I don’t understand it. When he says things like that, it feels like he feels the same love that I have for him. He makes me believe there could be so much more, but when prompted, I don’t get the same response.
His thumb drags over my cheek. “When we’re allowed to take you out of here, where do you want to go? Back to Banff, or do you want to go home?”
“Home,” I say, not wanting to return to Banff, to the room where I confessed my love for this man. I don’t want to be reminded of that moment, a moment I’m trying desperately to forget even happened.
“Okay.” He leans in and presses a kiss to my forehead. “Then we’ll go home.”
ChapterThirty-Four
PENNY
“What do you think?” Eli says, holding his arms out as he shows off his apartment.
While we were in Banff, he had movers pack up my place and move me into his apartment.
Normally, such a grand gesture of not having to move would be applauded, but as I stare at his apartment, where my décor and personal items have been expertly placed and used as decorations to make his apartment mine as well, all I feel is irritation.
Intense irritation.
An irritation so consuming that I can actually taste it on my tongue.
Why would he do this?
I’m not his girlfriend.
I thought that we were having a good time, you know? Enjoying each other.
He doesn’t love me.
He’s the baby’s dad.
“It’s . . . uh . . . it’s done,” I say as I walk around the apartment. I run my fingers over the back of his long gray couch draped with one of my throw blankets. Behind the couch is the console table from my apartment, decorated with some of my favorite books and picture frames. It seamlessly goes together, which irritates me even more. The curtains in his apartment have been switched out to ones that are similar to mine, and the art above the mantelpiece is colorful, pulling the many hues from my apartment together.
“It’s done?” He chuckles, not sensing my mood. “Babe, it’s more than done. It’s us.”
Us.
Well, that doesn’t seem like an appropriate word since I’m not even considered his girlfriend in his mind. But we’re an us. Isn’t that swell?
“And look, the kitchen is a perfect combination of your things and my things, and of course, I had them use your dining room table because frankly, I liked it better.”
Yup. It is better. And the wood grain softens the room surprisingly, making it feel less modern and more homey.
The bowl of lemons on the table, and the rug under it that’s mine, pulls it all together.
Who has a bowl of lemons anyway? Are those fake?
They can’t be real.
What a waste.
When I pick one up, it’s light and plastic-like in my hand. Huh, fake. He must have a good designer to find such a lifelike fruit.
“And come with me,” he says, taking my hand and walking me toward the hallway. My eyes land on the fireplace, the space in front of it where this started. The French silk pie, the flirting, the way he looked in his suit, the need to be with this man.
If only I knew it would end up like this, me walking around with this belly full of baby, attempting to enjoy a surprise that my non-boyfriend created for me. And uncomfortably at that.
In what felt like seconds, I went from feeling sexy and amazing to uncomfortable in my own skin, where everything seems to irritate me.
