“That sums it up.” I hesitated. We were about the leave the corridor and enter back into the lobby. Depending on where they’d been seated in the restaurant, they might be able to see us. “Ready to sell it?”
“Told you I am already,” Rowe said and stuck out his hand.
I swallowed hard and took it. Heat flashed from his palm to mine, and I tried to grind it down and ignore it and focus on doing a good job of pretending.
I couldn’t get away with pretending we were dating if I looked like a stupid school kid every time he touched me.
It felt weird to walk alongside someone. Even weirder when you weren’t used to their gait. He walked quickly with the cane but it was still slightly off compared to mine, more sway or less sway or something that I couldn’t work out. It was just… different, and I had to keep adjusting myself as we walked across the lobby, trying to get into his rhythm.
I looked up and saw everyone seated at a table near enough to the door that they could see us.
I looked right into Ace’s eyes.
He was giving me this smirk, his gaze flicking from me to Rowe and back again, this knowing look like he was onto us.
“Fuck,” I muttered. “Rowe.”
“What?” he asked. I turned my head towards him, trying not to let Ace read my lips or my emotions. He knew me better than the others here, except maybe Keaton – and Keaton was bound to assume the best in anyone. That was just how he was. It was how I’d gotten away with my bullshit so much over the years.
I had to convince Ace, or this would all fall apart.
Out of everyone, my ex-fuck buddy had to believe it, or this was for nothing.
“Kiss me,” I said, hoping he could read in my eyes that this was absolutely necessary and they were watching.
Rowe didn’t even hesitate.
He swooped down towards me from his taller height, his free hand letting go of mine to grab me around the waist, his lips descending and capturing my mouth with heat and fervor like he couldn’t get enough of me. My startled eyes slid shut and by automatic motion I remembered to grab onto him, my hands landing on his biceps, holding on for dear life.
He pulled away and looked into my eyes and I blinked, trying to clear away the sparks in my eyes and the butterflies dancing in my stomach. I remembered to take a breath and sucked in oxygen desperately. Rowe only smiled, the motion making my eyes dart down again to his mouth, that sure and confident curve, and the corresponding tingle I could still feel on my own lips.
“Hey!” Keaton called out. “We saved a couple of seats for you guys.”
I spun around, grateful for the distraction, focusing my eyes on Keaton and walking towards him. There were two empty chairs between him and Ace. I hesitated. Put myself next to my best friend, or protect Rowe from the snake in the grass?
I sat next to Ace, ignoring his smirk and then glaring at him for good measure as soon as I was seated, giving Rowe the easier option.
At least this way, Ace couldn’t interrogate him and find proof of what he clearly suspected: that this was all a lie.
“We’re playing a couples game while we wait,” Keaton told me, leaning around with his eyes sparkling. He included Rowe in the conversation as I knew he would, not cutting him out. “Aiden and Cade – they’re proving how much they know about each other.”
“We should have done this at the bachelor parties,” Aiden said, rolling his eyes. I hadn’t been invited to either of them. I had a sense I was only here at the rehearsal dinner because they didn’t want things to be awkward. Someone had said something on the group chat about the parties being small, but I knew the truth.
They just didn’t want me there because I was a liability. Because I would embarrass them by getting drunk and fucking a stripper. Or getting thrown out of wherever they went to. And they were right. I would. That was just who I was.
This was probably the only time in my life I wasn’t going to fuck up like that, and it was because I’d paid someone to keep me in line.
Someone whose kiss made me float on air like nothing I’d ever felt before, but that was obviously beside the point because he was still paid to be here and nothing that happened between us was real at all.
“Okay, next question,” someone was saying at the other side of the table. “Aiden, what’s Cade’s favorite childhood movie?”
“Bambi,” Aiden answered immediately.
Cade gaped at him. “You don’t know that,” he said. “You can’t possibly know that. We’ve never even discussed it.”
Aiden chuckled. “But I’m right, aren’t I?”
Cade pouted. “Not fair. Guessing doesn’t count.”
