Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 115198 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 576(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115198 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 576(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
“I was thinking earlier that we shouldn’t do this again,” he says, his thumb running in soothing circles just beneath my kneecap.
“You mean the way you’re casually fondling my knee?”
He nods, laughing quietly, his eyes still fixed on my mouth. But I notice he doesn’t stop stroking my leg.
“I’m finding it hard, however,” he says. I grin saucily and he closes his eyes, his head falling back with a quiet groan. “You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
“Someone could come in,” he says.
“Which wouldn’t be an entirely bad thing. The ruse, and whatnot.”
West frowns and seems to work through a few words before getting any out. “That’s one reason maybe we shouldn’t do this.”
“Isn’t that the point?”
“Kissing for show is one thing,” he says. “We—earlier—” He tries again. “It was more than kissing.”
“It sure was.” I wink dramatically and whisper, “Boner.”
He laughs. “It’s just that… I don’t want you to feel obligated.”
“What?” I gape at him, playing with the hair at the nape of his neck. “I don’t.”
“Okay.” His forehead relaxes. “That’s good.”
“I mean, I do, in the sense that I’m being paid to pretend to be your wife. But you were very clear that the physical side wasn’t part of that. And, West?”
“Yeah?”
“It isn’t a hardship, you know. Kissing you isn’t a chore.”
He nods, fingertips gliding seductively down my calf and back up again. “Yeah. But the money makes it—”
“Makes it complicated,” I finish for him. “I get it. But allow me to be completely honest: Now that I’ve spent some time with you? And now that I’ve seen your crazy family? I want to be here on your team.”
His eyes search mine.
“Even if you told me the offer was all fake, and you don’t actually have two nickels to rub together,” I tell him, “I’d still stay and help you pull this off. I’m your ride-or-die, West Weston.”
West’s expression crashes, features going slack, and I quickly amend with a laugh, “Oh my God, I’m not saying you’re lying about being loaded! It is very obvious to me that you are superrich, West. What I mean—”
“Anna.” His voice is low and emotionless.
“—is that I’m here for you,” I babble, even as he’s shifting me off his lap. “I’m saying I like you. Kissing or no kissing.” Why am I still talking? He’s standing up and tightening his robe around his hips. He’s moving toward the door.
He’s leaving?
“West?”
Stopping, he turns and looks in my direction, his gaze landing somewhere just past my shoulder.
I open my mouth, but at first nothing comes out. Finally: “Are you mad that I implied you don’t have money?”
He gusts out a disbelieving laugh. “No, Green.”
“Then what?” I ask. “What did I do wrong?”
He swallows thickly. “Nothing.”
But he turns anyway and disappears down the hall.
Twenty-Two
LIAM
My longest relationship, with a woman named Chiara, was in college. She was raised in Italy by her two psychologist parents and moved to the states to attend UC Berkeley, where we met. She was perceptive but bossy and in hindsight the relationship was fairly miserable, but something she said, near the end, always stuck with me: “Liam!” she’d yelled in exasperation. “Why don’t you ever know how you feel?”
In truth, Chiara got me at my worst—from ages eighteen to twenty-one, privileged beyond belief and totally unaware, several years pre-therapy. Tragically, our relationship spanned the years where I was utterly destroyed by my father—so she was right, I hardly ever knew what I was feeling. It’s not that I was apathetic, but I hadn’t yet learned how to give names to the tension inside me.
I have now. A decade after my breakup with Chiara, I know when I’m happy, when I’m angry, when I’m frustrated, anxious, lonely, hurt, embarrassed, elated. I let myself feel things; I don’t shy away from big, consuming emotions.
So it’s bewildering now to be unable to identify this churning, rioting feeling in my gut.
Given what just happened between me and Anna, and the way all my previous hesitations about physical intimacy seemed to simply evaporate the minute she was on my lap, I would expect to be on a high from her proximity and the way she so frankly confessed that I have someone in my corner. I have never, not once in my life, had someone show up for me so deliberately and unreservedly without wanting anything in return.
But instead of feeling awash with gratitude, I feel the vague and disconcerting tendrils of anger.
So I bolt. I shower quickly, get dressed, and then leave before she can find me. I walk until I run out of beach, and then I sit on the sand and stare out at the unending ocean, trying to understand why my heart is pounding like something’s wrong with it, why the last thing I can make my body do is go back to the bungalow.