Counterfeit Love

And me?

I was stuck on the spot.

With a stomach that felt oddly wobbly.

It was the syrup.

I wasn't used to having sweets so late at night.

I had a stomach ache.

That was the only rational explanation.

I decided to cling to it.

Because if I let myself contemplate those irrational explanations, I might realize something I was in no way prepared to yet.

I was more than a little intrigued by Finch McAwley.

No.

It was far more dangerous than that.

I was into him.

Like any woman was with any man.

And that, well, that was impossible.

So, I was going to blame the syrup.Chapter FourFinchShe got me a new place.

No, that wasn't quite right.

One day, she sent me a message with an address as well as instructions to show up there at a certain time with a certain amount of money to hand the landlord.

From there, I returned home to a giant stack of boxes in front of my unit with a note that said I should be packed up and ready for the moving truck she'd reserved for me the following morning.

And bright and early at six-thirty a.m., she showed up and stood there watching me pack up said moving truck while she typed away on her phone. Likely writing up another PDF for me.

Then she went ahead and followed me in her ridiculously practical small SUV that she claimed had a high safety rating as well as good fuel mileage when I had maybe called it an ugly toaster.

Practical, that was how the woman was.

I couldn't claim to know what that was like myself, but I found it oddly charming that she extended it to every aspect of her life. Even her damn shoes were practical.

The new place was a little more remote, a standalone building at the edge of a dead-end road. It wasn't much, but a step up from the row of little rooms I had been living in.

It was a low brown-shingled ranch with an uneven front porch and a gravel drive.

"So you'll hear someone coming," Chris told me as she caught me looking at it.

"Got every detail covered, huh, dollface?" I asked, opening up the back of the truck.

"That's my job," she agreed, sparing me a short glance before going back to her phone, something she found there making her brows draw together, creating two little vertical lines between them.

"I'm assuming you know of the moving-in-day tradition, right?" I asked, watching her head snap up, eyes blank.

"No?"

"We--or in this case, I--move in all the boxes, make a half-hearted attempt to unpack a few of the essentials, then give up on everything, and order take-out."

"There's no reason for me to stay here for dinner," she objected.

"Other than the fact that you know you want to, that is," I corrected, shooting her a smirk as I moved past, letting her stew on that a moment while I made my first trip inside.

The inside was as dark as the outside, the windows caked in years of grime, making me wonder when the last person had inhabited this place. But the kitchen was a little bigger than the one I'd been renting. There was a proper living room to the left inside the door, as well as a hall that had three open doors. Master, bath, and second bedroom, I figured.

"It needs a proper scrubbing," she said from behind me, looking past my shoulder. "But it has the extra room for all the printing stuff. Which you need."

"So I don't burn it up with my smoking," I figured.

"Oh, right. About that. Hold on," she said, turning, rushing back down the path to her car, grabbing a reusable bag in a bright green color, then making her way back as I put down the box. "I picked this up for you. You can reimburse me when you unpack your money," she told me as I took the bag.

She was careful to make sure our fingers didn't touch, but she seemed a little excited as I reached inside. "Nicotine patches. Nicotine gum. Self-explanatory," I agreed, finding myself touched that she had gone out of her way to pick them up. Even if her intention was to keep her seed money safe. "And... lollipops?" I said, feeling a smile tug at my lips as I pulled out the bag of Dum-Dums I used to beg my grandmother to buy me as a kid.

"For the, you know, oral fixation issue," she told me, shrugging.

I tore open the bag, unwrapped a root beer one, and plopped it into my mouth, watching the way her gaze stayed on me the whole time.

"You know, angel, you're right. I do have a bit of a... oral fixation," I told her, letting those words drip with the innuendo they deserved. "I wouldn't call it an issue, though."

"I, ah," she started, letting out an awkward throat-clearing noise, shaking her head. "See? They're working already," she declared, taking the bag back, and moving toward the kitchen, setting the boxes in a row, then fidgeting with the bag of lollipops, and I got the feeling it was bugging her that she didn't have anything to put them in.