Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 68390 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 342(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68390 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 342(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
“Oh no.” I sag against the door after. This is all getting so out of hand. So freaking complicated. I don’t like complicated. I thought my life had enough of that before. I can’t even imagine it now. Sterling’s brows dip down above his nose like a flock of flying geese following the lead geese, except they ate a bunch of fermented something or other and got drunk and aren’t flying in a proper formation.
“I’m scared to ask what you just thought of,” Sterling mutters.
“My friends. None of them know I’m married. We just told my parents, remember?”
“Yes, well, it makes sense. I wanted to keep the marriage a secret to keep you out of the spotlight and keep any and all attention away from us and also to keep my cousins away from you, so you didn’t tell your friends. You only told your family, and you swore them to secrecy. That’s the story we’re going with.”
My sigh could bring down the house. “And what about my students? What if your cousins go sniffing around them and their parents? Would they think I gave their names out? That’s a breach of privacy. People would be angry. Then they’d be doubly angry that I lied to them about being married to someone like you. Or at all. It just makes me look completely dishonest.” I hate that my nose is burning. I’m not going to let those three big hairy toes of cousins make me cry. I’m seriously not. I’m freaking not, and I mean it.
Beans has wandered off and is eating dog food in the kitchen. I can’t see him, but I can hear him crunching. He makes the strangest sounds when he eats, and by strange, I mean entirely adorable. It’s a mrph crunch, mrph crunch noise and then smack, smack, smack, like he’s really enjoying himself. He probably is. The poor thing. I spent a wad on that food, wanting to get something good for him. I focus on those sounds—happy sounds—to ground me instead.
“My cousins won’t mess with your students,” Sterling says.
“How do you know? What if they’re skulking around here and creeping people out? What if they make it so I don’t have any students because people can’t trust me anymore, and my neighborhood is full of buttholes?”
Sterling’s right eye twitches like he just got a fly up his nose and needs to sneeze. I understand the sentiment. I really do.
“I’ll make sure Smitty takes care of them. He’ll hire someone to keep this place secure and chase off the riffraff so they can’t scare your students or creep out their parents.”
“What if they hire someone to clear them out?”
“I’ll hire two people then. Or as many as it takes.” He raises his hand, brings it almost to my shoulder, and pauses when I make a noise in my throat. Then, he tucks it back at his side and doesn’t end up touching me, which is a tragedy. I could use a hug right now.
I’m shocked at how much I’d like a hug right now. A Sterling hug. It makes my heart jump two beats past its regular pattern, which could also be the stress. It’s probably that. My stomach has just about lost the tickly feeling it got when it came to standing next to Sterling or being alone with him. I’m not so focused on that anymore. Now I’m trying to figure out how to get the fuckedupness of this whole thing unfucked.
“Well?” I’m just giving up on trying to make it through this on my own. I have to look to Sterling for my cues now. “What do we do now?” As in, what are our next steps? We talked about a performance, but I’m not sure how to do it. I’m not good at faking anything. Then again, I’ve been selling this for years, even to my family.
“Like right now?”
“Maybe we should go find them and just sell them some kind of story they’d believe. We could rehearse it and get it straight. Tell them there’s no need to doubt us.”
“Like right now?” Sterling repeats.
“They’re probably just lingering around. I doubt they’ve gone far.”
“We’ve been standing here for so long that all the blood has disappeared from my feet. If we ran after them, my toes would probably snap off.”
“Dear god, is that actually a thing?” I want to laugh. Despite everything, I actually want to laugh. Even Sterling’s eye twitch isn’t so bad right now.
“I’m not sure. I hope not. I don’t want to have to shake the bloody stumps out of my shoes.”
“Seriously, that’s a mental picture if I’ve ever seen one, and I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard about a lot of really crazy things. The internet is a blessing and a curse. Blessing and a curse.” I pause. The crunching noises from the kitchen have stopped. “We could always fake a pregnancy.” At that, Sterling’s jaw drops. “I’m kidding. That was seriously just a joke. I would never do that. And speeding up the whole let’s see if we can make this a real marriage thing by actually getting pregnant for real isn’t…that’s just…I can’t do that. Not to us, not to my family, not to me, and not to the poor child.”