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“It’s not jealousy,” I tell him, scrambling for cover. “It’s an aversion to Chlamydia.”
My words knock the grin right off his face, his jaw suddenly snapping so tight I can practically hear his teeth crack. “Whatever you say. It’s your dime, Daisy.” I hurt his feelings again. “No booze. No other women.”
His agreement leaves me out of sorts. I expected him to tell me no. That he’d do as he pleased. Other women. Oceans of whiskey.
I’d been prepared to accept both.
I drop my arms and stand up straight.
He doesn’t move.
“Okay, well—”
“No ring.”
“What?”
“You heard me,” he says, gaze dropping to the engagement ring on my hand. “The ring. I don’t want to see it on your finger again—for the duration. Next time, it’s going in the goddamned harbor.”
“It’s a family heirloom.” The ring has been in the Bradford family for generations. I’ll have to return it when this whole thing is finally over, which is just as well. It’s too much for me. I prefer simple.
“I don’t give a fuck if it’s the goddamned One Ring.” He laughs at me. “He gave it to you.”
“Jeremy is gay,” I blurt it out, finally finding a place to fit in the confession I’ve been carrying for days. “That’s why we’ve never been intimate—we’re just friends. That’s all we’ve ever been. Our relationship has never been real. He’s paying me to marry him.” I look down at the ring on my hand. It feels like it weighs a thousand pounds. If someone tossed me in the Charles right now, I’d sink to the bottom with no hope of surfacing. “None of it is real.”
“It feels real enough to me.”
His words jerk my gaze upward. I find him watching me, his jaw flexing and clenching like he’s struggling to keep himself in check.
“Con—”
“And stop bleaching your goddamned freckles.” It’s not a request. It’s a demand, and that’s exactly what it sounds like.
I think about the tube of skin cream in my travel bag, prescribed by my dermatologist. I use it religiously. I could deny it. Tell him they just faded on their own over time, but something tells me he’d know I was lying.
I swallow and nod, silently agreeing to his terms. “Is that all?”
“Yeah. That’s all.” He drops his arms and pushes himself off the wall. “Now, if you’re finished with me, I’ve got a business to run.” He moves down the hall, toward the kitchen, shoulders stiff, he calls out to me, right before he walks out the door. “You can leave the same way you came in.”