They didn’t.
Which was the problem.
I moved into the kitchen before the thought could settle, before it could take root and lead me to ask questions I wasn’t ready to answer. Distraction had always been my specialty—give myself a task, a list, a problem to solve, and I could outrun just about any feeling.
Cold water. Fridge light. Something normal.
As I twisted the cap off the bottle, another problem surfaced, one I’d been avoiding all afternoon. The text from my mom. The polite pressure. The carefully worded expectation wrapped in disappointment.
This, at least, was familiar territory.
Better to deal withthatthan the unsettling warmth pooling around my heart over two words Ledger hadn’t even meant, at least not the way my brain clearly wanted him to.
I took a sip, squared my shoulders, and reached for the thing I could control.
“So,” I said casually, like my pulse hadn’t just kicked up a notch. “My mom wants us to come over for brunch.”
The worduslanded between us with a thud.
Ledger froze, a water bottle halfway to his mouth. Slowly, he turned to look at me. “Today?”
I shook my head quickly. “No. Gosh, no. This weekend.”
His shoulders dropped a fraction. “Okay. Still not thrilled, but okay.”
“That makes two of us.”
He leaned against the counter, studying my face. “You don’t want to go.”
I scoffed. “Wow. Incredible insight. Truly.”
But he didn’t take the bait. Didn’t fire back. Didn’t smirk or toss out one of his infuriatingly calm swimmer-boy comments.
He just waited.
And for some reason, that unnerved me more than if he’d argued.
I’d been braced for snark, for the easy friction we’d been using like armor since the courthouse. Sarcasm, I could handle. Sniping, I could manage. But this? This quiet patience felt like someone setting down a chair and asking me to actually sit with something I’d been strategically avoiding.
I shifted my weight, suddenly hyperaware of the space between us.
I sighed and leaned back against the opposite counter, the distance between us feeling deliberate now. “I don’t want to go,” I admitted. “But we kind of have to. It’ll be like ripping off a Band-Aid. The longer we wait, the worse it will be.”
“And this is damage control?”
“This is survival,” I corrected. “If we show up united, polite, wearing rings, maybe she’ll be too busy judging our napkin placement to interrogate us.”
“Rings,” Ledger repeated.
“Yeah.” I winced. “That’s the other thing. We don’t have wedding rings,” I said. “Which … it’s probably time we get some.”
My mind, traitor that it was, immediately jumped back to the swim meet. To the guy leaning too close. To the way Ledger had stepped in without hesitation.
My wife.
If I’d had a ring on my finger, maybe that guy wouldn’t have flirted with me in the first place. And the fact that I didn’t know whether that thought disappointed me or relieved me was not something I wanted to unpack.
Even worse was the part of my brain that wondered, very briefly, what would happen if someone else flirted with me. If Ledger would react again. If he’d say it again.
