Page 11 of Dearly Unbeloved (Spicy in Seattle #3)

ROSE

Do you really need that stick up your ass? - S

“ W hat are you wearing?”

I look down at myself, wondering what I could possibly be doing wrong with this outfit. Black slacks, a white shirt, a black blazer. “This is what I always wear to work.”

Sierra is wearing an ankle-length white floral dress with a caramel-colored shirt over top, tied in a bow at the bust. “You’re not going to work, Cannon. You’re going to a picnic.”

“A work picnic.”

Sierra pinches her brow. “Oh my god. You can’t wear that. You’re supposed to be showing people you have a life outside of work.”

I consider myself and, though I won’t admit she’s right out loud, she might just be. “Fine, whatever. You can pick what I wear. Make me look like you or whatever you need to do to make me seem likable.”

The corner of her lips lifts in a shit-eating smirk. “Are you saying I’m likable?”

“No, I’m saying you look likable. The problem starts when you open your mouth.”

She shrugs. “Eh. It’s compliment-adjacent. I’ll take it.”

“You really should raise your standards,” I mutter under my breath as I follow her into my room.

“Yeah, no shit,” she replies as she yanks my closet doors open. “I’ve been thinking the same thing ever since I woke up married to you.”

I bite my tongue. If I don’t, we’re going to be snapping at each other all day, and I don’t think that’s entirely typical of newlyweds.

“Lose the blazer and the pants,” Sierra says, rummaging through my closet. I wince as a shirt falls off a hanger. She looks over her shoulder at me and snaps her fingers. “Now, Cannon. You’re the one who’s pissy if you’re not twenty minutes early.”

Gritting my teeth, I shrug out of my blazer, step out of my slacks, and fold them. I turn around to place them on the end of my bed—hopefully I won’t have to steam them before work on Monday.

“Huh.”

I spin around, and Sierra is squinting at me. More specifically… “Are you staring at my ass?”

She shrugs, nonplussed. “You just didn’t strike me as a pink satin kind of girl. ”

“They’re coral,” I correct, and her nostrils flare as she sucks in a breath. She throws a bundle of fabric at me.

“Put those on.”

She’s picked out a pair of beige, high-waisted pants, a thin brown belt, and a navy V-neck sweater. It’s a nice combination, only a little more casual than I usually wear to work.

“This isn’t what I expected,” I admit as I put them on, tucking my shirt and the sweater into the pants before I belt them.

Sierra hums, grabbing for me and roughly rolling up my sweater sleeves so the cuffs of my shirt stick out.

She unbuttons them so they’re looser around my wrists, then reaches for the buttons by my collar.

Her fingers graze my skin as she unbuttons them, and we both still for a moment.

Have we ever willingly been so close to each other?

Not including the drunken mistake we made last weekend.

She steps back, the sudden distance sending a chill over me.

There’s a sharp pain in my chest, the kind I get when I don’t breathe properly on a run.

She turns us both so she can look me over in my full-length mirror and tuts. “You’ll do.”

A glowing review.

“I can’t see how this is more likable. I still look like me.”

“Well, yeah. There’s no point in making you look like someone else. If you’re too different, it won’t be believable. This is more approachable than a pantsuit.”

“Fine,” I begrudgingly agree. I flick my gaze between us. We’re somewhat matchy. “Do you think our being married looks believable?” I ask, toying with my ring.

Sierra snorts and turns away. “Us looking married is not the problem here. The acting is the problem. We somehow need to make it through a three-hour picnic without biting each other’s heads off.”

I follow her out of the room, grabbing my purse from the barstool at the kitchen island. “At least I’ll be so focused on trying to be sociable and personable that I probably won’t have any energy left to make my true feelings about you known.”

Sierra sits on the bench by the door to tug her shoes on, and I lean against the wall, sliding my feet into the brown boots she passes my way.

“I’m going to say it one more time and then I’ll leave it,” she says, buckling her wedges and looking up at me.

“While I personally think your personality is, well, awful, you shouldn’t have to change it to please people at work.

You can be social without changing everything about yourself.

You’re twenty-seven, not sixteen, trying to fit in with scary high school girls. ”

I hate that I have to do this, and I hate that she’s the only person who knows about it.

The downside of being so introverted is that I just don’t have friends, and I’m not close enough to any of my family.

Even if I was, it’s not like I could talk to Jazz without her putting two and two together about me and Sierra.

I have no desire to talk shit out with Sierra, and she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, anyway. She finds people easy to get along with—not me, but other people .

“Thanks for the advice I didn’t ask for,” I say, and she rolls her eyes.

It’s not until we’re climbing into her car that I fully process what she said.

“By the way, I’m only twenty-six. That seems like something my wife should know.

” A year of living together, and almost everything I could tell you about Sierra is shit that pisses me off, or things I’ve absorbed through Jazz.

I only learned her middle name was Kimiko when I read it on our marriage paperwork.

I don’t know her favorite color, where she grew up, what she wants from her future—none of the things spouses are supposed to know about each other.

And I’m almost certain she doesn’t know any of those things about me.

Sierra pulls out of the parking lot, shaking her head. “We are so fucked.”