Page 38 of Call You Mine
I roll my eyes. “You need to take this seriously. I can’t fuck this up, Anderson. Not if I want them to give me Georgie.” The vulnerability I offer should make me uncomfortable, and I wait for the uneasiness, the anxiety, the compulsion to come—but it doesn’t. Instead, its absence leaves an aching, longing feeling—like I should do this more often.
“Hey.” Anderson reaches for me. Putting his warm, calloused hand on my thigh, and even through the fabric of my pants, the touch gives me goosebumps. This is the second time I’ve felt his hand on my leg, and it has me starting to forget why I have been keeping him at arm’s length. “We can do this, Ava. You’re safe with me. I promise.”
The words land more heavily than they should.
I still don’t know why he came over tonight, and, for a moment, I think about asking.
But then I remember how complicated this all already is, and I decide against it.
“Yeah,” I say, trying for nonchalance, the uneasiness I was anticipating hits me all at once. I stand up, and his hand drops from my leg, finally allowing me to collect my bearings. I tuck my hair behind my ears just for a few shorter curls to immediately escape. “You say that like you’re very sure of yourself.”
“Someone has to be.”
I raise a brow to hide the way my stomach does an annoying little flip. “Anderson,” I say carefully, “if we do this, we really have to commit. No half-assing. No backing out.”
His lips curl in a lazy smile. “Smitten looks happen naturally. I just won’t fight them like I usually do,” he jokes.
I snort. “Down, boy.” I stick my hands in my front pockets just to do something with them. “No need to waste the flirting on me when it’s just the two of us. Let’s wait until we have an audience.”
The apples of his cheeks pinken as he coughs into his fist. “Just practicing,” he answers, and even though I don’t knowwhat got him all flustered, I find myself wanting to see how much more color I can get in those cheeks.
I close some of the distance between us, our height difference reversed, as he’s still seated. His legs are open, and I’m tempted to step into them. Batting my eyelashes, I ask in a low voice, “But what if I’mtoogood at it?”
He blinks. “Too good?”
“Yeah. Like, what if youactuallyend up falling in love with me?”
His face turns bright red. “Then we win?”
I let out a dramatic sigh. “Don’t you know the number one rule about fake marriages?”
He shakes his head, lips slightly parted.
“Don’t fall in love.” I offer.
Anderson’s eyes widen. “We won’t,” he says, a little too quickly, and I didn’t think his face could get any redder, but somehow it does. There’s a beat where neither of us looks away before the corner of his mouth lifts, a hand going to the back of his neck as he shyly mutters. “I thought you said no flirting without an audience.”
“Just practicing.” I roll my lips together to hide my growing smile.
“So, are we telling them we’ve been together since the drive-in?” Anderson asks, getting us back on track, but I think he just wants to change the subject before I get him all hot and bothered again.
I nod. “I think that’s believable.” Emerson and Rumi know about the night I went to see my ex a few weeks after the drive-in. That would be the only thing thatmightmake them suspicious of our story, but I doubt it will ever come up.
I never told them that I didn’t even make it to his house—didn’t even see him and immediately blocked his number again before heading home, only to find firetrucks surrounding the house I shared with my best friend and her daughter.
Rumi was right when she tried to stop me when I told her I was going to go see him, and I wish I had realized it sooner—that getting closure, or whatever the fuck I thought I was doing, was stupid and was really just me freaking out about the feelings I was having for Anderson.
I felt myself starting to wonder what could happen with him, and I needed the reminder that we could never be more than a quick escape from reality.
And now, even that can’t happen anymore.
“Okay,” Anderson says, rubbing the palm of his hand over his mouth. “And we are finally telling them about us because things are getting serious, and because of everything that happened with Georgie and CPS?”
Nodding, I add, “And, because of the stuff with Georgie, we’re getting married because your job, your house, and the marriage will show CPS that I’m capable of being her guardian.”
“We.”
“What?” I heard him, but my brain doesn’t fully register the word.
