But he would never have thought to ask, and I hadn’t volunteered the information because I was afraid that?—
Warm fingers slipped under mine, threading between them. I let out a breath I hadn’t meant to hold, looking down at Simon’s hand linked with mine to confirm that was definitely what I was feeling.
When I risked a glance at his face, his lips twitched into a wry smile.
“Not as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “Although it is possibly makingmelook like the gold digger, here.”
I huffed. “You wouldn’t.”
“You know that,” Simon said. “Not that I care what your mom thinks of me. She could hardly think less.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
Honestly? It’d been part of the appeal of him when we’d first met. He was so unlike anyone else I’d ever known and I knew Mom would hate him being my friend.
Then it hadn’t mattered anymore what she thought. It’d only mattered that I got to spend time with him. That he was mine.
Even if not quite in the way I wished he was.
He’d made it clear a long time ago that he didn’t want that. Ten years, almost to the day.
If I’d thought a number with eight zeroes after it would change his mind on the subject, I wouldn’t have felt the way I did. Simon couldn’t be bought at any price.
“What I don’t get is why mom’s in on it,” I said, flopping back onto the bed beside Simon. We’d have to share, I realized belatedly. Not that we were strangers to sharing a bed.
This felt a little different, though. If we were pretending…
“I do not aspire to understanding anything about the way your mother thinks,” Simon said. “Okay,” he added, taking a deep breath and letting it out as a huff. “How are we playing this?”
“You’re taking it well,” I pointed out. Now that I was horizontal, my heart was finally starting to slow down. Things seemed so much easier when I was lying next to Simon.
That was how they were supposed to feel when people who loved you were nearby, I was fairly sure.
Simon shrugged, the mattress shifting under the movement. “Would it help for me to start freaking out? Because I can, if that’ll make you feel better.”
A smile tugged at my lips. Simon had always had a way of cutting right through anything I was worried about and making it seem ridiculous. Without makingmefeel ridiculous.
“How long have we been dating?” he asked. “Because that’s gonna come up pretty much first thing.”
I poked my tongue out between my lips while I thought. “It has to be recent,” I decided after a moment. “But since before the wedding announcement got to me. So maybe… two months?”
“Two months,” Simon agreed. “Works for me. Maybe I confessed my feelings on your birthday?”
My birthday was the fifth of May. So that’d make it almost exactly two months.
“You did?”
“I did,” Simon confirmed. “They know you, but they don’t really know me. Better if you’re giving me a chance rather than trying to pretend your taste in romantic partners has completely changed overnight.”
I hadn’t thought of that. From my perspective, it hadn’t.
“Would they think that?”
“The ex-boyfriend your sister’s marrying is an underwear model,” Simon said. The bedsheets rustled as he turned to lookat me. “I’m not. And I’m not a lawyer or a doctor or a Nobel laureate, either.”
“I’ve never dated a Nobel laureate,” I said.
I’d never realized what all of that must’ve looked like from Simon’s—and everyone else’s—perspective.
