Page 113 of Runaway Bride and Prejudice

I’m a planner. A rule follower. A by the book kind of woman. Van’s very opposite.

And while the time in Florida was fun and freeing, and I got to explore a new side to myself—that simply isn’t me. I’m not the person Van said he wanted to marry. That was Vacation Amelia. Just Got Cheated on Amelia. Needs to Blow Off a Little Steam Amelia.

But now, I’ve come back to the neat and tidy life I know. It’s familiar and comfortable, and more than that, it’s who I am at my very core.

Isn’t it?

I am above my life, looking down on it. Two Amelias are perched on a teeter-totter. One side has Florida Amelia—whoI might as well callVanAmelia—and the other has Normal Amelia. Solid and Stable Amelia. Boring Amelia.

The two are engaged in a violent teeter-totter battle to the death. The prize and the cost of this war seems to be my sanity.

Van’s hands lift away, and I barely hold back a whimper. But they cup my cheeks, and he drops his forehead to mine. This close, his eyes are inky black pools, not totally in focus.

“It’s not too late to fix this,” he says, and my brain goes straight to annulment.

But his brain is clearly going in a different direction because the next thing I know, he’s kissing me.

And I’m kissing him back.

It’s like we’re on the beach again, and I’m channeling Bad Idea Amelia, Brave Amelia, Stupid Amelia all over again.

This Amelia is actually pretty awesome. Maybe I need to find a way to fit the two halves of me together. To tell them to balance out the teeter-totter instead of trying to throw each other off.

Van’s mouth is both familiar and new. He kisses me like he’s finally found his way back to me and has been simply starving in the meantime. He kisses me like he owns me, but also like I own him.

I try to memorize the shape of his lips, the curve of his smile. I need to commit them to memory because even as I’m lifting my hands to his neck and pressing in closer, I know this can’t happen again.

Not until we untangle the mess we’ve made, and I’m not sure where to start.

Kissing … probably isn’t the wisest place.

I need to figure out how to get out of this marriage and how to be around this man without being drawn into his orbit. But he’s a giant planet and I’m just some little bit of space dust. I stand zero chance of escaping his pull.

Van makes a low, rumbling sound that draws out goose bumps on every bit of my exposed skin.

Maybe I don’t need to forget about him. I just need to backtrack. To figure out what it would look like todateVan in this setting, with this version of me.

The one who doesn’t kiss men in a stairwell after a heated subtext-y conversation.

“You know what’s totally not fair, hotshot?” I say, pressing a kiss to the corner of his smiling mouth.

He shifts, trailing kisses down the line of my neck. I shiver. “Price gouging during a pandemic?”

I laugh, and he brings his mouth back to mine, swallowing up the sound. “No,” I say between kisses. “The fact that you smell good after practicing.”

“You think I smell good?” He nips at my lip. Somewhere near my waist, his fingers gently pinch me, bringing back memories.

“I just said so, didn’t I?”

“I missed you, Mills,” he says.

I’m not sure why it’s these words that do it, but they pull me back out of the deep waters and to the surface, gasping for air. Reminding me where we are. I slow down the kiss, pressing one last quick one to his lips before taking a huge step back.

His hands drop. So does his expression.

“We can’t keep doing this,” I say softly.

Van smiles, but it’s forced. So is the lightness in his tone. “What—kissing in stairwells? Or having secret conversations in the middle of public situations? Pretending not to be married?”

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