“Don’t make me say it,” he growls.
“Say what?”
“Briar.”
My name sounds different in his mouth. Rough. Sharp. Almost like a warning. Or a promise.
“I shouldn’t be here like this,” he says, dragging a hand over his jaw. “Not when we’re pretending.”
Right. Pretending. My stomach twists.
“We are pretending,” I remind him.
He laughs once—dry, humorless. “You keep telling yourself that if it helps you sleep.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” he says, stepping in just long enough for me to feel the heat coming off him again, “I don’t pretend well. Not about this.”
My breath stutters. “Saxon?—”
And then he’s gone. Not out of the house. Just out of the kitchen. He moves to the hallway, palms braced on the wall beside Junie’s art, head bowed. Breathing hard. Fighting something. Losing.
I follow him because apparently I never learned self-preservation. He looks up slowly, and the restraint in his eyes is almost violent.
“Don’t walk over here,” he warns.
I stop. Barely. “I wasn’t?—”
“You were.”
“I just?—”
“Briar,” he murmurs, voice dropping so low it vibrates through me, “if you come one step closer to me right now, I won’t stop at almost.”
My stomach flips. My pulse slams.
“Saxon…”
He drags a hand through his hair. “Tell me to leave.”
“I don’t want you to leave.”
His head snaps up. Those dark eyes sharpen. Lock on mine. Pin me.
“Then you need to tell me something else,” he says. “Tell me what you want.” I open my mouth. Silence. His jaw flexes. “That’s what I thought.”
He pushes off the wall, walks past me, grabs his jacket from the hook. He pauses at the door. Not looking back. Not needing to. “I’ll be here tomorrow,” he says quietly. “Same time.”
My heart stutters. “Why?”
He finally turns. His eyes scorch. “Because engaged men show up. And because I want to.”
Heat floods me.
He steps outside, pulls the door shut behind him—and I’m left in my kitchen alone, breathless, and shaking because we both know the truth neither of us is allowed to say out loud: the engagement might be fake, but nothing else is.
Chapter Eight
