Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 76425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Made us break apart, turning to find a car sitting at the gates, waiting to be let in.
"Ayanna," Che sighed, hand dropping from the necklace I quickly tucked away, turning to walk toward the garage door opening while I stood there and tried to pull myself back together.
"I'm just saying. Huck should spring for the system with a buzzer, so you guys can unlock the gate from... oh hey," the woman, Ayanna, said, noticing me as Che walked her into the garage.
Ayanna was a stunning dark-skinned woman with her curvy body draped in a terra cotta colored sundress.
"Ayanna, this is Saskia," Che introduced us. "My wife," he added.
And the calm, confident, casual way he said that had a lot more impact on me than it should have. It wasn't like he was making some grand romantic statement. I was his wife. On paper.
"Did you knock her up? Do I have another baby party to plan? Please tell me you have some friends and family, because Harm is making this shit really difficult since she hates her family, which means it is basically me, her, and now you attending."
"I, ah, I'm not pregnant," I insisted. "We married almost ten years ago."
"When you were, what, fifteen?" she asked, shooting Che a hard look.
"No. No, it wasn't like that. It was a convenience thing," I explained.
"A convenience...oh, right. Okay. Well. You're still coming to the baby shower," she told me.
"If I'm still around," I said, not feeling like she would take no for an answer, even though I clearly was not a part of their inner circle.
"Three weeks," Ayanna said, scrolling through her phone. "On the fifteenth. So, where have you been?" she asked.
"A little bit of everywhere," I admitted.
"Good. Come with me, and tell me all about it," Ayanna said, linking her arm through mine, and walking me in from the garage and in toward the kitchen.
I had a feeling an inquisition was in my future.
And Che didn't seem like he was coming to save me from it.
Probably because he was standing in that garage coming back to his senses.
He'd just been caught up in sentimentality.
He hadn't meant to pull me close, to look at me like that.
That wasn't the dynamic we had.
It was never going to be what was between us.
The sooner I came to terms with that, the better.
Chapter Seven
Che
Fucking Ayanna.
I loved the woman, but she had the worst timing.
Not only that, but she couldn't have just moved on into the house and found Harm; nope, she had to abduct Saskia, ruining any chance I had of figuring out if that look in her eye meant what I thought it meant.
What I hoped it meant.
I don't know what it was about seeing that ring around her neck that hit me so hard.
I mean, I had a tendency toward sentimentality about some shit.
And I was traditional in the meanings of things like rings and marriage, even if I hadn't gone into the arrangement in a traditional way.
So maybe those two things had just collided in that moment, clouded my judgment, made me start twisting the whole situation into something it wasn't.
She hadn't exactly encouraged it, had she?
She'd tried pretty hard, in fact, to convince me that it wasn't a big deal, that she just kept it with her as a talisman, or as a reminder to a hard time in her life that was made easier with the help of a good friend.
Because that was all I'd ever been to her.
A good friend.
A mentor, even.
Someone older and wiser, someone she could lean on after a lifetime of only having herself to rely on.
It had never been more than that between us. There had never even been a hint of any interest beyond that. It was stupid to think there was now.
I just needed to get a little distance from it all, from the resurgence of my sort of old-fashioned values.
I had my mother to thank for them. Despite having her own husband abandon her in a strange country, she'd always been very steadfast in her beliefs in marriage and family.
I couldn't count how many times she told me it was her dream for me to find a good woman, to give her my name, to have half a dozen babies for her to fawn over.
I wondered a lot after Sass and I had hatched our plan what my mother might think of the whole situation. On the one hand, she believed in love. On the other, she would want more than anything for me to be able to stay.
Knowing my hopeless romantic of a mother, she likely would have sat there with a sly smile all the while believing Sass and my fake marriage would eventually grow into actual feelings, and then a legitimate happily-ever-after.
I knew the truth, though.
Once Saskia got tired of the life on the road, the danger of her job, the lack of connection, she would take what she had made, and start a life with it. She would find a man. She'd build a life.