Page 113 of Just (Fake) Married
“People are going to start asking questions. About us. And the truth is…”
“What?”
I sighed. “It’s getting harder to lie to everyone. It’s getting hard to remind myself that you’re just pretending to care about the festival-”
“Hey,” he said, grabbing me by my upper arms and giving me a little shake. “Idocare about the festival. I care about all of it. I consider this marriage my responsibility and I’m owning up to that.”
I pressed my lips closed because I didn’t want to give away anything to him. I didn’t want to tell him that he was doing a really good job of making everyone believe he was in love with me.
Including me.
“I hate lying to everyone,” I said again. But maybe more than that, I hated that he was so good at it.
“I know you do. I know it’s not you at all,” he said, in that way that made me want to fall against his chest and let him rub my back.
So, I fell against his chest and I let him rub my back. But only for a minute.
Then I pushed my hands against his chest and stepped back.
“What do you think we should do?” he asked me.
I thought about it, and he must have been thinking about it, too.
Because at the same time I said, “Let’s tell everyone the truth,” he said, “Let’s double down.”
Needless to say,Ethan won that argument.
As the weeks marched on, we fell into a pattern.
There was a reciprocal medical licensing program between Washington state and Wyoming. Dr. Blackfeather had been able to fast-track some paperwork that allowed Ethan to work at the clinic as a doctor rather than just assisting her.
Because of him, they were able to double the amount of patients they saw in a day.
I wondered how much he thought about the surgeries he wasn’t performing. The lives he wasn’t saving by being here and talking to Darryl about his health.
Every day, we would carpool into town together, with our travel mugs of coffee, the animals in the back seat. I dropped him at work, and I went to the store. We’d either meet at the café for dinner or stop by Mom’s house for a home cooked meal so she could glare at Ethan the entire time.
Or, we’d dive into whatever Mrs. Walker had left for us in the fridge.
The nights…well, they were ours. Technically, I hadn’t moved into his room, but when Jenny and Bruce started to get upset with me in the mornings for abandoning them every night, we moved their beds into Ethan’s room.
Still, I had to be the one to knock on his door every night and I left every morning as soon as I woke up.
No lingering and no snuggling, was a silent rule of mine.
The other rules hadn’t changed, either.
No kissing or affectionate touching when it was just the two of us.
No talking about anything that wasn’tlike this, harder, more please, fuck me now.
In public, however, we kept up our strong display of affection.
At the café, we held hands and he pushed the hair off my cheek, looking at me like I was the greatest thing that ever happened.
At the store, when he’d come by to pick me up, always a kiss on the forehead, the cheek and my nose.
When he attended the Feud Day Festival committee meetings, just to support me, everyone at the meeting thought it was sweet.
