My skin prickled.Had she figured out we were faking this?
And then I felt Calder’s strong fingers lacing mine into his hold. Without a word, he comforted me. Steadied me.
Be still, Lara. Stop flying up.
“I’m not sure,” I murmured, and Dr. Julia took my hesitation as nervousness.
“Do you think it has something to do with your sister?”
My jaw went slack. I should be glad—glad the accusation hadn’t hit closer to home.Do you think it’s because you aren’t really together? Because you’re faking this relationship to invade my retreat?
Still, I couldn’t bring myself to answer her.
“Calder, what do you think?” She drew him in. “Is your ex-girlfriend, Lara’s sister, a barrier in your relationship?”
“Yes.”
I couldn’t help but flinch.
“This is a safe place, Lara. A sanctuary for your wildness. You can let it be free here.”
I released my breath, the air forced out by the battering of my pulse, and leaned—hard—into what I could think if Calder were really mine.
“I hesitate because he never looked twice at me back when he dated my sister,” I started slow, my feigned answer fueled by coals of dark, messy truths like a locomotive gaining speed. “I hesitate because I wonder if he thinks of her when he’s with me. If he wishes he were with her instead.”
It couldn’t be the truth—in fact, it was probably the furthest thing from it: Calder had ended things with Rachel, not the other way around. But somewhere in the fiction, my deep-seated anger toward him for hurting her began to sprout.
“But mostly, I hesitate because I worry he’ll treat me like he did her. That he’ll realize I want too much or something too serious, and he’ll leave me without caring what happens.” The words tumbled out, unstoppable. Like trying to unfire a gun, I couldn’t reel back the bullet through the air orpress it back into the chamber, any more than I could stop my words from piercing skin and bones and soul. “I hesitate because I’ve seen how carelessly he can break a heart, and I don’t want him to break mine.”
When I’d finished, the air around us prickled with a static energy, unmoving but threatening to spark all the same.
“Good,” Dr. Julia finally cooed. “Bravo, Lara. Bravo.” In my periphery, she turned to Calder, but his stare didn’t break from mine, shimmering and molten. “Calder, Lara’s wild core has shared this vulnerability with you. Reached for you. How does what she said make you feel?”
Her question drifted into long seconds of silence.
“I’m sorry, but I haven’t thought about your sister in any meaningful way in the last dozen years. And before that ...” His jaw fired up. “I never looked twice at you back then because all it took was once.”
My heart tripped and fell flat on its face, its rhythm returning only to the cadence of those words:All it took was once.
Five words and I forgot this was fake. How could I not when he stared at me like he wanted to rip my prior thoughts to shreds?
“Your sister and I dated for nine months, but it could’ve been nine years and I still never would’ve felt for her what I felt for you after only one look.”
A small whimper escaped my chest, and as soon as I heard the sound, I stiffened. His words were affecting me too much—he was affecting me too much.
“Don’t tell me it’s okay to kiss you. Not if you don’t want me to do it again.”
“What is it, Calder? What are you holding back?”
Calder grimaced, a wild, tortured expression consuming his face. He was holding back, or trying to. His jaw anchored shut and his mouth pulled into a tight line, but even that wasn’t enough to stop the honesty that came next. “As for how things ended,” he rasped, “sometimes letting someone believe a lie is the only compassion you can offer.”
My heart tumbled like a glass from a table, shattering in my chest and sending shards of heartbeats like shrapnel through my veins.
There was no responding to him before he rose abruptly and strode from the Sanctuary without another word. Like he was angry. Like we werenot real.
“We need to put some distance between us in front of Maxwell.”
The raging heat under my skin turned to ash.Of course.This was fake. Calder would never display emotion like that. This was all part of his plan—our plan. To make Dr. Julia think we had major problems, too. This was nothing more than a show, and like a fool, I’d been swept away in the performance—in the sweet promise. “All it took was once.”