Except Jen was quiet…too quiet all through dinner. It was as if she were invisible and could blend right into the background. With Chester’s booming personality, Margaret spitting back at everything he said, and both sets of parents talking up their kids, I could see how alone Jennifer must feel. No wonder she hadn’t wanted to come.
By the time we finished dinner and Margaret’s parents were offering drinks, I barely stifled a yawn.
“Thank you, but I have to decline,” I said. “I think Jen and I need to get back. We drove into Austin today, and I’m wiped.”
“Oh, of course,” Connie said sympathetically.
Jennifer’s head jumped at my suggestion. Her eyes assessed me in confusion. Like she couldn’t figure out why I was bowing out of the rest of the evening.
I shook hands with the rest of the family and hugged Connie one more time. Then I ushered Jennifer out of that house as fast as humanly possible.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Getting you out of there.”
“What? But…what?”
We stopped in front of Milli.
“Did you want to stay for drinks? Sit around and hear about how amazing Chester is? Watch Margaret and Chester barely keep from boiling over at each other?”
“No,” she whispered. “But…how did you know that?”
“I have eyes. Anyone with eyes could see that you were disappearing in that room.”
Her eyes widened, and then she flushed. “Yeah. Okay. Disappearing.”
I grasped her hand before she could push away. “Hey.”
She drew back and headed toward the passenger side. “Let’s just go.”
But I followed her. “Did I say something wrong?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Jen…”
She looked up at me, and I saw for the first time that she was hurt. Hurt by what I’d said?
“You didn’t disappear to me,” I said softly.
She took a step backward in surprise. “What?”
“You were fading into the background but not to me. You needed a breath of fresh air. That’s why I suggested it. Not because I think that you’re walking in your brother’s shadow.”
Her eyes were round and lined with gold from the light of the moon. “It’s all that obvious, isn’t it?”
“I’ve had a lot of experience observing people.”
“I was afraid of this,” she whispered and looked away.
“Of what?”
“That you’d see me differently once you met everyone.”
I barked a laugh. “Differently? If anything, I see everyone else differently. How can they not appreciate what’s right in front of them?”
My words held a double meaning. How had I not appreciated her there all this time? Our constant friendship. Her easy demeanor. The friendship that had blossomed so effortlessly over the last few years. That now, we were standing here, and all I wanted to do was kiss her.
She bit her bottom lip and looked down. “We should…we should just go back.”
Right. This was Jennifer. She was all of those things to me, but we weren’t in a place where I could kiss her. I didn’t want her to push me away.
I straightened, swallowing down the urge to kiss her, and headed to the other side of the car. We drove back to the house in silence. Just the gentle purr of Milli guiding the way. The house was dark when we arrived, and Jen flipped on the lights as she headed back for the bedroom. By the time she got there, she was yawning for real.
“Maybe I’m more tired than I thought,” she said.
“Traveling is draining.”
So was pretending to be something that she wasn’t and hiding her entire personality because of her parents’ expectations and suffocating under her brother’s supposed brilliance. Things I couldn’t say. She’d been uncomfortable enough when I mentioned that she was invisible. Obviously, she’d been dealing with all of this a lot longer than the handful of hours I’d been present. This wasn’t new to her. But that didn’t mean I had to like it.
Jennifer grabbed her clothes and headed into the bathroom. She returned, wearing adorable glasses, a short-sleeved, mint-green, silk, button-up sleeping outfit. Her hair was piled into a messy bun on the top of her head with the shortest strands loose at the nape of her neck.
I snatched up my own sleeping clothes before my dick could respond to seeing her long, curvy legs and the shape of her in silk…with no bra.
Normally, I slept naked. Or at the most, in a pair of boxers. But I couldn’t do that here, of course. So, I’d packed some sleep shorts and an old traveling soccer team shirt. Jennifer was already in bed when I got back. The lamp on the side table light was on, and she had a historical romance set next to it.
“Any idea where I should look for the extra pillows and blankets?” I asked her.
She cleared her throat, as if she were about to prepare a speech. “I actually thought…there is room.” She gestured next to her. “I mean, I don’t move around a lot in my sleep. I’ll stay on my side.”