Page 23 of Unexpectedly Wanted
I didn’t hate it, though, even if he waslaughingat me. The sound, it was… very nice. Deep. Almost rumble-y in his chest, and since we were still pressed together, it was like I not only heard the sound, but felt it too. Pair that with the fact that his arms tightened around me as he made that sound, and, well, my body liked it a lot.
“Tell me why you are trying to avoid them,” he demanded in a soft tone.
“Really?” I rolled my eyes, though he couldn’t see it. “You’ve been around them. It’s not hard to figure out why I would rather be literally anywhere else.”
“I mean, yeah, I get it. But tell meyourreasons.”
Why did he want to know so badly?
“For starters, I don’t think we are pulling this thing off all that well. We are horrible fake boyfriends,” I started. “I’m sure they can see right through it. Which means that my mother is just waiting for a moment alone with me so she can strike. I can’t handle that. And honestly, I don’t want to deal with it. I shouldn’t have to. Once everything starts to unravel, she’ll get in there and get me so twisted up, I’ll have agreed to something before I even know what is going on.”
“Like getting hitched to Blaire Carver?”
“Yes, and probably a whole bunch of other things. I’ll blink and it will be three years down the road. I’ll be living back in that God-awful town with a wife and three kids. Clearly, I don’t have any interest in marrying a woman. And I don’t even like kids. Not sure if you know that or not, but I don’t. I’m barely good around human adults. I have no clue what to do with a child. I’ll be working nine to five at some job that I won’t completely get. Or, and fucking kill me if I ever end up there, taking over the family business and helping people pick out new tile for their bathroom and shit. Miserable life on the weekdays, and can’t forget golfing with my father’s buddies on the weekends.”
By the time I was done, my chest was heaving with panic.
“Mi,” Remy breathed against my ear. Since I now knew he was saying his own shortened version of my name, every time I heard it, my heart did this weird thing in my chest like it skipped a beat. “Hey, that life is not you. It won’t happen. I’ll make sure of it.”
I wasn’t sure how he was going to do that, but somehow hearing those words made me feel better.
“I… hate them,” I whispered out brokenly. “I know I shouldn’t say that, but they’ve never understood me. Ever. They haven’t even tried. Growing up, they wanted me to do all these things that I hated. Play piano because it would look good when they throw their big Christmas party and I could be part of the entertainment. Take ballroom dance lessons. And this and that. I hated it. I wasn’t good at any of it. Which made my mother begin to despise me because I couldn’t do anything to make her proud, you know.”
“But you’re good at other things,” he said like he was trying to remind and reassure me.
“Yeah, I know I am. But those things never mattered to her. They weren’t things she could show off. My whole life, I was supposed to be seen and not heard. The seen part was kind of a stretch too, I guess, since I was only brought out as more of a show prize. Anyway, it was never aboutme. When I got the courage to speak up, I ended up feeling even worse. I felt stupid for even trying. I just… wanted someone to hear me. To see inside the image my parents had made of me and acknowledge the real parts of me.”
I sighed, sure that I’d said too much.
“I hear you,” Remy said, and I would have sworn I felt his lips skim the side of my neck.
I liked it.
I wanted more of it. Like a real actual kiss from those lips. To know what they felt like against my skin, pressing firmly in a way that was intimate and special.
That was only slightly overshadowed by what he’d said to me.
A rush of warmth flowed through me as I realized that those weren’t just words he’d said to make me feel better. They weren’t empty. They held a weight to them that kind of made me feel uncomfortable. It wasn’t like I’d had that a lot in my lifetime.
It made me twitchy because I realized that he really did. Hedidhear me.
He knew me.
Not something I was expecting, since I’d spent so much time trying to blink him out of existence with my mind. Okay, I hadn’t been that bad. But I had built him up as this asshole. Realizing I was kinda, sorta wrong left me reeling a bit.
However, that was something I didn’t want to think about. I couldn’t. Because if I thought about how the Remy here in my bed that was talking sweetly to me wasn’t the Remy that I had in my head, I might explode. I wasn’t good when things shifted like this. It left me feeling out of place—moreout of place.
I had to get ready and head to the office. There were more important things than my feelings and Remy and my parents.
And like I couldn’t help it, I jumped out of bed. All my focus was now on getting to work and behind my computer.
“I need to get ready,” I said, voice nearly shaky because I was so frantic and focused.
“Okay,” Remy said, sitting up and staring at me. “I’ll go down and make us coffee.”
“I don’t like coffee,” I blurted out. My gaze was down as I scurried around the bed, headed for the bathroom.
“But you drank it the other morning.” He sounded very confused.
