“Viv.” She shifted to look at him, apparently clueing in that he had something serious to say. “I married you specifically because I have no intention of having a real marriage. It was deliberate.”
Something that looked a lot like pain flashed through her gaze. “Because I’m not real marriage material?”
A sound gurgled in his throat as he got caught between a vehement denial and an explanation that hopefully didn’t make him sound like an ass.
“Not because you’re unlovable or something.” God, what was wrong with him? He was hurting her with his thoughtlessness. She’d spilled her guts to him, obviously because she trusted him with the truth, and the best he could do was smash her dreams? “I care about you. That’s why we’re having this conversation, which we should have had a long time ago. I never told you about Marcus.”
Eyes wide, she shook her head but stayed silent as he spit out the tale of his friend who had loved and lost and then never recovered. When he wound it up with the tragedy and subsequent pact, she blinked away a sheen of tears that he had no idea what to do with.
“So you, Warren and Hendrix are all part of this...club?” she asked. “The Never Going to Fall in Love club?”
It sounded silly when she said it like that. “It’s not a club. We swore solemn vows and I take that seriously.”
She nodded once, but confusion completely screwed up her beautiful face. “I see. Instead of having something wonderful with a life partner, you intend to stick to a promise you made under duress a decade ago.”
“No,” he countered quietly. “I intend to stand by a promise I made, period. Because that’s who I am. It’s a measure of my ethical standards. A testament to the kind of man I want to be.”
“Alone? That’s the kind of man you want to be?”
“That’s not fair.” Why was she so concerned about his emotional state all at once? “I don’t want to be alone. That’s why I like being married to you so much. We have fun together. Eat dinner. Watch TV.”
“Not lately,” she said pointedly, and it was an arrow through his heart. If he was going to throw around his ethics like a blunt instrument, then he couldn’t very well pretend he didn’t know what she meant.
“Not lately,” he agreed. “I’d like to say it’s because we’ve both been busy. But that’s not the whole truth. I...started to get a little too attached to you. Distance was necessary.”
The sheen was back over her eyes. “Because of the pact. You’ve been pulling back on purpose.”
He nodded. The look on her face was killing him, and he’d like nothing more than to yank her into his arms and tell her to forget that nonsense. Because he wanted his friend back. His lover. His everything.
But he couldn’t. In the most unfair turnabout, he’d told her about the pact and instead of her running in the other direction like a lot of women, he was the one shutting down. “It was the only way I could keep you as my wife and honor the promises I made to myself and to my friends. And to you. I said no pressure. I meant to keep it that way. Which still stands, by the way.”
She laughed, but he didn’t think it was because she found any of this funny. “I think this is about the lowest-pressure marriage on the planet.”
“You misunderstand. I’m saying no pressure to stay married.”
Her gaze cut to him and he took the quick, hard punch to the gut in stride without letting on to her how difficult it had been to utter those words.
Take them back. Right now.
But he couldn’t.
“Jonas, we can’t get divorced. You’d lose your grandfather’s support to take over his role.”
The fact that she’d even consider that put the whole conversation in perspective. They were friends who cared about each other. Which meant he had to let her go, no matter how hard it was. “I know. But it’s not fair to you to stay in this marriage given that you want something different.”
“I do want something different,” she agreed quietly. “I have to go to LA. I can’t think about any of this right now.”
He let her fingers slip from his, and when she shut herself in her bedroom, the quiet click of the door burst through his chest like a gunshot to the heart. He wished he felt like congratulating himself on his fine upstanding character, but all he felt like doing was crawling into bed and throwing a blanket over his head. The absence of Viv left a cold, dark place inside that even a million blankets couldn’t warm.
Ten
The trip to LA was a disaster. Oh, the cooking show was fine. She won the first round. But Viv hated having to fake smile, hated pretending her marriage wasn’t fake, hated the fakeness of baking on camera with a script full of fake dialogue.
There was nothing real about her, apparently. And it had been slowly sapping her happiness away until she couldn’t stand it if one more person called her Mrs. Kim. Why had she changed her name? Even that was temporary until some ambiguous point in the future.
Well, there was one thing that was real. The way she felt about Jonas, as evidenced by the numbness inside that she carried 24/7. Finally, she had someone to care about and he cared about her. Yay. He cared so much that he was willing to let her out of the favor of being married to him so she could find someone else.
How ironic that she’d ended up exactly where she’d intended to be. All practiced up for her next relationship, except she didn’t want to move on. She wanted Jonas, just like she had for over a year, and she wanted him to feel the same about her.