I’ve done a little more than drop a few twenties into the museum fundraising jars around town and stopped by to peruse the exhibits, which are about as much as Davis did.
Though he has been doing other charity work.
Namely, being the subject of secret pictures that I’ve snapped of him and sent to my grandmother for the past year, telling Grandma that he’s my boyfriend, Steve.
Because Grandma started making noises about sending Nigel to get me and bring me home and marry me and fill my belly with babies.
Yes, she actually says it like that.
All of it.
So can you blame me for telling the woman who raised me that I already had a boyfriend?
Slipping yesterday and saying thatStevehad proposed though—that was probably a mistake.
Especially since Nigel’s here.
Calling me out on my lies and demanding that I come home with him.
I won’t—clearly—but my life will be infinitely more difficult until he accepts that I’m not moving back to Two Twigs.
“Are you sure you’re not hurt?” I ask Davis.
“Yes.”
“Good. Don’t touch anything.Quit taking pictures. No one’s supposed to have phones here.”
He slides another unreadable look at me.
And unfortunately, I read a crap ton into that look.
You don’t get yourself a pretend boyfriend without knowing a little about him when he’s a real person.
And I know a little about what people say about him.
And I suspect he likes what people say about him.
But I don’t. Not right now.
“Don’t freaking start with thatI’m doing my jobthing. I don’t believe it. Sarah Ryder told me you work at the nuclear reactor down in Corieville and just like making people think you’re a spy. I’m going to get the sheriff. You need to give him a statement about what you were doing here and anything you saw or know.”
Once again, the man doesn’t answer as he goes back to snapping photos of the workroom.
But I do get a different kind of answer.
The kind that comes in the form of a swooshing noise near the front of the museum.
I know that swoosh.
Davis apparently does too.
His head jerks toward the front of the museum, then he grabs me by the arm and pulls me out of the workroom.
But unlike when Nigel grabbed me five minutes ago, this time, I get a full-body shiver at his touch.
The kind of shiver I have actively chosen to not ever get again in my life because I don’t want men touching me.
Not because I don’t enjoy physical activities between consenting adults—though that took me a few years to embrace after I left Two Twigs too—but because I pick terrible men.
