Page 11 of The Neighborly Thing To Do
I don’t want to stand here looming over her, but I don’t know where to sit. If I sit on the couch next to her, I’ll take up all the space. We’ll be pressed together, hip to hip. If I sit in the arm chair, it’ll be a tight fit.
She solves the problem, sliding over and patting the couch cushion next to her. “C’mere.” My heart beats faster as I sit. It’s exactly as tight a fit as I thought. I try to ignore her warm skin against mine, but it’s a losing battle. “We maybe should have talked about this more.”
“Regretting marrying me already?” I try to say it mostly as a tease, but it is a genuine concern. This might be the best plan to help her, but it is a little insane. Most people would be unwilling to go through this, and I wouldn’t blame her at all if she wanted to back out.
“No.” I shouldn’t find that as reassuring as I do. “I just think we should have gotten our stories straight. We’re lucky it didn’t fall apart in front of Mayor Davies. And now we have to figure out the logistics before the rest of the town is on our ass.”
She has a point, but I can’t regret anything that has happened so far. “What’s our story, then?”
She considers for a moment. “We’ve been dating two years.” She’d have been, what, twenty-seven? Old enough to not make me feel like a creep, so I nod. “We kept it quiet because I didn’t want Georgia to get attached if it didn’t work. We agreed we’d go public after she moved out. We’ve talked about marriage, but we’re rushing into it because of the house. Sound good?”
“Sounds good,” I agree, suitably impressed by how easily she came up with that.
“And we’re going to live here?” she asks. “You have a home, Finn.”
“I’m not giving them an inch of space to take this place from you.” I look at her, studying her face, trying to determine if she’s bothered by it. “Sorry I’m crashing in your space.”
She shakes her head. “Tell the truth, the house has been too quiet. It’s been a day and a half and I’m always expecting Georgia to pop around the corner. Hearing someone else’s footsteps will be a relief, honestly.”
I imagine the little girl who turned into an owl has quieter footsteps than me, but I get what she means and nod. When I first moved out of my parents’ house into the apartment over theworkshop, I’d also found it too quiet. I got used to it eventually, though. “Well then, I’m happy to do the job.”
“Do you want your stuff?”
“I’ll pack a bag.” I’ll be back at my house every day, so I won’t need much. It’s where my workshop is, after all.
She nods, then goes silent for a minute. “Do we tell anyone?” she asks.
“I imagine the whole town will know soon. Anyone you want to tell before the rumor mill gets to it?” Hearthstone’s gossips are relentless, so it might already be too late if she had anyone she needed to warn first.
She bites her lip. “I don’t know how to tell G.”
“I’m not sure how to tell my mother,” I admit.
“You didn’t tell your motherbeforewe did this?“ she demands, eyes aghast as she takes me in.
“You didn’t tell Georgia!” I think it’s a pretty good defense.
She groans, head dropping toward the back of the couch. “Your mother is going to kill me, Finn.”
“Nah. My mother likes you, Cassidy. It’ll be fine.” My mother’s always had a soft spot for the woman next door. Half my prior interactions with Cassidy were because my mother sent me over on some errand.
“She’s so nice,” Cassidy whispers, then shakes her head. “She’s not going to like me anymore when she finds out I trapped you in a fake marriage.”
“Not fake.” It’s out before I can stop myself, and I don’t know why I’m so insistent about it. I take a deep breath to re-set myself. “It’s legal and everything, wife. And I offered, remember?”
She doesn’t lift her head from the back of the couch, just takes another deep breath. “That’s not going to matter to her,” she mutters. “She’s a mom. She wants you to be married to someone you actually want to be with and making grandbabies or whatever.”
She’s not far off; my mother would be over the moon if I gave her a few grandbabies. I’m forty in six months, though, so I think she’s gotten used to waiting. And regardless, my mother will understand. She won’t want Cassidy thrown out of town any more than I do.
But I do need to tell my mother before she finds out elsewhere. Imagining the scolding if she doesn’t hear it from me first is motivation to get up and go. “I guess I’ll go see her. Are you calling Georgia?”
She bites her lip harder and I almost reach out to stop it. I don’t like that she’s hurting herself, even that tiny amount. “Not yet. I don’t want to go into it without a plan. This is delicate.”
And she wants to protect Georgia, I hear without her saying it. I nod.
There are more things to hammer out, like how we present ourselves in town, and what she expects from me living in herspace, but this is a good start for now. Any more and we might overwhelm ourselves.
“You should go see your mother,” she tells me. “Before she hears it from someone else.”
