“You going to eat?”
I blink and look down at my plate. “Uh. Yeah.”
After a few minutes of the both of us eating quietly—me sort of picking at the food, Carter wolfing his down as fast as possible, Carter asks, “You going to tell me what’s the matter?”
I stare at him for a moment, my mind blank, because I don’t know how to put it into words.Um, you see, Carter. I just realized I have a new kink featuring you, specifically, on your knees, while I order you to do things like eat me for dinner.I clear my throat and break eye contact. That image…didn’t help.
I need to remember why all of this is so dumb. And it all comes down to the fact that Carter doesn’t want to touch me. Notlike that. And not like anything, it feels. So. Time for a subject change.
“I told Sage I would buy her flowers for her wedding, but it’s way too fucking expensive.”
“How expensive?”
When I tell him the amount, he winces. “For flowers?”
“Apparently, they are very special flowers. Difficult to import, so they have to be local and shit. And of course she’s going to want them to be organically grown.”
“How would she know the difference?” I give him a look and he smiles sheepishly. “Right. She could just ask the plants and they would tell her.”
“Right.”
“Well, once we get Gene’s money, you could get them, no problem. I can cover you in the meantime.”
I shake my head. “Hell no. No way am I spending that amount on flowers. I’m working on a better and cheaper solution. Besides, I want to use the money for a PI, anyway.”
Carter’s basically licking his plate clean at this point, so I grab it to serve him more. “So your mom’s not in town, then?” he asks.
I snort. “Amá threatened me when I asked her about it. So my guess is something is up. Maybe Mama’s here, or maybe she was here recently but isn’t anymore…who knows. But we’re not getting answers from my family.” I’d tried to bring up the subject to Nadia, but before I could even get the question out, she raised one mahogany pencil–filled eyebrow at me and said,Iknow, Teal, that you’re about to ask something that’s none of your business, so I suggest you don’t.
Damn, Latine elders with magical powers are unnecessarily difficult.
“Speaking of family…” Carter begins, and with that tone, I already know I’m not going to like whatever he’s about to say. Iset his plate down in front of him and return to my seat, my arms folded over my stomach. “Mine heard about our getting married.”
And I’m right. I don’t like this one bit. “What do you mean,heard?”
He bites his lip and it’s so damn hot, I want to smack him. Spank him. Kiss him.
I take a breath and command my brain to stop getting pervy.
It doesn’t listen.
Luckily, Carter’s keen on distracting me enough. “I kind of didn’t tell them about…you know. Our marriage.”
I blink slowly. “And why is that?”
He blinks slowly. “To avoid drama, like I said before.”
I stand and point. “You said they weren’t invited to the wedding to avoid drama. Not that you’d keep the whole damn marriage a secret from them!”
He frowns and waves a fork around. “Same thing, no?”
“No, it’s not the same thing. Which is ridiculous because the whole point of our holy matrimony was so that they would know about it.” I huff. “They’re going to think that you’re hiding me. Like you’re ashamed of me.”
I know this marriage isn’t real. That my accusation doesn’t exactly ring true when I’m talking about something fake. How can Carter be ashamed of me when I’m not really his?
And yet I can’t stop the emotions—dark, slithering, overwhelming—from rising up insideandoutside me. Thunder rumbles even closer, so close the windows rattle in their frames. Something horrible inside me whispers one of my greatest fears, straight from the memory of my abusive ex’s lips.No one else would ever want you.
Not even Carter, in his epically fake way, can pretend that he really wants me.
