“We should get married,” he said, the snake tightening around his throat, even when he realised that this was the right thing to do. “We can tell them we’re engaged now.”
She spun around to face him, her eyes huge and mesmerising, so he wanted to fall into them.
“What?” She shook her head quickly, then her lips parted with obvious confusion. “You’re not serious?”
“Aren’t I?” The snake was wrapping around his whole body now, but the panic felt different. It was laced with urgency. As though he’d held something that could liberate him and was losing it. Nothing made sense.
“Raf, I’mnotmarrying you.”
Her own voice rang with shock, and the same sense of panicked urgency he was feeling.
Despite the darkness running through him, his lips formed a grim smile. He could think of any number of a dozen women, at least, who would be falling over themselves for a marriage proposal from Raf. He wasn’t delusional enough to think it was about him, though, so much as his bank balance. Whereas Elodie had never made him feel like that mattered.Perhaps some help with a pusher.He almost laughed, now, at the modest minimalism of her expectations.
“We’ve already agreed to live together, to raise the baby together. What difference does marriage make?”
“Wehaven’tagreed to any such thing!” Her skin was pale, her cheeks a blotchy pink, her eyes shining with emotions.
“I beg your pardon?” He sounded calm when he was anything but. “Then what have we been doing?”
“Seeing if we can make any kind of co-parenting arrangement work,” she rushed out, the words breathy, as though she were struggling to breathe.
He understood. He now felt as though he were being pushed onto the precipice of a cliff, invisible forces dragging him perilously close to the edge. For a man who liked, and sought, control, this situation was spiralling in a way he hated.
“And?”
“And what?” she asked, sinking back in her seat and looking out of her window, her body radiating ten times more tension than it had been earlier.
Raf leaned forward and knocked on the glass, separating them from the driver. “Pull over, Raul.”
“What are you doing? They’re expecting us.”
“We need to finish this conversation.”
“Fine.” She turned to face him, her face a mask that showed she was trying to control her feelings—and only barely managing. “What else is there to say?”
“Why is the idea of marriage so offensive to you?”
Her cheeks puffed with indignation. “Why do you think people get married?”
He ground his jaw. “There are a whole host of reasons. Every situation is different.”
“Why do you thinkI’dget married?”
For love.The answer hit him with the force of a sledgehammer. That was why she’d gotten engaged in the past. It’s why she would have married Aaron, why she’d spent so much of her adult life dedicated to supporting him.
She’d loved him.
Possibly still did?
He tried to sift through all of the things she’d said about her ex, and the things she hadn’t. He tried to capture her face, her expression, when the subject had come up, to understand howshe felt about him, but it was all a hazy blur. All he could think about was the way she looked at him, the way it felt when Elodie caught his eye and smiled, as though without speaking they were sharing a secret only they knew.
His whole chest shuttered closed at that thought, and what it might mean.
“Marriage makes sense,” he said, taking refuge and relief in the business-like truth of his statement.
“Not to me.”
“How is it different to choosing to live together?”
