Page 25 of Literally For Keeps
Eleven
I’d just kissed Landon Novak.
My lips tingled from the knee-weakening experience. I bit down on them, keeping my ridiculous grin to a non-creepy level.
Landon stood inches away, his forehead once again resting against mine. His chest rose and fell beneath my hands, matching the cadence of my own. I’d never been kissed breathless before. Really, I’d thought that whole breathless, weak-in-the-knees description was just a literary machination, not something that actually happened to real people. But it did. I knew firsthand now.
What did it mean, that kiss? Had Landon felt it too, that connection between us? That You get me like no one else ever has or ever will tingle in the pit of my stomach. Claire had been teasing, but when Landon quoted Don Quixote it was almost like the final nail in my crush coffin. Darcy saved Lydia’s reputation? Psh. No big deal. Sir Lancelot? An actual knight in shining armor? Meh. Don’t quit your day job. But quote classic literature to me and do it with a ruggedness reserved for mountain men and I’m putty in your hands.
But what about Landon? He’d gone into this thing with his own reasons. Had those reasons changed at all? Was there any chance I was a part of his Rubik’s Cube of life and that kiss had been the last move to complete the game—all the colors now aligned?
I really need to check the shipping date on that straightjacket. I am completely out of my mind.
But really…had that kiss meant anything to him like it had me, or had it just been a part of the ruse?
His head lifted, and this time I found myself searching his face, holding my breath for what he would say. His green eyes took me in, and I felt like a woodland fairy sprite. When he looked at me like that, I could fly.
But then the light in his gaze dimmed, his hands fell away from me, and he took a step back. The pixie dust he’d sprinkled on me faded, and I fell to the ground of reality with a hard thud.
His hand gripped the back of his neck. “You think they bought it?” The words seemed to pain him, but not as much as they pierced me.
“What?” I blinked against the verbal slap as my heart stuttered.
His thumb hooked over his shoulder to indicate the cabin. “Ken Abrams,” he huffed with some disgust. “You think he bought the show?”
It was easier to breathe now, and my knees felt like steel. “The show.”
“Yeah.” His brows met low as they dipped in the middle. “That kiss was all a part of the act, right? Being married and all.”
Act.
One word transported me back in time until I found myself sitting on the edge of Parker’s and my queen-sized bed. Parker sitting beside me, his hand tentatively hovering over my back, afraid contact would somehow ignite the detonation wick to a ticking time bomb. He’d just told me he couldn’t live a lie any longer. He couldn’t pretend, go through the motions, put on an act for the audience of the world when, inside, his brain and his body were telling him something different.
The same crushing hurt that had filled me then—a flash-flood of self-condemnation, of words like unlovable, undesirable, unwanted—filled my every pore now. I choked down on a sob, but really I had no one to blame but myself. Parker, though he’d hurt me, had done the right thing. When others in his situation had gone on to live secret lives on the side, often bringing home and sharing the diseases and consequences of their actions, Parker hadn’t. Even though he knew how much it could cost him, he had confessed his life of deceit, and now, at the very least, he was honest about who he was.
Couldn’t really say that about myself, could I? I shook my head. Not only was I back in the same situation—“married” to a man I had feelings for, but who was only putting on an act for others—but I had done it to myself this time. And I was lying to everyone. A groan tore from my throat. I needed to find Claire and tell her I couldn’t do this anymore. I couldn’t live the lie again. And more importantly, I couldn’t let her perpetuate it either.
“Right, Ashleigh?” Landon picked up one of my clammy hands. “That kiss was a show?”
I swallowed hard. It would be so easy to smile and nod and keep on pretending. Landon never needed to know that I had let fact and fiction blur in my brain until I wanted to make what we had real. But then I’d still be lying, wouldn’t I? I took a deep breath to gather courage and then said, “No.”
He looked confused. “You don’t think kissing me will make the Abrams believe we’re happily married?”
“Yes, of course I do.”
He stood up straighter, putting more distance between us.
“But that’s not why I kissed you. Well, technically I don’t think what I did was a kiss. It was more like a mauling than anything. Sorry about your teeth, by the way. And the back of your head. I didn’t leave a bump back there, did I?”
His lips had started to curve while I prattled on like the insane person that I was, and by the time I paused to take a breath, he had a full-fledged grin on his face.
“Why did you kiss me, Ashleigh?”
Here goes nothing.
“I kissed you because—”
“If you guys aren’t going to kayak, we’re about to put a movie on in here,” Noah hollered from the door.
