Page 2 of Just (Fake) Married (Calloways vs. McGraws #1)

“Then congratulations. What kind of doctor do you want to be?” I asked, feeling like I was drunk just talking to him. Was this flirting? It felt like flirting.

“The best,” he said. The s in that word got a little slurry. He handed me the whiskey and I pretended to take a sip.

“Well, good luck,” I said. “The Gulch could use a real doctor.”

“Oh, I’m never coming back to this town,” he said. “Not fucking ever. No, I’m going to be a world class surgeon who saves lives, far away from this place.”

There was zero reason I should be sad. Ethan and I didn’t even know each other, and it wasn’t like five minutes in a pantry was going to make us friends. But the Gulch could honestly use a doctor and it was a shame he didn’t want to stay.

“That’s too bad,” I said.

“You’ll miss me?” he laughed, and listed to the side, against me. He was solid muscle and hot. I could feel his skin through our clothes. I touched his arm with the back of my hand, his hair tickling me.

“Sure,” I said, proud my voice came out solid, when I felt like Jell-O inside.

Our eyes met in the hazy light coming in from under the door.

His were blue, even in the shadows. He reached up and tugged on one of my curls, pulling it tight and letting it spring back to its factory settings.

He did it again and his thumb touched my face.

I gasped, tasting his breath. Chocolate and whiskey. So delicious.

“When did you get so pretty?” he asked.

“I…ah…I don’t know,” I said, and wanted to kick my own butt for being stupid.

“You ever been kissed before, Harmony?”

I rolled my eyes. “Like, loads.”

Two times. Once in eighth grade and again last year, but…so far it wasn’t all that. I had this instinct that it should be more. That I was supposed to see fireworks and stars exploding behind my eyes.

Mostly, I tasted bad breath and felt teeth.

“But never by a McGraw?”

“I don’t think my mom or your dad would like that.”

“Fuck ‘um.”

Then it happened. He kissed me. It was careful at first, almost like an accident.

Like he was just resting his lips against mine.

But I tilted my head up like I was saying yes.

And more. And please. His tongue licked over my lips and I could taste him.

I opened my mouth on a startled gasp and he stepped forward, pushing into my body.

His hands cradled my face and I felt…grown up.

This was an adult kiss. His tongue stroked mine and the whole world fell away.

He was warmth and strength and heat. I wanted to lose myself in him. His mouth, his body.

I arched against his chest, felt his arms wrap around me, lifting me against him, and his leg pressed in between mine, my hips tight against his, and he was… oh, wow .

He was hard. I made Ethan McGraw hard.

My skin felt electric and there was a heavy heat between my thighs.

There were stars!

There were fireworks!

My breath caught in my chest and my toes curled in my boots. It was delicious and addictive, and, at the same time, it wasn’t enough. Not even close. I moaned and arched into him.

Immediately, he pulled away, panting against my lips.

“You okay?” he asked.

Okay? That was awesome. I wrapped my arms around his neck and dove in for more, but he was still pulling away and his face was at the wrong angle…

I ended up slamming the side of my head into his eye.

“Ow, fuck!” He clapped a hand over his eye.

“Ow, shit,” I said, slapping my hand over my throbbing forehead. “Sorry. I thought…Why are we stopping?”

“Because…it was just supposed to be a kiss.”

“You mean it was more?” To you? I wanted to say. It was more to you? Because it was so much more than a kiss to me.

He shook his head and probed at his eye. “I don’t know what the fuck that was.”

“What happens next?” I asked him.

“We should get out of this pantry,” he said abruptly, and rubbed his hands against the front of his jeans. I wondered if they were sweaty. Mine were.

“I meant like…”

Our eyes met again, and I knew he was drunk, but I didn’t want him to think I thought this was anything other than what it was. Not that I knew what it was. Did Ethan kiss a lot of girls at parties? He didn’t have that kind of reputation. In fact, he never seemed to date anyone.

Were we dating?

No.

Were we?

Did he think it was something? I mean…he kissed me. And he was hard. Sure, he was drunk, but he knew what was happening. Didn’t he?

“Come on,” he said, and in one smooth move, he opened the pantry door and pushed me out first, and then he beelined to Tag and his brother in the kitchen.

“The fuck?” Tag said from the other room. “What happened to your eye?”

Me, I thought. I happened to his eye.

Monday Morning

That kiss in the pantry changed my whole life. Every part of it. It changed my body. My brain. The world was different.

“What in the world is going on with you?” Sunshine asked, as we walked up the road toward the bus stop. The Gulch had one K-12 school and one school bus. You missed it, and you missed school that day.

“Nothing,” I lied, hiking my backpack higher on my shoulders. “It’s really beautiful out today, isn’t it?”

