Page 47 of Faking It with the Firefighter

Her eyes narrowed. Her hair was splayed all over the pillow, and it took all my self-control not to put my arm around her waistand pull her closer so I could feel the warmth of her body against mine.

“What, you’re going to psychoanalyze me?”

“Call me Dr. Rex. Now strip down and lie on your back so I can examine you.”

That got a laugh out of her. The tension in her face relaxed, and she took a deep breath. “I’m only telling you this so you’ll get off my case, all right?”

I nodded.

“My ex-husband Travis used to badger me about keeping house. He’d…” She hesitated, chewing that full bottom lip of hers. “He used to love reminding me about how bad I was at cooking and cleaning and being a perfect housewife.”

“And you’d tell him to pound sand?”

Abigail snorted. “I wish. I think…”

She didn’t finish her sentence for a long time, and I thought about those thick, high walls she kept around herself. Not knowing if she’d slap my hand away, I reached over and brushed a strand of her dark blond hair off her forehead.

She let out a shuddering breath and said, “We met when we were in high school, and I guess teenage insecurities lingered. Or maybe Travis got a claw in there early, and he knew how to hurt me. My parents got divorced when I was eleven, you know. And I guess I just didn’t cope with it well at all. From then on, I was always the troublemaker, the one who messed up, the one who was too impulsive and too brash and too loud. And Travis told me he loved that about me, but then…”

“But then he’d turn around and criticize you for the same thing?”

She met my gaze. “Exactly. It was fun to go joyridingwhen we were seventeen. It was great when a restaurant brought out the wrong thing, and he could send his personal attack dog to get them to remake his order. My personality was convenient sometimes, but mostly he knew exactly how to tear me down.”

“For what it’s worth, I’m glad you divorced him.”

Abigail gave me a sad smile. “You have no idea the shit I endured for that. My mother thought I was crazy to divorce someone because he thought I should do more housework. Turns out she thought I should do more housework too. And yeah, he ended up cheating on me, so that’s what I told everyone was the reason we broke up. But the marriage was over long before that happened. It hurt, but it didn’t devastate me the way I expected. When I found out about the affairs, I was relieved. I told my mother that, and that’s when her opinion on the whole thing changed. Suddenly, I should fight for my marriage and learn how to keep a clean house.”

“It wasn’t really housework, though, was it? It was the fact that he kept trying to change you.”

Abigail stared at me for a long moment. “You know, I spent hours crying to my mom and Gabe. Hours, Rex. They never really got it. And you just listened to me for five minutes and understood. How do you do that?”

I thought about telling her that she’d become fascinating to me. That I’d spent the past few days watching her movements, her expressions, her tone of voice. Everything was a clue to discover what was going on inside her, to pick the locks to the doors she kept barred against the world.

Instead, I shrugged. “I can relate. Blair loved how I anticipated her needs. She relied on me so much during our relationship, told me I wasthe best guy she knew. But if I dared do the same for someone else, she’d act wounded and pout for days.”

“It’s like they like the idea of us, but not the reality.”

I hummed, nodding.

“Travis used to ask me to have dinner ready for him when he got home from work, even though half the time he got home first. It’s like he couldn’t process the fact that I also had a job. God, that used to annoy me. And if Ididmake the effort, he’d complain about my cooking!”

“I’ll never ask you to cook so long as we’re together.”

Abigail laughed. “Thank you. I appreciate that.”

“And don’t worry about Blair, Abigail. She has a special talent for finding people’s weaknesses and needling at them. All that shit today…”

“That was so annoying,” Abigail said, sitting up to aggressively fluff her pillow. “I don’t even know why that got to me.”

“Well,” I said, curling an arm around my back. “You were jealous. I get it.”

She grabbed the pillow she’d been fluffing and whacked me with it. “I don’t like this cocky side of you, Rex.”

I laughed, catching her arms before she could hammer me with her pillow again. “That’s a lie.”

Her cheeks were flushed. “I just want to get through this wedding and never speak to you again.”

“You wound me.”

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