Page 68 of Beautiful Thing

“It is. And I’m really grateful that I won’t need to be sharing a bed with Sky anymore. I love my little guy but he sleeps like a starfish.”

Inez giggles. “I can only imagine.”

I gnaw on the inside of my cheek. “I do feel bad about taking a Brighton family heirloom, though. Don’t you and Nolan want to keep the crib for your own future babies?”

A mischievous twinkle glitters in her eyes when she leans close to me. “From the way Archer has been looking at you the whole time you guys have been here, you two will probably be making babies before Nolan and me. Hell—you’re lucky that man can’t put a baby in you with his eyes. If he could, he would have done it already.”

“Stop it.” I laugh sadly. If babies were made through eye-fucking, then fine, maybe. But Archer has made it very clear that he has no intention of touching me again unless his very clear conditions are met.

“He’s really into you,” Inez is saying now. “I mean—he’s been into you for a long time, but he used to try and hide it. But these days? The man looks at you like you are the only source of oxygen in his universe.” She tosses a glance toward the kids then turns up the volume on the music and lowers her voice. “You guys must be havingsomuchsex.”

I scoff, keeping my voice low, too. “Sex?! We’re not havinganysex, actually.”

My friend tilts her head to the side. “I don’t understand.”

I’m still feeling desperate to make sense of this sticky situation, so I let the truth gush out. “Archer and I aren’t in a real relationship. We’re just pretending.”

“What? Why?!” She blurts out.

My shoulder lifts and falls helplessly. “So that everyone stops giving him a hard time about being single. Especially with the wedding coming up.”

Inez goes quiet as her eyes widen. I cringe, watching her process this shocking new information for a long moment, wondering if she’ll judge me or if she’ll understand.

Finally, she speaks. “So, the relationship is fake, huh?”

I nod my head, feeling an unexpected wave of shame. Jeez—I’m a bad person, lying to everyone around us like this. Archer and I have convinced this whole town that he and I are in love.

“But there’s nothing fake about the chemistry between you two. It’s off the charts.” There’s a confident lilt in her voice.

“Chemistry isn’t enough, unfortunately. It’s way more complicated than that,” I admit.

“How do you mean?” my friend questions.

I peek over at the kids and turn up the music a bit higher. “Apparently, Archer doesn’t do casual sex. He won’t even kiss me without a commitment.”

Inez freezes. Her spoon dangles in the air between us, a glob of juicy ground beef slipping to the floor. “Wow. That’s kind of hot.” Her nose scrunches up. “But also incredibly frustrating.”

I whimper. “Sohot.Sofrustrating.”

“What’s getting in the way of making the commitment?”

I take the drippy spoon from her hand, setting it down on the counter. “Well first off, I didn’t even know that he was into me until a few hours ago.”

She tosses her head back and laughs. “Honey,everybodyknows that Archer is into you. That’s probably why nobody ever questioned whether your relationship was real.”

“Really?” I ask. “He’d been giving me crazy mixed signals for years. You have no idea. He’d act like he was into me but anytimeI’d try to get close to him, he’d shut me down.” I sigh. “But now that he’s let me know where he stands, I just feel…scared.”

“Scared?”

“He doesn’t understand what he’s getting himself into. What if he gets to know me better and he changes his mind about everything?”

“Why on earth would he do that?”

I shrug helplessly. “Razor says I’m worthless. My parents say I’m worthless. And now, I’m just supposed to believe this man who’s got all these great opinions of me? I feel like one day, I’m going to wake up and he’s going to say, ‘Oops! Guess I was wrong about you. Turns out, you’re trash like everyone else said you are’.”

Even if I wanted to fling myself at Archer with open arms, I don’t even know how to accept love. Let alone believe that I’m worthy of it.

“Be fucking for real, Layla.” She frowns harshly at me. “You know he’d never see you that way. That man has you on the highest pedestal.”

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