He hadn’t quite managed, because he knew in Serena’s world, any comparison to an animal she loved was a great compliment. He lived for a compliment from her. They were never lies, never superficial.
She did not have either in her.
And the horrible truth was that hedidfeel some excitement about bringing a puppy home. He had never been able to have animals before. His parents did not enjoy them, and then he’d assumed himself too adult, too busy to keep them.
Serena had showed him otherwise, and there was something…justsomethingabout the idea of walking an animal around, enjoying its exuberance in their home—herhome—as he’d enjoyed it on their visit.
But it wasn’t just her softness he was obsessed with. TherealSerena she let out only at home. He also appreciated the business side of her. The icy, curt way she’d cut one of her managers down to size the very next morning when he dared suggest the merger was a mistake.
She was alarmingly amazing, and he recognized this feeling growing inside of him as an old, dangerous one he’d put away. He’d stopped yearning for his parents’ affection and learned to do without. Because he was strong. Because he was purposeful. Because he did notneedthose people who had refused to see him.
Love him.
But the need winding its way around his heart when it came to Serena was too much. He couldn’t seem to cut it off.
And he didn’t know which prospect was worse. That the soft light in her hazel eyes—the way she sighed his name, the way she looked at him sometimes, seriously and intently—might mean she felt the same.
Or that he was delusional. That it was an act. That he was desperate for any affection and reading into things. That everything his father had once said about his intelligence about businessandpeople was true. That one day Serena would look at him with tears in her eyes and turn him away, because there was nothing he coulddoright.
He didn’t stop this though. Because they were getting married tomorrow. Because this was business. Because thiswasn’t real.
Not real, no matter how soft her gaze seemed to be. No matter how much taking her to bed each and every night was a glorious and never ending source of enjoyment. No matter how much the past few weeks had begun to feel like alifehe’d never known he’d wanted.
Calm. Cozy. Serene.Real.
Because the want was insidious and deep inside him—the want to make it real. To be her husband. To love her. To build a life.
The knowledge he could not. Because he did not know what a real marriage looked like. What a real husband did. He wouldn’t be good enough. It wasimpossible.
He remembered all too well what it was like to want something out of his control. His father’s approval, his mother’s love. Other people’s feelings were not concrete, and they could change with the whims of time. He had no control over them.
And so he’d gone along these last few weeks, waiting for his own whim. Waiting for something to change. To feel suffocated. To find some flaw in her.
For her to finally,finallyrealize that all of the many flaws in him were not charming or acceptable at all.
But nothing changed. She simply got her hooks deeper and deeper into him. She simply settled into a life in which they were in each other’s space constantly. Drowning in each other. With neither of them sensible enough to escape to shore.
Maybe she had even convinced herself that she was in love with him. He saw the way she looked at him sometimes. The way she opened her mouth to say something, then closed it as if she was afraid to say the words.
When she was never afraid. Which meant it was all wrong. Wrong. How could he exist in a place where Serena Valli was afraid? It had to be his fault somehow.
He glanced over at where she stood over the stove, humming as she cooked them dinner. Something she apparently liked to do. She was more than adept at it, and he enjoyed watching the pleasure in her expression when he enjoyed what she’d made.
Her hair was piled up on her head, and she wore casual sweats he knew would be almost as soft as she was under his hands.
The desire to touch her—to lose himself inherrather than the way the anxious, horrible dread kept drifting over him and pulling him under this strange wave of…fear—was overpowering.
He never considered himself afraid, but she made him so. She made everythingso. But if he lost himself in her now, they would be married tomorrow.
Married.
He wanted to believe it could be like this. The past few weeks. Theeaseof it. But didn’t he know better?
He had watched what his parents had done to one another. He had heard Serena’s own mother berate a dead man. What were they doing? What made them think they could do this?
It isn’t real.
But it was. It was real, and there was no more time to pretend it hadn’t become so. So, he had two choices.
