This situation should have been supremely ridiculous. His sibling showing up out of the blue and mistaking me for her brother’s boyfriend. Me going along with it because I was so afraid of making even tiny ripples let alone waves with anyone.
But nothing about the sadness radiating from Lea was ridiculous to me. It tugged at my heartstrings. Did he have anyone he could talk to about these things? Did he talk to my brother or Riley or Monroe about this? Something told me that while he was extremely easy to read ninety-nine percentof the time, he didn’t ever let this one percent show to anyone.
He seemed to want to avoid the painful past more than anything, to the point of telling his family a lie and dragging it out for god knew how long. I understood that all too well.
Maybe not the lying, but the desperate desire to bury the past and all the feelings that came with it.
I felt like I was outside of my own body when I said, “We could pretend. Until she leaves.”
His head whipped up, his stunned gaze razor-sharp on mine.
“It’s only a w-week, right?” I wasn’t sure what had gotten into me, except—yes. Yes, I was. I had spent the past two months crushing on Lea, wanting him on every level, and my selfishness had surged to the surface and eagerly grabbed this opportunity to be closer to him.
For a week, I could pretend that Lea was all mine—and I was his. I could pretend I was living the life I’d always dreamed of.
I was breathless just thinking about it.
“Beau…” He licked his lips and stood up, slowly moving closer. “As much as that would solve my problems temporarily, I don’t want to put you in any kind of position where you’re not comfortable. I won’t do that.” He paused, glanced away, and said, “I feel like I make you uncomfortable enough that?—”
“No! No, you don’t, you really don’t make me uncomfortable at all. I promise.”
He stared at me for what felt like years, his mouth a flat line, then said, “Okay. I believe you. But I don’t want you to do this if you’re not actually okay with it. Remember what you promised me? I want you to feel like you can be honest with me. Because you can. You know that, right?”
My stomach lurched. “I’m being honest. It’s fine. I promise, Lea.”
“Okay. Well…” He reached out and brushed a finger lightly across my cheekbone, sending sparks dancing where he touched me. “You have no idea how much I appreciate this. And I doubt we’ll have to spend a lot of time with her, since we’re both working. That’s what she gets for just showing up like this, uninvited. Fuck, I love her, but she can be a lot.” He turned away from me, eyeing up my things in the corner, then his desk. He started moving everything off his desk, putting it on the floor under the window.
“What are you doing?”
He glanced back at me. “Making room for your computer and ten thousand monitors. You need a place to work.”
“Oh.” It hit me then, that I was going to be stuck in this room with Lea for the next week. My eyes flew to the bed, taking in the light cream quilt, the mismatched pillows—blue, green, pink, yellow—and then I looked at the floor space. With both of our things crammed in here, there wasn’t enough room for one of us to sleep on the floor.
“Ta-da,” Lea said, drawing my attention back to him. The desk had been cleared, and Lea was smiling at me. My heart thumped in my chest, and I gave him a shaky smile in return.
I wasn’t going to survive this week.
13
LEA
Iwasn’t going to survive this week.
I stared into the darkness, listening to Beau breathing quietly beside me.
He’d been asleep for a while now, and I was lying next to him, trying to keep my hands to myself when all I wanted to do was roll over, tuck my body into his arms and let him spoon me to sleep.
I didn’t care if I was bigger than him, I was a little spoon, damn it.
Ugh. Everything was fucked.
I was so mad at Judy for just showing up, but I was far angrier with myself for perpetuating this lie as long as I had.
For putting Beau in this godawful situation.
I never should have lied to my family in the first place, but they were an exhausting group. They loved me and wanted to see me happy—which I was very thankful for, but they had their own strong opinions aboutwhatwould make me happy.
I just wanted them to stop bringing up Lyle and how I’d let him chase me into a shadowed corner I was too afraid to stepout of. To stop getting on my case about being single when I was ‘made to love’, whatever that meant. So, in a fit of irritation, I’d said, “Well I’mnotsingle, so take that!”