Page 60 of Hot Shot

CHAPTER 23

LIMEADES AND LIES

CASS

Iput down my phone and sigh a big, stupid sigh.

Thank God Wilder has to work tonight. Because I am inso much trouble.

I’ve never been so dumb as when I took on this deal. Despite the myriad of reasons to move in with him and pretend we’re married, the biggest and most obvious reasonnotto is a hard, long truth. A truth that lives in his pants. Pants that I dream nightly are very much not on his body.

It’s a problem.

The rest of the school day was a blur, a wonderful, dreamy blur. Fun and chaotic and stressful and absolutely perfect. Fresh art hung on the wall, cubbies were filled and emptied again. I tied at least twelve shoes, read a book to a class of rapt children, and enjoyed the giggles and smiles and joy so much, it should be criminal.

Perfect.

And exhausting.

By the time we got to the station to see Wilder, I was dragging my ass behind me like it was a full time job. Once Cricket and I got home and PJ’d up, we lay around like slugs for a few hours and watched TV. For dinner we decided on Sonic, and two cherry limeades and some cheese tots later, we were pooped. We read in bed for a while, all the way up until Cricket dropped her book on her face for the third time. She didn’t want to readA Wrinkle In Timewithout Wilder, so she brushed her teeth and fell into her bed.

I fall into mine too. His. Ours. Whatever. After we texted, and now that my phone is safely out of my hands, I lie in his sheets, overwhelmed. Everything smells like him. Like a freak, I roll over and smother myself with his pillow, groaning as I inhale. I don’t know what’s in his soap. Cedar? Sandalwood? Poppers? Deliriously, I take advantage of the solitude, wondering how many nights he lay right here with his cock in his hand, thinking about me. Fifteen seconds with my finger pressed to my clit and boom, thar she blows.

Really. I’m in super-duper deep fucking trouble.

I sleep like I’m dead and wake brand new with Cricket somehow occupying three quarters of the king-sized bed. As we are leaving for school, Wilder comes in looking as pooped as I was last night, kissing me again briefly before shuffling to his room forhisturn to faceplant in his bed.

Our bed.

Whatever.

The school day goes smoother without the whole fire alarm interruption, and the heat has let up too with a passing storm last night. Wilder is home when we get there, at least for long enough to catch up briefly. And then he’s off to the game and we decide to have Sonic again. I make this choice as a full-fledged adult and have no regrets.

And so, as I sit in the breezy twilight with a Route 44 limeade, a belly full of cheesy tots, and the familiar sounds of the game around me, I feel content in a way I haven’t in years. Cricket is running around with a few kids, and when I see her toothy grin, everything feels all right. At least for a moment.

Molly sits to one side of me and Jessa on the other, the game well under way. On the way in, a half dozen older women from church stopped by to “say hello,” which we all really know means “be nosy.” Gloriously, I’ve been left alone since Molly joined us, but the second Barb Weaver veers from the stairs to venture down the row in front of us, I know my luck is up. I pop on a smile and brace myself.

It’s not so much that I mind the questions—hell, I’d be begging for more information too, if someone else had been involved in a scandal like mine. I just hate lying, and I’m generally terrible at it.

Hopefully Barb will be too hungry for details to notice.

I raise a hand and shake it. “Well, hey, Barb. How are you?”

“Oh, hey, honey! I’m good, howyoudoin’?” She giggles like a girl, her cheeks flushing. “All this time we thought you’d never end up a wife, and you were one all along!”

Jessa’s face flattens at the insult, but I laugh it off. “Well, it was a surprise to me too.”

She takes a seat, twisting to face me. Her short hair is the shade of orangey-red that looks like a crayon-scribbled flame. “I’ll bet it was, finding out you were married all these years? Typical man, forgetting to tell you he forgot to get a divorce.”

“Can’t live with ‘em, am I right?”

Another giggle. “Gerald is terrible. I swear, the man can’t even pick up a gallon of milk without having to call me.” She waves a wrinkled, manicured hand. “But your Wilder? I’d put up with all kinds of idiot forthat.”

“Barb,” I laugh, swatting at her forearm, because it’s easier than pointing out weaponized incompetence and her suggestion at having sex with my husband. Ex boyfriend.Seriously, what-ever.“You’re so bad.”

“Now don’t you go and tell anybody!” Another burst of laughter. “Did you justkillhim when you found out?”

“I did, but then I remembered I was in love with him, so I had to find my spell book, reanimate his body—it was a whole thing.”

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