“That’s what they told you?”
“We always had our summers in Montauk. That was our family time.”
“That’s all you got from them? A few months of the year and then they shipped you off again?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s terrible,” she says, exhaling. “Sorry. I don’t mean to judge your parents.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ve judged them my whole life.” I huff. “They are who they are. There’s no changing them. There’s no taking back what they did.”
“Is that why you pour yourself into your work?” she asks.
I glance ahead. We’re getting closer to the street with the antique houses. They’re all I can think about. I don’t want to discuss my childhood anymore. I don’t want to talk about—or think about—the fact that I may or may not have abandonment issues as a result of never truly feeling wanted by my parents.
It’s neither here nor there. Truly.
“See that white house?” I point north. “It has a triangular pediment set against a hipped roof with dormers. It’s a Queen Anne.”
“Oh,” she says. “We always called that the Pauley House. It’s haunted. Or that’s what everyone says. Some kids died there in the 1920s. Drowned in the pool when the nanny was supposed to be watching them. So sad.”
“How tragic.”
“What about that stone house? I always thought it looked like a castle,” she says. “When I was a little girl, I’d ride my bike up and down this street and pretend that I was a princess and that was my house.”
“That’s a European Romantic,” I say. “You can tell by the asymmetric composition and the half-timbered accents. The light stone is fairly typical too. Sometimes you’ll see stucco.”
Warm drops of rain begin to pepper the sidewalk, dampening our clothes in the process. A clap of thunder groans in the distance. Spring is nothing if not a temperamental woman: loving on you one minute, chasing you off the next.
Without saying a word, we turn back, leaving the picturesque street in the distance, and by the time we’re halfway home, the rain picks up and begins to pour. Rustling leaves in the ancient oaks above us do little to protect us, and by the time we reach the front door, we’re both soaked.
Standing in the foyer, we lock eyes. Mari laughs, her hair sticking to her cheeks and neck, and rainwater pools at our bare feet. My shoes are in the yard, but I’m not concerned with them right now.
I can’t stop looking at her, all wet and vulnerable.
This may be a fake relationship, but this woman is as real as they come.
My eyes fall on her lips, my hands aching to reach for her chin and angle it just so.
“I’m going to go change,” she says, as if she picked up on my intentions.
Dashing up the stairs, she disappears around the corner.
Thirteen
Mari
* * *
“Mari?” Hudson creeps into my darkened room. I hear him changing out of his damp clothes and slipping into something dry, and then I feel the dip of the mattress when he takes a spot next to me.
I don’t know what happened.
Everything was going well until we stood in the foyer, rain-soaked and eyes holding steady. Something told me he was about to kiss me, and I couldn’t let that happen, so I bolted.
I hid.
I tucked myself away in my room, under the covers, nose buried in a book on my phone.
“You just left me. I thought you were coming back,” he says. “You okay?”
No.
No, I’m not okay because part of me wanted to kiss him too. And part of me is starting to like him … not romantically, but as a human being.
This entire arrangement was a hell of a lot easier when I hated him with the fury of a million Flaming Hot Cheetos.
“Sorry. I needed to lie down,” I say. “Didn’t mean to leave you hanging.”
“It’s okay. Your dad wanted to run some more shed ideas past me,” he climbs under the covers.
It’s dark now, thanks in part to the storm rolling through. The windows rattle, pelted by a spray of rain every odd second.
“You wanted to kiss me earlier, didn’t you?” I ask. If I don’t come out and say this, it’s going to be on my mind all night, keeping me up, and we’re supposed to catch an early flight home in the morning.
“What?”
“You heard me.” I sit up, turning toward him.
“Is that why you ran off? Because you thought I was going to kiss you?” he asks.
“I didn’t think. I knew. I could sense it.” I visually trace the outline of his body in the dark, under the random illumination of lightning flashes. He’s handsome in a way I never wanted to fully accept. He’s chiseled. And beautiful. Long dark lashes. Dimpled chin. Deep-as-the-ocean blue eyes. Thick hair I could run my fingers through. A body built for sin. The list goes on.
“You’re going to have to kiss me sooner or later,” he says. “Unless you want our first kiss to be on our wedding day.”
I inhale, letting it go a few seconds later. The words are terrifying, but they’re right there, on the tip of my tongue, and I have to say them.
“I don’t want this to get so complicated that we don’t know where fake ends and real begins,” I blurt.
“Mari, I don’t want to be married. I don’t do monogamy or commitment. If I kiss you … if I touch you … it’ll be because I think you’re gorgeous and sexy and you turn me on. It won’t be because I’m in love with you and want to spend the rest of my life with you. You don’t need to worry about any of this becoming real. It might be really fun, but it won’t be real love. I can promise you that.”
His brutal honesty stings, despite the fact that he’s saying the words I needed to hear.
“I don’t do the no-strings things,” I say.
“Have you done it before?”
“Yeah. And it didn’t end so well for me.”
“What happened?” he asks.
“I’d rather not say.”
“Let me guess,” Hudson says. “You wanted no-strings, ended up falling for the guy thinking you’d be the one to change him, and he left you high and dry?”
“Nope.”
“Then what happened?”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it.”
He reaches for my cheek, causing me to flinch at his touch. Just weeks ago, the sight of this man used to put my stomach in knots with anxiety, and now he’s in my bed, touching me like I’m some kind of porcelain doll, the object of his affection.
“I won’t kiss you if you don’t want me to,” he says. “But I’m just saying … you might actually enjoy it.”
“I doubt that.”
“Hell bent on convincing yourself you still hate me?” he asks.
“I don’t hate you, Hudson.”
“I know you don’t. But you wish you did,” he says.
“You’re right.” I can’t argue with him. He hit the nail on the head. Rolling to my back, I pull the covers up and sink into the pillow, staring at the ceiling and the crooked ceiling fan that wobbles with each spin. “You’re absolutely right.”