Page 3 of Married to Number 22
With a sparkly pink colored pencil.
A giant boulder settles in my stomach, but before I can snap myself out of the horror of those memories, she shoves the paper in my hands then throws her arms around my neck.
“We’re getting married!”
Two
Luna
My heart is poundingand pretty much every cell in my body is telling me to stop this insanity and to turn around and get the hell out of here.
To leave Aiden to his life without adding the craziness of mine.
But I’m desperate.
And alone.
And this is the only thing that’s given me the slightest bit of hope over the last eight months.
And…because I’m almost out of time.
So, I reach into the paper bag I brought, pull out the oversized grocery store cupcake I bought with pretty much the last money I had in my account.
Pretty muchbecause I still technically have nine dollars and sixty-seven cents left until pay day.
Part of that desperate.
But notallof it.
Because I can manage the money—yeah, I’ve been living paycheck to paycheck, surviving because I don’t have access to the family funds I’m legally entitled to, but I have a job and a car and a place to live.
I’m lucky.
And I’m…still almost out of time with very limited ways to move forward.
“Luna,” he says and the note of warning, of sharpness in his voice—Aiden was the one person who never disappointed me, who never hurt me—stings.
Slamming the door on those thoughts, I drop the bag to the floor, fumble with the lid of the plastic box of the cupcake, managing to get it open just before I hear him say, “Luna,” again. Only this time, instead of censure, his tone has gone gentle.
Right. I can’t have that either.
Gentle is soft. Soft means that I’ll have all those same feelings again.
And then the Maybelle curse will strike anew.
I shove all that down as I hold up the cupcake, slap a bright smile on my face, one that I perfected during my competition days, and declare, “Happy Birthday!”
Then watch a strange cascade of emotions fly across his face—disbelief and confusion, sadness and pleasure, and…a softness.
A tenderness.
Like a store-bought cupcake and a middle-of-the-night declaration is so far away from what he was expecting to receive that it means more than it should.
I ignore the blip in my heart.
“Luna,” he says a third time.
Andthistime it sends heat flickering through me, twining down through my belly, dancing between my thighs.
