Page 54 of Better Off Wed
“Sadie. Someone is threatening you. I need to know about these things.”
“I thought they were spam calls,” I snapped. “That’s the first text I’ve gotten.”
Gideon squeezed the steering wheel with one hand, glaring at my phone.
Because I was feeling tender and pitiful and self-destructive, I said, “They’re not wrong, though,” nodding at the text.
Gideon’s eyes were sharp as he looked at me. He opened his mouth, reconsidered, and closed it again before handing me my phone. Then he turned on the car and started driving. “Let’s go home,” he finally said. “I’ll get my guys to up the patrols around the cottage. We’ll find out who’sdoing this.”
I nodded, hollow inside. We drove home in silence, and when we got there Gideon started setting up the couch for sleep. When he dug a knuckle into his back, I clicked my tongue.
“Just take the bed, Gideon. Please.”
“I’m not making you sleep on that thing,” he replied, not looking at me.
“So sleep next to me! I won’t touch you, I promise,” I sneered. My headache had turned into a jackhammer on the inside of my temples, and I didn’t have the energy to be civil. Besides, my ego was bruised and I was starting to think this whole experience was just one big bout of torture. I could glimpse my perfect life, full of friendship and laughter and joy, but I could never actually make it reality.
Gideon finally lifted his eyes and met my gaze. Then he glanced at the phone I still held clutched in my hand, and he finally nodded. “Fine,” he said, and I wondered how much of his agreement was due to his sore back, and how much of it was because he was feeling responsible for my safety.
I rushed through washing my teeth and face, put my PJs on, and curled up in a ball. The bed dipped when Gideon got in beside me, and a pit opened up in my stomach. Even after all these rejections, I still wanted him.
I was such a fool.
GIDEON
I lay awake for a long time listening to the sound of Sadie’s breathing. I stared at the lump in the blankets that was her curled-up body, wondering if I should have kissed her when she’d invited me to. She’d been radiant in the moonlight.
But would she still want me if there was no threat? If she didn’t need a protector? If she had another option, any option but me?
My defenses were crumbling. Was there any point resisting her at all, if I already knew that when she left Marswood Harbor, it would destroy me?
EIGHTEEN
SADIE
Horrifically, I woke up with my face smashed into Gideon’s chest and a puddle of drool dripping from my mouth and soaking into his shirt. Both his arms were around me, our legs tangled together. He was hard. I could feel it throbbing against my thigh.
The moment I moved, he released me. “Morning,” he rasped, looking rumpled and sleepy and gorgeous.
I wiped the crusty line of drool at the side of my mouth and shuffled back to my side of the bed. “Morning,” I said. “Sorry about that.”
Gideon sighed. “It’s fine, Sadie.”
“No, I promised not to touch you and?—”
“It’sfine.”
I clamped my lips shut, keeping my back to him as I swung my legs off the bed. By the time I was showered and dressed, Gideon was in the kitchen. There was a matcha latte fromKnead More Bread waiting for me on the counter. My heart ached as I grabbed it. “Thank you.”
He nodded in response. Then we ate and headed into town. Gideon ignored me when I suggested that he go to the Marswood Security building and let me work at Life’s a Stitch in peace, so I resigned myself to another day of torture. I managed to finish cleaning the front of the shop and start sorting through the bits and pieces in the storage room. Gideon helped me put up curtains at the back of the shop that I would use for a change room when Lola came to try on the muslin draft of her dress.
Jack came by to pick up my phone to see if he could figure out who had sent that text. He returned a few hours later with a grim shake of the head. Nothing.
By the end of the day, the space was clean and ready for me to start working. Despite everything that had happened between me and Gideon and whoever was threatening me, I was excited to make a dress.
Gideon and I cooked together, and then I spent the evening sketching ideas for the construction of her gown while Gideon read on the opposite couch. It was disgustingly domestic and I would’ve loved every minute of it if it hadn’t been absolute torture. Then it was time for bed.
“I’ll take the couch,” I said decisively.
