Good at Being Alive(64)

“What had you so upset?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “Just this nightmare I’ve had since I was little.”

Fiona always wanted to tell me about her dreams, and I wanted to hear nothing less. Even the wilds of her subconscious were not interesting to me, a fact I couldn’t quite admit to myself at the time.

“What was it about?” I prod. I want to know everything about her. Even the things she doesn’t know about herself.

“I’m a kid and someone’s breaking into the house, so my family pushes me into this hole and covers me up,” she says with a hard swallow. “But once I’m buried, I can hear them upstairs having a little party without me—there was never a burglar. They just didn’t want me around, and I’m suffocating but they can’t hear me or are just ignoring me. I think I just never knew if they really cared.”

There’s this sharp tug in the center of my chest for the adult beside me who has suffered so much in her short life and for the little kid whose stepmother’s cruelty was extreme enough to infiltrate her dreams.

I reach across the pillow and grab her hand. “They adored you, Bex. I promise.”

Her tongue prods her cheek, and she gives a tiny shake of her head. “You know why I moved to California?” she whispers. “Because it was easier than the constant reminder that they didn’t want me around when I lived a mile away—catching them all out to dinner without me or swinging by the house only to discover they were having a big family party with Bronwyn and Jessie’s sisters and all the cousins—everyone but me. Someone was being an asshole recently and said they died to get away from me. I guess I’ve sort of felt like that too.” Her voice cracks on that last word.

“Who?” I demand, because I’m going to destroy him. “Who said that? Was it Brian?”

“Caden,” she replies. “He sort of hit on me a few times and it turned ugly after Italy, but he apologized. I think tonight just made me feel like…I don’t know. Eventually I always discover that the people I like are just putting up with me because they have to, and obviously, this marriage is fake but you not wanting me around made it feel like our friendship was too.”

My stomach drops.

Caden hurt her, and I’m just as bad. I should have told her I hired Peter. And I should have told him to fuck off when he wanted to meet because he isn’t the person I wanted to spend time with. “It’s complicated, but that wasn’t what happened tonight, I swear.”

Her shoulders rise, a resigned shrug. “It’s fine, Theo. I’m a lot. I’d want to get away from me on occasion, too, if I could figure out how to manage it.”

There is silence for a moment, and my body is leaden. I’ve got to tell her a piece of the truth, even if I don’t want to.

“He’s interested in you,” I say hoarsely. “That’s why I didn’t want you with us. And that’s why I was trying so hard to meet him elsewhere.”

She rolls my way once more. “What?”

“He’s got a crush on you. Peter. Surely you noticed…He’s incredibly obvious. I think it’s the reason he stayed in Paris tonight when he could have gone home this morning.”

Her brow furrows. “But…he knows we’re married.”

Fuck. That’s a whole other story, one I’m not getting into now. “I think he suspects it won’t last and is biding his time. Anyway, that’s why I didn’t want you down there.”

She could easily ask why I care when this thing between us is ostensibly fake, a question I’ve avoided asking myself, but…I’m pretty sure I know the answer.

“You never mentioned he was working for you,” she says. “I tell you everything but it’s like you only reveal what you have to with me.”

“It’s complicated,” I reply.

I can’t keep using that as an excuse, but it is. It’s complicated. My whole fucking life is complicated and getting more so by the minute.

And she’s the most complicated part of all.





Bex


Theo is a cuddler.

He’s the last person in the world I’d have assumed was a cuddler. I would fully have expected him to complete coitus with whatever supermodel was in his bed and then voice-direct his phone to find her a ride home.

But I digress. My point is that when I wake just before dawn, Theo is curled up around me as if I’m his most beloved stuffed animal, if his beloved stuffed animal gave him a boner. Because Theo definitely has one, and I’d relish ridiculing him for it later if he wasn’t in here out of the goodness of his heart.

Oh, who am I kidding? I’m totally going to ridicule him for it later.

I don’t know what happened to the pillow that was between us, but it’s long gone. Or perhaps Theo’s massive penis pushed into it so hard it disintegrated.

I pull the collar of his T-shirt to my nose. Though it was on me for the last few hours, hours during which I slept like the dead, I can still smell him on it. Hotel soap, aftershave, salty skin. I take a deep inhale, wishing he’d let me hold on to the shirt. Wishing I hadn’t worn it at all so the traces of my shampoo would be gone and it would be entirely him, six-foot-something and overly warm behind me.

With an absolutely staggering erection, one that is nestled against the crack of my ass, pressing a little tighter when he exhales, releasing when he inhales, with his large hand wrapped around my hip.