Page 55 of Don't Call Me Sweetheart

Somehow, between the soft way he called me sweetheart and the orgasm, I had forgotten that. Forgotten that I was just practice. A placeholder for the real thing. A wife. I hadn’t thought about that even once, from the moment I had stormed into his office until now. It had all felt so real.

Because it was real. That was the point, wasn’t it? We were both so bad at real that we needed to practice it. This was the relationship we should have had when we were young and stupid and inexperienced. The relationship that would probably have ended with fond farewells and a few tears upon college graduation before we began the adult relationships that truly mattered.

We were still inexperienced, to differing degrees, but we no longer had the excuse of being young and stupid. And instead of a breakup at college graduation, we had November 1. A date we had chosen to give some buffer before the holidays. Because holidays made things too real.

I pulled myself together. We still had a month to get this right. To practice.

“So what are you going to do now?” I asked. “Are you going to tell them?”

“Not yet. Soon, I think.”

“I could go with you,” I offered. “If you want me to. When you’re ready.”

“Thanks, but I think this might be something I need to do myself. Alone. I don’t know how any of the Hart sisters are going to take this information. Hell, I don’t really know how I’m going to take it, once it’s real. That’s maybe something we shouldn’t have an audience for. I appreciate the offer, though.”

I studied him for a moment. Was he still trying to shut me out? But it didn’t feel like that. It felt like he was…opening. For once, I hadn’t had to pull something from him. He had offered it to me freely.

“I understand.” I squeezed his thigh. “I’ll be waiting for you when you’re done. With cookies.”

His lips tilted up in a smile. “You’re pretty good at this girlfriend stuff.”

His words lanced my heart. Girlfriend. Not wife. I rubbed at my chest, futilely, because the pain was coming from inside. There was no way of easing it.

I forced a smile. “That’s what I’m here for.”

That was all I was here for. And thank God for that. I was absolutely thrilled that being his practice girlfriend was all he wanted from me. Because I might be pretty good at being a girlfriend—

But I was terrible at being a wife.

The house lights gleamed warmly against the darkness when I pulled into my driveway. Jessica had beaten me home.

I killed the ignition and unbuckled, but I didn’t get out. Instead, I sat there, letting the guilt seep into me.

It was the first time Jessica had come home to an empty house. Not once in fourteen years had that ever happened. I had always made sure that someone was waiting for her, usually me, but sometimes a grandparent. Once or twice, it was a neighbor.

When Jessica had been a baby, I had worn her in a sling across my chest while I was working at Sweet Things. As she grew older, I made sure that the afternoon shift was covered so I could pick her up from school and then bring her back to the store, where she did her homework or played video games in the office. Now that Jessica was a teenager, she often hung out with friends after school, giving me more flexibility.

Jessica was old enough to be home alone for a couple hours. I knew that. And she had texted me that she was going for pizza with friends, so it wasn’t like my daughter was starving, waiting for me to put dinner on the table. She had probably only been home for twenty minutes, tops.

And still, the guilt gnawed at my bones. This was where I had told Jessica I would be, so I should have been here. But I wasn’t. Because I was too busy having sex.

I had a feeling Steven would have a lot to say about that.

And probably Estelle, Maud, and Lillian, as well.

Which was stupid. Why did I care what they thought about how I lived my life without George? It wasn’t their business. It wasn’t anyone’s business except mine.

I sighed and thunked my forehead gently on the steering wheel. Because I didn’t really believe that. If you cared about someone, that made them your business. Everyone in Hart’s Ridge cared about George. And they cared about me, even if only as an extension of George. More importantly, I cared about them too.

That made me their business, and they were mine.

However annoying that might be.

Usually, I saw that as a good thing, but right now, I envied Max and his unencumbered existence. He had made a point of not getting tangled up in anyone’s web, and right now that seemed like a brilliant idea.

My phone buzzed, and I pulled it out of my bag, fully expecting to see a message from Jessica asking where I was. But it wasn’t Jessica. It was Mom. With a reminder that there was still a lot to do for George’s commemoration and not much time to do it in.

Another ball I had dropped.

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