Page 59 of The Troublemaker

“You don’t think it’s the love?”

“No, Charity, I don’t. I think it’s more than that. I’m just saying I prize companionship over that. That’s what I’m looking for. Friendship.”

She looked up, and her eyes locked with his and held. An uncomfortable sensation wound through her body.

Friendship.

She suddenly felt like there was a magnet somewhere down beneath the floor that was pulling her sharply to the chair, but down farther. Like she was being dragged down beneath the surface. She didn’t know what that was. But it made her dizzy.

“Friendship,” she repeated.

“Well. Yeah. Companionship. Someone to have kids with.”

“Kids.”

“Yeah. I might have some kids.”

“I want kids,” she said, feeling wistful. It was one reason she had decided that she and Byron really needed to hurry up and get married. Because she was thirty, and the logistics of pregnancy and fertility became a little bit more thorny after thirty, and she wanted to have a couple of children.

She didn’t want to have one child that was lonely the way that she had been. She didn’t want to be single. She didn’t want her child to have one parent. She wanted something different than what she’d grown up with. Listening to Lachlan, she could see that it was much the same for him.

Neither of them seemed to be all that bothered about a great passionate love. If pressed, she would say that she loved Byron. Except...

There was a strange sort of lightness in her chest when she thought of him. No gravity. No weight. No magnet.

And they had never said it to each other. They were more careful than that. They said things like that they were looking forward to seeing each other. That they enjoyed each other’s company. But they had never said they loved each other.

She couldn’t even imagine it. That was wrong, wasn’t it? Except, there Lachlan was, being utterly dismissive of love, acting like it had practically nothing to do with marriage. So maybe she was the one who was wrong about it. Maybe Lachlan had the right idea, and there was actually nothing to be worried about.

Friendship.

She was friends with Byron.

The word echoed inside her. “I just think that getting involved in all that passion and stuff, it’s not good for some people,” he said.

“It’s not?”

He shook his head. “No. I think there’s a good, logical way to go about this. Find somebody who shares my values. Find somebody that wants the same things I do and make a life. That will go a long way to... I don’t know. It just feels like it’ll fix some things.”

“Yeah. It does. I understand that. I was really lonely when I was a kid. And the idea of fixing it by creating a family on purpose feels right.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It does.”

She grabbed the ketchup bottle and poured more on her eggs.

“Disgusting,” he said, lightly salting and peppering his.

“It’s zesty,” she responded, taking a bite.

“Zesty. Probably about the zestiest thing you’ve done recently.”

That little mocking grin twisted up the corner of his mouth and there was an answering pull in her stomach that she didn’t care for.

The kind of pull in her stomach she never felt when she was around Byron.

What would she do without Lachlan? What would she do if he married someone else and she moved away? She hadn’t told him about the potential move, and she did need to.

“Just let me enjoy my zesty eggs in peace.”

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