Page 60 of Falling for the Forward

“Yeah, it’s true. I love how you are with them. You’re the best thing that’s happened to them since they lost their mom.”

Tears spring to my eyes. It feels amazing to know he thinks that, but it also clouds his feelings for me.

“I don’t want you to be with me just because I’m a great choice to help you raise the girls.” I fight back the tears pooling in my eyes. “I want someone who is completely madly in love with me. Who wants me and no one else.”

“I want you and no one else.”

“How can you know that after two months in a fake marriage?”

He shrugs. “I just do.”

“What if you don’t feel that way in six months? Or in two years?”

“How can anyone know how they’ll feel in two years?”

I swipe the tears from the corners of my eyes. “Everything was going so well. Why did you have to blow it up like that?”

His eyes bulge. “Blow it up? By telling you I’m not faking it anymore and I really do want you to keep being my wife? By telling you I love you? And then you tell me youprobablylove me. But I’m the one who blew it up.”

“I’m not getting burned again.” My voice breaks with emotion. “You want me to jump in with both feet a fewdaysafter we started this thing for real. That’s not fair.”

“I’m not him, Suki. Judge me for my actions alone.”

“I’m not the starry-eyed twenty-two-year-old I was when I met him. We’re shaped by the things that happen to us, good and bad.”

With a bitter one-note hum, he says, “So I have to deal with you not trusting me because of what he did. I have to fix what he broke. Is that what you’re saying?”

His being pissed off about my brokenness is the final straw for me. I point at the closet.

“One of us is packing a bag and going somewhere else for the night. Is it me or you?”

“Oh, okay. Now you want me to leave my own house?”

I walk over to the closet. “No problem, I’ll go.”

He follows me inside. “I’ll fucking go. I have to be at the arena in the morning anyway. I’ll stay at Bash’s.”

I walk out of the closet and out of the bedroom, needing to get away from him. I can’t believe how cold and harsh he was. All because I didn’t fall at his feet like he expected me to.

Fuck him. If he can’t meet me where I’m at and respect how I got here, I’m not even faking a relationship with him anymore. I won’t be able to stand even looking at him.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Carter

“Hey man,do you have a charger I can borrow?”

Bash doesn’t look up from his phone as he asks the question. Our flight home from a shitty road trip is landing in twenty minutes, and his question sets me off.

“Get your ass on Amazon and place an order for ten fucking chargers, Bash. Or thirty. Put at least a dozen of them in your travel bag so you’re not asking me for one every fucking time we step onto a plane or a bus.”

“Dude, just tell Suki you’re sorry and make up with her. You’re crankier than a woman on her period and I’m fucking done.”

I scoff. “Ha! You’re done? You’re the one who’s twenty-seven years old and can’t even keep track of a phone charger. Or drop off your dry cleaning. Or take a break from video games to go visit your goddamn grandma.”

“It was the first day the game came out and I went the next day, asshole.”

I press my lips together and ignore him. The tension between us started when I went to stay with him on the day Suki kicked me out of my own house and I told him the truth about our marriage.

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