Page 71 of Just My Fake Husband

“It’s literally my job to try to control things. That’s sort of what PR is. I know I might not be able to, but I’m going to try.” Her eyes snap into thin slits. “Besides, how come you’re so loosey goosey about all this now?”

“I honestly don’t know.” I realize that my lungs haven’t threatened to fold in on themselves once these last few hours. “Maybe Lunch Lady Liz is having an emotional support dog effect on me.” I still care about my reputation and about getting back in my dad’s good graces. But right now? River’s taking up all the space in my head.

“She does her magic on Skye, too.” She holds my gaze. “Look. What about the air mattress? Did it come with a repair patch?”

“It’s a gash.” I laugh. “A patch isn’t going to cut it.”

Her eyes widen and take me in. There’s a softening happening in her. And I don’t want to say I’ll sleep on the floor, or heaven forbid, one of the love seats in the great room.

I don’t want to. Is it so bad that I want to sleep on the bed? “I won’t bite, I promise.” It’s more of a whisper than I intended.

Her expression looks as though she’s weighing her options. I catch her gaze drifting to the floor and then the sofa. She’s thinking what I’m thinking.

“Fine.” Her eyes dance for a moment before she’s hardened again. “But Lunch Lady Liz is in the kennel no matter what.”

I maybe took the bull by the horns and insisted I sleep in the bed with her, but I still set up the blanket barrier between us.

Once it’s firmly in place, and a quiet and perfectly contented Liz is securely in her crate, I settle in. The sheets are cool and crisp. River’s vanilla scent is mixing with the smell of freshly laundered bedding. High above us, the moon is shining through the skylight windows. The dog is quiet. The bed soft.

And my wife is next to me.

This is the life.

“Lunch Lady Liz is happy now?” River scolds the dark night air with a disgusted sigh. “So that was her problem? She had to be in the same room as both of us?”

“Looks like it. She seems happy again.” In the dark, I can barely make out River’s facial features. But there seems to be an openness there, so I decide to start talking.

“So what’s up with Antonio?”

“This again? The last time we talked about him, you and I . . . kissed. I would have thought that would make it clear to you what I think about Antonio.”

“You kissed me because my dad was standing there. You were trying to prove something to him.”

“I panicked when I saw him. We have to sell this, remember?”

A pause. “And that’s all it was?” It’s a leading question, I know. Still, the memories of how she acted around Antonio have caused a jealousy I didn’t know I was capable of. I don’t like needing her reassurance but here we are.

I can imagine us together. On the screen of my mind, I see us continuing this marriage past the one-year mark and settling ina place of our own. The more time I spend with her makes one thing clear: there’s a perennial gap between the time Igetwith her and the time Iwantto spend with her.

She takes too long to answer, and all sorts of things come to mind to fill in the blanks. Is she thinking of a way to let me down easy? Did she and Antonio used to date and she doesn’t know how to tell me that?

Finally, she whispers. “You know that wasn’t all it was.”

“I wasn’t imagining things, then? It wasn’t just about my father?”

“No. And if you don’t know that by how . . . intense . . . it was, then I can’t help you.”

Memories of the heated and heady kiss threaten to weaken me. “It was intense,” I whisper. “In a lot of ways.”

“He’s just a friend, Gabriel.”

“That’s not what he wants.” I’d like to put this weapon down, I really would. “But I’m glad to hear where your head’s at.”

“I think, at the reception, he had some nostalgia for college life.”

She doesn’t understand what she can do to a person, does she? She doesn’t see it.

“We can agree to disagree about that.” I reach out my hand across the divide. “Handshake? Truce?”

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