Her words soften parts of me I didn’t even know were hard. I like that she wants to know things about me. The feeling is mutual.
“It feels like another life,” I say softly. “It was a means to something that I thought I wanted. Then it wasn’t.”
She nods as if she understands.
“Yeah,” I murmur. “I live a different life now.”
She’s quiet for a second. Then she smiles, gentle and real. “That’s kind of a big secret, Cal.”
I laugh under my breath. “Wait until you hear the rest of them.”
She arches a brow. “Oh yeah?”
“Come on,” I say. “I’m cooking you dinner. Then we’re going to sit and watch the storm roll in and tell each other all our secrets.”
Only there’s some I won’t be telling her.
She grins. “I can’t wait. Apparently, you’ve got layers.”
She has no idea.
So much laughter.
My jaw hurts. Not from the savory steaks I grilled. No, from all the laughs I’ve had with Silvie. She’s fun. While I cooked, she insisted on helping, and she was sort of clumsy, unsure of where anything was located. It made for a humorous affair.
Thunder rattles all the windows in the bungalow. There’s an eagerness in Silvie’s eyes that has me abandoning kitchen cleanup after dinner to take her onto the porch. We sit side by side on my porch swing, close enough our thighs touch.
“I’ll learn my way around your house soon,” she says, turning slightly to smile at me. “I love the smell of a storm.”
I inhale the ozone scent, but her sweetness quickly overtakes it. When she shivers, I slide my arm over the back of the porch swing and pull her to my side. We sit quietly as the wind whistles and the thunder rumbles. Each time I push the swing forward, she kicks her bare feet out toward the edge of the porch, letting the raindrops speckle the tops of them.
What was supposed to be a “secrets confessional” turns into a charged, intimate moment between us while we enjoy the sounds of the storm. Silvie, having had enough of getting her feet wet, turns more toward me, and hooks her legs over my thigh.
Nothing about this feels fake.
My heart stammers in my chest as I toy with a silky strand of her hair.
“Cal,” she whispers, barely carrying over the sound of the storm.
“Hmm.”
“I have a secret.”
I turn to smell her hair. God, she smells good. “Yeah? Tell me.”
“I really like this. You.”
“Silvie?”
“Yes?”
“I have a secret too,” I murmur.
She giggles, already reading my mind. “Oh, do you now? What is it?”
“I like this. And I really like you, too.”
The most difficult thing about this entire fake marriage with Silvie is that I’m going to have to not fall in love with her.
