If she’s feeling anything like I’m feeling right now, she’ll need a second to herself.
She disappears around the corner, her pace quicker than necessary. I don’t go to her. Instead, I take a bite of the chicken and wonder what in the hell just happened.
Things with Dr. Montgomery went well—very well, actually. He seemed to like me and Sophie. He looked comfortable and a bit impressed by dinner and our interaction.
So why is there this pit in my stomach?
Why do I feel like something is terribly fucking wrong?
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
SOPHIE
I open the bedroom door to find Holden already in bed. He’s awake, his forehead wrinkled as he looks at something on his phone. He glances up, takes me in, and gives me a small smile before going back to whatever had his attention before I walked into the room.
Making my way to the empty side of the bed, I pore over what I should say to break the ice. And why there’s ice to break in the first place.
My plan was to give him time to fall asleep before I came to bed. I insisted on cleaning up dinner myself. He was typical Holden and insisted just as adamantly that he help. We moved around the kitchen quietly. It was a comfortable silence, albeit ripe with a conversation of unsaid things.
What things, though, I’m not sure.
I fulfilled my part of the agreement tonight. I made Holden look like the perfect candidate he is. So why it feels like he wants to say something to me about it, I’m not sure.
I’m also not sure I even want to know.
As I take off my robe and hang it on the bedpost, I can feel him watching me. And I wish for the first time that things between us could be different. How? I don’t know. There’s so much I don’t know. But I do regret that I like him so much—that talking to him is so easy, and working with him on things from crazy marriage plans to seducing a CEO is so much fun.
Because he’s going to leave. I can feel it. And that’s that.
The mattress sinks with my weight.
“How do you feel like tonight went?” I ask.
He rustles beside me. The sound of him setting his phone on the nightstand pops through the air.
“I think Dr. Montgomery likes you,” I say as I get settled beside him, being careful not to bump or touch him in any way.
“Oh, I think Dr. Montgomery is smitten with you. If he were thirty years younger, he’d give me a run for my money.”
He looks at me across his white cotton T-shirt. Our eyes meet somewhere in the uncertainty between us as we realize the words he spoke.
Holden’s eyes divert to the blankets. “Well, you know what I mean.”
“I do. You mean theoretically.”
He rolls over onto his side to face me. I tug the blankets up to my waist and tap them snugly around me. Maybe it’s because I’m nervous, and when I get nervous, I get cold. Or maybe it’s to put a barrier between his body and mine, I don’t know, but I tuck those suckers around me tight.
“You really like it here, huh?” he asks.
“Where?”
“In Honey Creek.”
My throat feels dry. “Yeah. This is home for me. My brother and sister are here. All of my memories. Why?”
He shrugs as if it were some random question that just popped into his mind. But the way his forehead creases makes me think that’s not true.
“No reason,” he says. “I’ve just been thinking . . .”
He wiggles around in the blankets, sticking a leg out and then pulling it back in. He shoves an arm under his pillow and then uses it to prop his head up. It’s like watching an overgrown child not want to go down for a nap, and I can’t help but giggle.
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing. You’re just moving around like you have ants in your pants.”
His grin is subtle. “I assure you that ants are not what’s in these pants.”
I look away, embarrassed at walking right into that one.
“So back to my thinking,” he says. “If I get the job with Montgomery, we don’t have to get divorced right away, you know.”
I press my lips together as a physical block to keep from speaking. I’m not fully confident that my language will match the instructions sent from my brain.
The command center in my head is shouting at me to proceed with caution. My mouth is ready to spill some kind of crap that will indicate that I kind of like being married to him so far and that maybe we can try out one of those newfangled marriages where the couple lives apart. People do it all the time.
Lucky for me, I’m aware that my mouth is a traitor to my best interests.