best for each other, I decided I had to be in love with Eden… didn’t I?

But then I remembered Natana saying what I shared with Eden wasn’t the stuff a real relationship was built on. And I thought about the way Silas stirred me up—not just sexually but in every way—while also making me feel like I could lean on someone for maybe the first time in my adult life.

Silas still seemed to be waiting for an answer, but I didn’t have one. Not one I was willing to admit to myself, anyway.

“I… I don’t know,” I finally said. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. She said no, and you said yes.”

He didn’t allow me to joke my way out of this serious moment. “Way… it seems to me like maybe she’ll say yes eventually. If you want her to, that is.”

That same mild nausea from before crawled up my throat at the idea, but I couldn’t figure out if it was guilt for marrying Silas instead of Eden or the idea of there being someone after Silas making me sick.

What I did know was that for there to be someone after Silas, Silas would have to be gone from my life, and I wasn’t ready for that. At all.

Not yet.

“Can my current spouse stop trying to set up a future spouse for me, please?” I said, sounding snappish. “I’m a married man, in case you forgot. To you.”

His eyes locked on mine until I felt like my legs would wobble if I stepped wrong. “I didn’t forget. Couldn’t if I tried.”

I wanted to kiss him, grab onto him and press him against the nearest tree or rock face, and shove my body against his until he truly knew what it would be like to not forget me. But the rational part of my brain reminded me that his words could just as easily have been a complaint about the inconvenience of our sudden matrimony.

My throat was thick from wanting him, but my stomach was too twisted with nerves and confusion to do anything about it.

“Can we talk about your personal shit now, please?” I grumbled.

He let out a soft chuckle. “Sure. What do you want to know?”

I scrambled to think of something. “Your tattoos. The chemical symbols. You told me you got them because of your sister.”

Silas’s entire demeanor changed at the mention of Camille. Anytime her name came up, he turned soft in the sweetest way.

“She was pre-med in college,” he began. “But she really struggled with chemistry. It was enough to make her think she was going to have to give up her dream of becoming a doctor. I offered to…”

For some reason, he stopped, so I elbowed him. “Offered to…”

---