“It’s freezing,” Sunshine said, ducking her head deeper into the collar of her coat. “When people talk about hell freezing over, they mean Wyoming in winter.”

“Yeah, but the sky. So beautiful.” It was an endless Wyoming sky arching over us to the Bighorn Mountains in the far off distance. No clouds. Just a blue so blue, it didn’t seem real.

“You’re too weird right now, I can’t deal with it,” my sister muttered. “Did they give you drugs at that party?”

“No!” Unless kissing was a drug. Then I was addicted.

I wanted to tell her that Ethan McGraw had kissed me. Like for real kissing.

And that maybe we were…well, I didn’t know what we were, but we were something that we weren’t before.

Wouldn’t it be funny, if after all this time, it was me and Ethan who finally put an end to the McGraw and Calloway feud?

But something made me hold back. I could share anything with my sisters, but that kiss, in the pantry? That was mine. So, I kept the secret to myself.

Ethan’s blue truck came rattling up the dirt road from his family’s big, fancy house which was a mile down the road, past ours.

Nothing unusual about that. Of course the McGraws had their own transportation to school. I watched Ethan and Seth drive together almost every day, passing me and Sunshine, no matter if it was raining, or cold, or even scorching hot.

There had never been one reason for Ethan to pull his truck over to the side of the road and ask us if we wanted a ride.

Except for today. Because Saturday night we’d kissed. Saturday night we became more than just a Calloway and a McGraw.

I lifted my hand, to shield my eyes, expecting him to slow down any minute.

I could feel the excitement, tender and glittery, stab me right in the stomach, before…

He drove right past .

Like. Right past. He didn’t even look our way.

“Asshole,” my sister muttered. “They see us walking to the same place, they know it’s freezing out. I’m going to be so happy to leave this town and those McGraw dickheads behind.”

I stood there for a second, trying to make sense of what had just happened. He hadn’t even waved. That kiss in the closet had been like a movie kiss. I didn’t have a lot to go on, but when his tongue touched mine, I’d felt nothing but sparks. Everywhere. And I mean… everywhere .

It’s because I’m with Sunshine.

He didn’t want anyone to know. Because he’s older and I’m a Calloway and it might make his dad pissed if he knew.

That’s why he didn’t stop.

That was it. That had to be it.

At school, I made up a story about stopping by Mrs. McCormick’s room for some student council stuff, but I turned left instead of right and went to Ethan’s locker.

As I walked to the upper classmen lockers, people were watching me, whispering behind their books. I lifted my head and kept walking.

Ethan had kissed me in that pantry. He was the one who pulled me into the pantry in the first place. I had nothing to be embarrassed about.

I found Ethan standing in front of his locker, looking at something on his phone. I watched him for a second, his tall, lean body that I’d literally been pressed against.

All these years staying away from the McGraws, so stupid. Maybe I should have been kissing them in closets all this time.

He shoved his phone in his pocket and when he shut his locker door, I was standing right there.

“Jesus!” he shouted.

“Sorry,” I said quickly. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“You scared the shit out of me,” he gasped, bracing his hands on his knees for a second.

I smiled, even tried to laugh, but it came out all wrong.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, and turned to face me.

“Oh my…what…what happened to your eye?” I reached for the shiner around his left eye and he dodged away.

“Like you don’t know,” he said.

Had that been from the kiss? When I hit him with my forehead? I didn’t realize I’d hit him that hard. His eye was swollen and black and blue like he’d taken a fist to the face.

He lowered his voice. “I’m sorry if I was being a dick. Was I? Tell me I wasn’t being a dick.”

“You weren’t a dick,” I said. I wasn’t sure what that had to do with anything.

“Then why did you punch me?”

“Punch you?” I squeaked. “Is that what you think happened?”

“Um,” he gestured to his eye. “Yeah.”

“You don’t remember?” I asked, feeling all my buzzy happiness slip away. All my hope. All my that kiss changed my life certainty.

“I was really drunk and I don’t remember half the night. Tag said I pulled you into the pantry and I came out with a shiner. Everyone is saying I got handsy and you punched me. I mean, there’s no fucking way, though, right? I mean, I’m not that guy. I wouldn’t go there with you.”

Please someone kill me dead now. “Why not me?”

“Because you’re…I mean you’re…you’re…”

“What?” I asked, feeling all the humiliation a person could possibly feel.

Too ugly? Too young? Not good enough for a McGraw prince?

That kiss changed everything for me. And I thought he felt it, too.

How could he not remember?!

“Well, you’re a Calloway,” he half said, half laughed, like that explained everything.

“And you’re a McGraw,” I shot back. Because maybe it did explain everything. It explained everything we needed to know about each other.

A small, hopeful part of my heart dried up and blew away.

Hating each other was the only thing we were meant to do.