Page 101 of Just My Fake Husband

Her hands snake up my back, her breath at my throat. “There’s a bean in my burrito, Gabriel.”

I sputter as she steps back, gauging my reaction. I’m unsure what she means.

Then she sees it, the moment it hits my awareness.

“A baby?” I breathe.

Her squeal of joy is all I need to kick me into movement. I lift her in my arms to spin her, but we only make it halfway around before her lips find mine.

Our kiss is gentle and searching. A celebration.

Her feet make contact with the ground. I cup her cheek in my hand, brushing my thumb over her chin and lips. Memorizing every sensation that comes from her, thatisher.

“Do you approve?” she challenges, a fleck of a question in her eyes.

“Oh River, I approve.” I’ve gotten used to living on terms that I approve of.

What started out as a ruse is the most honest thing I’ve ever done.

The best thing I’ve ever done.

I stare at her in wonder—my beautiful wife and the mother of our child.

We whisper our "I love you"s far into the night. Over and over again.

Milo

A Friday night eleven months earlier

My older brothers are full of secrets.

And it’s the weight of secrets that has brought me to my favorite Denver hole-in-the-wall Italian place, Raymond’s, to eat alone. If I swim in the focaccia, the butter, and the chunky red sauce, maybe I’ll be able to forget for a moment that I’m being chased by an expectation that has its claws in me so good I’ll have to sever my own arm to be free of it.

For years, Henry lived life in hidden corners of the world—on the edges of what the family was privy to know. It made sense since he worked in Army special forces and in high-powered, private security in Europe. Still, it wasn’t easy not to know where he was or what was happening in his life.

Sebastian’s another story. His secret keeping isn’t overt. It’s his emotions he keeps private. The drive to be strong—to lead and protect his brothers—keeps his feelings buried inside.

Sometimes, I feel a pulse of anxiety about that. I’d give just about anything to know and help carry his inner struggles.

Grief is what Alec tries to hide. His life was punctuated by the loss of love and career. He’s healing from it, but the shadows behind his eyes aren’t hidden from me.

Even Oliver’s and Gabriel’s happier personalities have their limits. No matter how much enjoyment they manage to squeeze out of life, there are aspects of their early lives I’ll probably never know anything about.

And then there’s me.

The youngest.

At Raymond’s, you only ever have three options in servers: Nico, Raymond’s surly son; Ann, in her fifties and related to Raymond in some way (she’s only slightly less surly than Nico); and Rose.

Tonight, I’m the luckiest man alive because I got Rose, and when she comes to refill my water glass, I’m so tripped up by the way she looks in her starched, fitted white, button-down shirt and short black skirt, that I forget what I was going to order.

She looks, in a word, radiant.

“You need another minute to look over the menu?” Her voice is professionally polite, but the way her lips curve into a smile tells me she knows exactly what happened—that I’m temporarily waylaid by her beauty.

“No, uh, I’m ready.” I give her my order, which she scribbles on her pad, before sliding the pen in her waistband pocket.

“Is this your first time at Raymond’s?” she asks, taking the menu from me and tucking a strand of dark hair back into her clip. The light is dim in the restaurant, probably not by choice but because it’s on the end of a very old strip mall that has seen better days—and those days were in the nineteen seventies. The light fixtures hold so tightly to their coating of dust I doubt they’ll ever come clean.

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