Page 51 of Goal Line

Eva’s face falls, and immediately I wish I hadn’t played that one out loud. “I’ll sign a prenup,” she says quietly. “Or whatever you call it after we’re already married.”

“Fuck that,” I say, wrapping my arm around her shoulders and pulling her to my side. “I trust you unconditionally.”

“Not that you shouldn’t trust me,” she says, “but your brother is right. You can’t take risks like that, especially not after what happened to Tucker.”

Hmmmm.The sound rattles around in the back of my throat, because I hate that she’s sort of right. But still, she’d never do something like that to me.

“Should we see whatyourparents have to say?” I ask her.

“Do we have to?”

“Maybe we should see if they know where we are, at least?” It had never occurred to me that they’d realize we were here, though maybe it should have. Going to LA to get Eva’s stuff and bring it to Boston now seems pretty obvious.

Eva sighs and walks over to her bed and, as she crawls to her nightstand to retrieve her phone, I try not to focus on the way her ass looks in those short pajama shorts. I look away, because while there’s no ideal time to be checking out your best friend, thiscertainlyisn’t the right time.

She lets out a deep sigh as she walks back to me with her phone in her hand.

“Regretting our decision, wife?” I tease, but it doesn’t disguise the genuine worry that compelled me to ask in the first place.

“No.” She sighs again. “Just wishing we could fast forward through this part where we have to come to terms with hurting our families.”

“It’s going to be okay.”

“I know.” Her shoulders sag as she looks down at the ground. “I just hate disappointing them.”

“At some point,” I say as I reach out and sweep her hair off her face, tucking it behind her ear, “we’re going to talk about why that’s always the driving force in your decision making.”

She glances up at me, and a look of annoyance flashes across her face—the kind that tells me I’ve hit a little tooclose to her insecurities. I’m close to my family, too, and I know many of my decisions are based on “being a Hartmann.” But sometimes, it feels like Eva gets stuck in a pattern of perpetually trying to please her parents at the expense of her own happiness. She’s a grown woman, and now my wife, and that’s something we’re going to need to deal with or it’s going to get in the way of our relationship.

We can deal with that later, I remind myself.

“I don’t even want to listen to these messages,” she says, glancing back at her phone. “I just want to keep living in this world where we’ve made this decision and are dealing with it together, without all the outside factors.”

“It’s the outside factors that led us here in the first place,” I say, immediately regretting my words because they imply that we were forced into this position. In a way, I guess she was. I, however, would have wanted this marriage regardless—not that I can tell her that.

“I know.” Her words are clipped, and now I’m certain she took my statement the wrong way.

“Heyyy...” I drag the word out as I bring my hand back up to her neck and curl my fingers around the ridges of her spine. “I didn’t mean it the way you’re taking it.”

“Oh yeah? How did you mean it, then?” She glances up at me, looking pissed off. Honestly, with her tired eyes glaring, she’s cute as hell.

I pull her against me, wrapping my other arm around her back as I press my lips to the top of her head. “I told you before, Eva. You’re the only person I’d want to spend the rest of my life with.”

“That’s not what you said, actually,” she mumbles into my chest, her hot breath skimming over my bare skin.

“It’s not?” I’m pretty positive that’s what I told her when we were talking about this marriage.

“No, you said if youhadto pick one person to spend the rest of your life with, you’d pick me. And when I asked you if I was forcing you into this, you never actually said no.”

I hate the way her voice is tinged with hurt, and that my word choice caused this pain. “Can you explain something to me?”

She buries her face into my chest like she’s embarrassed, but says, “Sure.”

“What could I have said differently so I wouldn’t have hurt you?”

Obviously, I couldn’t have saidIf I could pick anyone...because then she’d know how I really feel. And the only thing more awkward than having very real feelings for my best friend would be her looking at me and saying, “You flatter yourself,” in response. We’ve been down that exact road before, and I have no desire for a repeat experience.

“You didn’t do anything wrong. It was just a reminder that you felt like youhadto do this.”