Page 62 of The Proposal Pact
“Ha-ha.” He rolls his eyes, clenching his teeth. “Hilarious.”
“Admit it, it was kind of funny. And you fell into it all on your own.” I wipe a tear off my eye, catching the smallest of tilts to the curve of his lips.
Ha, got ya, hubby. I wink, telling him I saw that without saying the words he’d most definitely deny until he was blue in his face.
“Come on, do you want some beer?” I push away, striding into my kitchen.
“Yes, please,”’ he says, moving toward the couch.
I grab two bottles out of the fridge and join him, handing him one.
“Cheers.” I clink my glass against his, falling to the seat with a relived sigh. “Getting married is exhausting, can you imagine doing it for real?”
“No, I cannot.” He takes a long sip of his beer, and I’m mesmerized by his thick throat working with each gulp.
I might’ve joked about the whole wedding night, but I was dead serious about orgasms. I need them from something or else I’m liable to jump my very, very, very hot husband.
“What’s your favorite color?” I ask the first thing that pops into my mind to distract myself.
Clover lifts his head up from the back of the couch. “I don’t have one.”
I frown. “Impossible, everyone has one.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s just a color, I’m fine with all of them.”
I gasp. “There is nothingjustabout color. It makes up your life, your personality, your soul.”
Clover eyes me for a second, then stares off into the window on the other side when he says, “Then I guess mine is dark-dark blue.” He pauses, turns his head back to me, and adds, “Like the bottom of the ocean.”
I tilt my head to the side, watching him.
No one willingly chooses that color to be the color of their soul. My sister-in-law taught me that much. As did my brother.
“Who do you have at the bottom of the ocean?” The question slips past my lips quietly. It’s not a whisper, and I’m not sure why I ask it when I have no clue if that’s the case, but it felt like it.
He has that same look in his eyes as Kira does when she talks about the baby she lost at a very young age. It’s that same pain and grief reflected in his green eyes.
The silence stretches between us as Clover regards me, but he doesn’t deny it. It’s quiet for so long, I’m certain he won’t respond when he says, “People.”
One word. Only one word that weighs a ton and it cost him as much to push it out, to tell me. I can see it and the internal fight he’s having with himself for telling me even that much.
“Mine is orange,” I say, and Clover stills, slowly turning to look at me.
“You won’t ask?” I know what he means. He was expecting me to pry, to try and learn more details about his story, but I won’t do it, so I shake my head.
“Nope, you already told me what you wanted. I’ll never put my nose where it’s not invited. Now, are you going to ask me about why orange or what kind of orange? You know, there are a million shades of that color. And some I hate with a passion. Like, coral forexample. Ew! It should be banned from the color wheel. Coral.” I’m still making a puking face when Callum startles the bejizzles out of me.
Laughing. He’s laughing.
16
Callum
“Color! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams.” — Paul Gauguin
