Page 113 of Clinically Delicious
“Cate.” His voice was low, meant only for me. “We’re going to get through this. Together.”
Together.
There’s that word again.
The word that makes my chest do weird things.
“Okay,” I whispered.
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
He pressed a kiss to my temple, casual, easy, like we’d been married for years instead of hours, and I felt something in my chest crack open.
Oh no.
Oh no, this is bad. This is worse than the fake marriage.
This is...“Cate!” Megan’s voice rang out from inside the house. “Can I help unpack your clothes?”
Right. Megan. The five-year-old who now thinks I’m her stepmother. Because we told her—carefully, age-appropriately—that Daddy and Cate got married because we care about each other very much and want to be a family.
Which is technically true, right?
Sort of.
If you ignore the part where we’re doing this to win a custody battle and we’ve only been sleeping together for a week.
“Coming, baby!” I called back and headed inside.
By noon, most of my stuff was inside.
By one PM, I’d had three separate panic attacks in the bathroom.
By two PM, Gabriel had pulled me into the hallway closet and kissed me until I forgot my name.
“We can’t,” I gasped against his mouth. “Everyone’s here. My parents are downstairs. Fitz is...”
“Fitz is helping Hayden with the bookshelf,” Gabriel murmured, his hands sliding under my shirt. “And your parents are in the kitchen with Megan.”
“Gabriel.”
“I need you.” His voice was rough, urgent. “I’ve needed you all morning, watching you walk around our house, and I can’t—”
Our house.
He said, our house.
I kissed him.
Hard.
Desperate.
Because apparently, I’d lost my mind somewhere between “I do” and “where do these boxes go,” and now I was making out with my husband in a closet while my parents unpacked my kitchen supplies downstairs.
Husband.
