Page 97 of Between Love and Loathing
“Oh, wait.” She waved her hands wildly. “Can you please help us hang them? We need them up today.”
And that’s how the rest of my day got taken up by her bakery. Hanging blown glass from the corners of her painted wall under floral arrangements that cost me half a million dollars.
The only saving grace to my being there was every time she tried to stand up and lift something or start to work, I pointed at her. “Get up and I’m breaking your blown glass. Sit your ass there and rest.”
Of course she didn’t see that as helping. She fought me about it the whole time, going on and on about how I was too overprotective for no reason.
She knew the goddamn reason.
Now that I knew her diagnosis, her smaller symptoms were more noticeable. She took time getting up and down every day, she moved consciously after cooking a while to stretch her joints. And she avoided certain foods. Granted, she didn’t have a doctor and had stressed herself out for months working tirelessly on this bakery, but I couldn’t fault her for that.
I was more than attuned to her late nights to the fridge now, and every time I followed her out there, she sighed and told me to go back to bed. Finally, yesterday she admitted that sometimes pain was worse at night so she got up to get water or move around to keep her mind off it.
I’d also caught her trying to cover up a rash on her face the other morning with concealer and had to snatch the makeup from her hands. She’d looked tired, broken, frustrated, and vulnerable as she curled in on herself, bowing her head to try to hide the redness of her cheeks. I lifted her chin and tsked before telling her to wait. I’d bought specific creams now and she didn’t fight me much when I rubbed them over her butterfly rash.
If she wouldn’t take care of herself, I would. I’d scheduled her acupuncture and massaged her back before bed. Then I fucked her slow or fast dependent on how she wanted it.
Most nights, we wanted it fast and hard, like we were trying to get as much of each other as we could.
Then I held her close. Every single night.
I shouldn’t have. No sleeping together had been my rule and the original plan. Also, no kissing women and staying the night had been my rule too.
Yet, there were no rules with Clara. She wasn’t really my fake girlfriend anymore. She was just mine.
Most people knew that. I’d made it quite clear by being in her bakery every day but that day specifically, Valentino seemed to want to test the waters. He stopped by to “lend a hand” and flirt with her. He complimented her necklace, how the bakery looked, gave updates on assistance emails with Rita, like the guy was actually helping her. He was a damn chef on the top floor of this resort, not her personal helper.
And yet even with my frustration throughout the day, as the work day came to an end, she turned to me with a tired smile on her face. “Let’s go home.”
She said it like that place was ours. I was pissed that I loved hearing the words that way, that I loved seeing her smile, that I loved how she threaded her fingers through mine in the car and whispered, “Thank you for believing me when I told you I had lupus. Thank you for still being the you who’s a complete jerk about your resort but also being the you who cares.”
How could I tell her I wasn’t me anymore? That we weren’t us? We were something more.
I worried about her day in and day out, wanted to spend every second with her. Hell, I researched lupus more than I’d researched angles of a new project that I needed to start working on. And through all that, she still managed to push the limits of my temper and keep me on my toes most days.
We’d finally settled in my study, where we spent most evenings, when I grabbed my phone to take a call. “Clara!” I bellowed loudly and threw my phone down instead of answering. “What in the hell is that?”
“We’ve been in here for like twenty minutes, Dominic. You’re just noticing?” She actually sat there with a pout on her face like she had a right to be irritated.
“Did you rearrange my books?” I shot up from my chair and threw down my eyeglasses before pacing over to the wall-to-wall shelves. I’d had classics printed in black leather binding, their white pages facing out to match the room, literally spent hundreds of thousands to make it all work together and the middle row was a fucking rainbow of colors.
“No. You said I could make myself at home, and I was at a garage sale the other day and this woman was selling a whole collection of romance novels. They’re all color coordinated, and I thought it was literally perfect for making me feel at home here.”
“You knew damn well it would make me furious. Where are my books that belong there?”
“The books you don’t read?” She curled her lip.
“You have no idea if I read them or not.”
“Name one on that shelf.”
“Clara, I swear to God—”
“Fine.” She cut me off and stomped one red-colored sock. The fact she even wore bright red on her feet around the house almost had me smiling. Fuck, I was getting soft. “I’ll put them all back up on your stupid shelf,” she pouted. “Just know though that all the ones I have up there now, I’ve read more than once. They’re amazing, and they deserve a spot.”
Such passion about a book or two for the content rather than the aesthetic. “What’s the book you’re reading now about?”
I held out a hand, but she stepped back fast and held it to her chest. “None of your business.”
