Page 52 of Rook

“Where’d you get the money for that?” Nancy asked, making me fight the urge to snap at her. “I’ve been saving for a long time. For a new couch,” I said, waving toward it. “Then I fell for her, and, well, we spend more time in bed than on the couch anyway…”

“Rook!” Tessa scolded, pretending to be a mix of scandalized and annoyed by my comment.

“How much was it?”

“Four grand,” I told her. She’d ask for the receipt. I had it. “As you know, my bills here are… minimal. And I make good money at the studio. So I had a decent chunk sitting around.”

I’d made sure to be very careful about my ledgers. I had proof of my income, the outgoing bills, and some missing ‘fun money’ for take-out and such. The rest sat in the account. It had been almost exactly six grand. I figured a man in love would want to put as much down on a ring as he could afford while still having a little money stashed away.

“I can show you my ledger,” I added.

“Yes, I will want to see that. I will also be needing your fiancée to do a drug test before I can approve this marriage.”

“You can’t make her do that,” I objected, my tone a little harsher than I’d intended.

“You’re right,” Nancy, not appreciating my tone, agreed in a sharp tone. “I can’tmakeher. But I can forbid you from marrying her if she won’t do one. I can remove her from your life entirely.”

“Why the fu—” I started, getting cut off by Tessa grabbing my hand and squeezing hard.

“Of course I will do a test,” Tessa said, tone light to distract from the way I was practically vibrating with rage. “That’s no problem at all. I have nothing to hide. Like I said, my mom suffered from addiction. And I suffered because of that too. I don’t touch drugs. So I’m fine proving that fact.”

She shouldn’thaveto.

Especially when she clearly had a bad history with drugs impacting her life by proxy.

“You shouldn’t have to hash up all those memories just because—”

“Rook, it’s okay,” Tessa said, pressing a hand to the center of my chest. “I don’t mind.”

I minded.

And while Tessa’s reaction seemed to make Nancy retract her fangs, she still shot me a cold look.

“Whatever it takes so we can get married, right?” Tessa went on. “That’s all that matters.”

To an outsider like Nancy, that probably just sounded like the words of someone in love. But I knew what point Tessa was trying to make.

This was my only shot to get a wife and someone to check in on my mom. If this failed, there was no way Nancy was going to buy another too-quick relationship.

This was my one and only chance to get eyes on my mom.

“Right,” I agreed, slipping an arm around her. “If you need me to piss in a cup again, I’m game.”

“I have a feeling a pre-pee-test water-drinking contest is in our future.”

Nancy, sick of us, went back to her search with even more gusto than usual.

Tessa and I went to the couch, and I pulled her legs up over mine so I could lean in and whisper in her ear without Nancy hearing.

“Thanks for keeping shit from escalating.”

“She really seems to hate that we’re together,” Tessa whispered back, her warm breath on my neck making my body get all sorts of ideas.

It was the first time we’d been within a foot of each other since the engagement. The first time I’d been this close to any woman in that timeframe, actually.

I didn’t even have an explanation for that. It wasn’t like our arrangement came with some celibacy clause or anything. I just hadn’t been interested.

Well, that wasn’t true.

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