Page 114 of The Fine Art of Faking It
“Right. Ha.”
“And there’s no reason why we can’t continue enjoying… the status quo until next week,” she ventured.
“Actually, I don’t think that’s a good idea. One of us is obviously more attached to the status quo than the other. And if you don’t see a future for us, I don’t see a present.” He stood abruptly.
She scrambled to her feet after him. “What about HeHa? What about the… plan?” She felt like an asshole even asking.
“Don’t worry. By this time next week, you’ll have everything you wanted,” he said grimly. “Good night, Eden.”
Davis Gates was too good to even slam the door, Eden thought, as it quietly clicked shut behind him. She’d rejected him, insulted him, and then reminded him she still needed to use him as a tool for revenge. And he was too damn gracious to even slam her door.
Where was this tightness in her chest coming from? They were ateam. They had agoal. They couldn’t just give up now. Not when she was this close to having every wrong in her life righted. It wasn’t fair of him to ask her to give it all up.
Shit.
She sank back down on the couch and picked up one of the happily bubbling glasses of champagne that taunted her. She’d gone from celebrating a victory to drowning her sorrow.
44
It was the second skillet of eggs she’d charbroiled. But Eden couldn’t really rouse herself to care as she scraped the burnt mess into the trashcan. Even Chewy turned his never-discerning nose up at the pan.
She dumped the pan into the sink and shoved her hands into her hair, mindful of the headache that had been her only companion recently. It had been three days. Three miserable days since she’d told Davis they had no future. And then he’d gone and got all righteous on her, claiming that they had no present.
“Just what exactly was wrong with enjoying our time together?” she asked Vader. The dog looked at her brother and back to Eden. “I mean seriously. What kind of a future did he expect? Weagreed. We had adeal.”
Chewy backed himself into the pantry and feigned sudden hearing loss.
“Oh, sure. Go ahead and avoid me, too.” Eden’s flailing hand bumped the pitcher of utensils sending serving spoons and spatulas flying.
Davis was avoiding her. Every morning he left—or more accurately, snuck out—while she was cooking breakfast, and he didn’t return until late at night. He responded to her HeHa texts and emails tersely, ignoring the invitations to snack time and quiet nights in the library by the fire. She hadn’t worked up the nerve to ask him to be seen with her in public to remind the Beautification Committee what a “great” job they’d done with the pairing that was about to explode.
He was sending her a message. They now had a business-only relationship, something that up until recently Eden would have been happy with.
“I don’t know why everyone’s acting like this is my fault,” she continued to the empty room. “What was wrong with getting a little enjoyment out of our situation?” She wielded a set of tongs in the air, trying to find the mad that had gotten her through Day One. But mad had given way to something murkier, more desolate.
She missed him.
Her bed, a perfectly comfortable sanctuary pre-Davis, was now an infinite wasteland of sleeplessness and memories of orgasms past.
“How does that even work? We’ve only been together a few weeks, and that was in a fake relationship!” Davis had no right to deprive her of sleep. Everything was essentially the same as it had been prior to the stink bomb. She’d been happy then, hadn’t she? And, if it had all been fine then, why wasn’t it fine now?
“Because I miss him,” she confessed to no one.
That suit-wearing, grape-smushing, sexy picture-drawing man had gotten into her head. And quite possibly her heart. The inn was tainted with memories, both sexy and sweet. It was unforgiveable. Turning her home, her business, into an altar at which to mourn the death of a relationship that was never supposed to be real.
“It was all supposed to be fake!” she railed.
“We’re too late. She’s screaming at her kitchen cabinets.” Layla ambled in wearing running tights and a hooded sweatshirt liberated from a long-forgotten college boyfriend.
Sammy yawned her way through the swinging door in sweatpants and a cozy tunic sweater. “Told ya we should have come yesterday.”
“What are you guys doing here at six o’clock in the morning?” Eden asked wearily. She didn’t have a meal for her own guests, let alone food to feed her constantly hungry friends.
“Saving your guests from blackened eggs.” Layla wrinkled her nose at the ruined breakfast remains.
“Supporting our friend in her time of need,” Sammy countered, tossing two bags of store-bought biscuits on the counter.
“What. Are. Those,” Eden demanded. Not-from-scratch biscuits were never welcome at her inn.
