Page 45 of Between Love and Loathing
“Natya, is there a reason you’re looking into fitting rooms you shouldn’t be? Because if my girlfriend feels violated in any way …” I turned to the saleswoman who immediately started to ask Natya to leave but I held up a hand. “And why the fuck would the woman I’m serious about need a loan or financing?”
“How serious?” she asked.
Instead of Clara staying quiet, she peeked around my body and spit out, “Pretty serious considering what I just did in there.”
When I whipped around in surprise to stare at her, her eyes sparkled with mirth before we both started chuckling, and then she was full-on laughing.
I turned to the saleslady and paid for the dresses. “Please make sure to keep my card on file,” I told the saleswoman and then turned to Natya as I said, “in case my future wife ever wants anything else here, got it?”
Natya and Clara both gasped at my words even as the salesperson mumbled, “Of course.”
I knew the news would spread fast, but the only person that needed to hear it was Natya. I was making it clear that Clara wasn’t just some fling that I hooked up with in the fitting room. I wanted a boundary set; I wanted respect for Clara to extend far and wide.
Natya may have proved three things when she’d walked into that boutique, but Clara proved more important points. She proved she was a force to be reckoned with, that the fighter in her didn’t quit, and that she could bring any man to his knees to prove his love for her.
I wouldn’t have anybody say otherwise.
I was falling for Clara Milton, and I had to make damn sure I stopped. Love between her and me would end up being a battlefield, and I didn’t want her wounded.
I had already been wrecked by love before and lived in a darkness now because of it. I’d accepted that I didn’t want love. She, on the other hand, was just finding her light, fighting for what she wanted and for herself. The way she owned me in that fitting room, the way she didn’t have any remorse about it either, she was a phoenix coming to life, and I was scared I’d ruin her.
She needed something I couldn’t give her. But despite that, I smiled the whole way to our car as she smacked my shoulder and told me I was an idiot for saying something like that. “Now, she’ll think we’re getting married. What if they tell the media? Are you completely mad?”
I was. Truly and utterly mad for Clara Milton, and it had started to feel a lot like love when I thought of her as my wife.
I repeated those words over and over again in my head.
My future wife.
It had a nice fucking ring to it.
CLARA
His future wife?
What the hell was wrong with him? He’d conveniently dropped the statement like Natya wouldn’t have heard it. Like the saleslady wouldn’t immediately turn around and post the juicy tidbit on her social media.
I bickered with him about it the whole way back, then I insisted he drop me off at the bakery, and when he left me to my own devices, it was with a loopy smile on his face.
For another whole week, I woke up, stretched out the aches and pains of working my butt off in the bakery, and then I bicycled there. I figured I was so sore from the addition of my secondhand bike, nothing more.
I took my meds and vitamins and tried my best to avoid unhealthy foods. I avoided the media and calls from my family too because I knew the news about us was out now.
Of course, Dominic showed up with that same smile even when they started printing things about us,seriousthings. Much more serious than me being a girlfriend. Instead, I was his future wife.
For that whole week, my phone rang off the hook. Every time it did, I snarled at it. Evie wanted details, so I texted her. We’d talk more later, but the bakery kept me busy.
My sister and my mother wouldn’t stop calling. Over and over, they called like I owed them an explanation. Maybe I did, but I was too overwhelmed to give them one.
Then Dominic would sit there in his ridiculous glasses that I decided didn’t even look that good on him and chuckle as I glared at it, vibrating on the counter. “Don’t you have an office?”
“Sure, but I’m trying to spend time with my future wife.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re an asshole. You know that? You keep joking about it, but we’re dealing with the blowback already. You know how many times my mother has called me?”
He tsked. “Want me to answer and talk to her?”
I did kind of want to make him deal with it. “You have no idea how ridiculous it is dealing with her.” When my phone rang again, I sighed, but he snatched it off the counter. “Dominic, don’t you dare.”
