Page 32 of Attached At Heart
Delaney’s head popped up, curiosity glittering in her gaze.
“Ourplans?”
I sighed before admitting, “London family dinner at Natalie’s.”
“Oh.” She tipped her head to the side, adorable confusion still playing out on her features. “But I’m?—”
“A London now,” I finished. “And my siblings have a lot of questions about that fact.”
Her lips popped apart in both understanding and surprise, and I couldn’t help but trace the curve of her mouth with my eyes, my thoughts immediately deteriorating into a place they shouldn’t be. Heat licked every nerve ending in my body as I remembered how eagerly that mouth had met mine yesterday, and I had to drag my attention up to her eyes. But fuck, they’d been watching me. And there was something I hadn’t seen before in her gaze, something…alive.
“You told them already?” she said after a tension-filled beat of silence.
“It would have killed my parents if I didn’t tell them right away, so I called them this morning,” I replied. “But news travels fast in the London family, so I knew it wouldn’t be long before my siblings knew anyway.”
Delaney took in the information with quiet consideration.
“Okay.” She flashed me a nervous smile. “Dinner with the London family it is, then.”
I went to grab her hand, wanting to reassure her, but thought better of it. Touching Delaney right now when I still hadn’t gotten over touching her yesterday seemed like a bad idea. So I gave her a relaxed grin instead.
“It’ll be fun,” I said, hoping I could speak that fact into existence. “My siblings are all way nicer than me anyway.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” she scoffed.
“It is,” I argued. “I’m onlyusuallynice. They’re always nice.”
Well, they weren’t always nice tome. But they would be nice toher, of that I was certain. Especially since it was the first time Noah and Natalie were meeting her, considering we used to live in different states until recently.
Delaney gave me a teasing little shove before returning to her puzzle, leaving a spark of heat in her wake. My body tingled from that touch, and I wondered how the hell she didn’t feel it, too.
But I’d been wondering that for years, and just because there was now a ring on both of our fingers didn’t mean that was about to change.
Nothing between us was going to change.
But for some reason, I just couldn’t shake the feeling it already had.
CHAPTER EIGHT
delaney
I’D EXPECTED THINGS TO feel fundamentally different after Blake and I got married, but they didn’t. And I couldn’t decide if I was grateful for that…or disappointed.
A week ago, there would have been no decision. I would have been grateful, end of story. Period. In this scenario, what could I possibly be disappointed about?
But a week ago, I’d never kissed my best friend.
A week ago, my lips had never touched his, and my body had never ached for the feel of his hands.
And a week ago, I didn’t have to try to figure out how I felt about that.
Blake, on the other hand, seemed completely unfazed by it all. I’d moved into his apartment, put his ring on my finger, and life had moved on. It was like we were still in school together, except years had passed, we were legally bound together for the next year, and the patients we were discussing were real and not case studies.
And that wasfine. Great, actually. But considering the way my brain hadn’t stopped spinning since our lips had brokenapart at the courthouse, I needed to set some parameters for this fake relationship. Otherwise, I was going to get too far into my head about it all.
“I think we need some ground rules,” I said as soon as we got into the car to head to the London family dinner. My stomach was already tied in knots at the prospect of spending the evening with his siblings, and the thought of having this conversation was not helping, but it needed to be done.
Blake lifted a brow as he checked behind him for any traffic. “Ground rules might have been an important conversation to havebeforewe tied the knot.”
