Page 44 of Just (Fake) Married (Calloways vs. McGraws #1)

TWENTY-NINE

ETHAN

Tag: Ethan was a hero tonight.

Mac: Jesus, don’t call him that. It will go to his head.

Tag: Saved a woman who’d hit an elk out on WYO 33. Called the medevac helicopter. Probably saved her life.

Ethan: Technically, we both hit the elk. And Dr. Blackfeather called the air ambulance. I just called her.

Tag: He’s being modest.

Carter: Who was it?

Ethan: Cinnamon Swift. Remember her? Chuck’s granddaughter.

Seth: Cinnamon Swift?

Carter: Wasn’t she in your grade?

Mac: No. She’s younger than Seth.

Seth: You sure it was her?

Ethan: Chuck came and picked her kid up. So, I’m pretty sure it was her.

Eli: Her mom was a real piece of work.

Carter: Holy shit, it’s another Eli sighting.

Seth: So, Cin has a kid?

I got home just past two in the morning. Exhausted but confident that Cin would make a full recovery, I stepped into the house and was greeted by Bruce and Jenny, who, as if they knew the hour, quietly came to greet me.

Bruce rubbed her head against my leg, and Jenny, didn’t look in my direction, but she wasn’t barking.

“Hello, friends,” I whispered, giving them each scratches as I made my way toward the living room. Jenny sniffed me for liver treats and when she didn’t find any she walked away, straight into a wall, before Bruce rounded her up back towards the fire.

Harmony was asleep on the couch. Curled up on her side facing the fire. A half-empty bottle of wine and a bowl with just a few tater tots on the side table.

A deep satisfaction ran through me that she was home safe. Either Chuck brought her back to town or someone brought the animals home. A community effort most likely, to get to the right outcome.

Yes, that made me happy.

Her red hair was darker in the firelight, almost the color of blood. I shook my head, trying to dislodge the hospital filter. It had been months since I’d been in a hospital or involved in a medical emergency with life-or-death stakes.

Seeing the world through that filter again was jarring.

The adrenaline was powerful and familiar, and, I could admit it, exciting. It felt really fucking good to be reminded that I was good at my job. That I was a person who walked into a crisis and could make things right.

However, the crash from that was exhausting.

I slipped my hand over Harmony’s shoulder, giving her a squeeze. She woke up in a start and grabbed my wrist.

“You’re back,” she said, blinking her eyes. “How’d you get home?”

“Caught a ride with one of the paramedics who lives in the Gulch,” I said. “You should go on up to bed.”

“Is she okay?” she asked instead, sitting up and scooting over so I could sit next to her.

“She will be. They managed to find and stop a brain bleed before it got too bad and they’re keeping her for observation. She’s got the broken collarbone, two broken ribs and a sternum bruise that will be painful.”

“You were amazing,” she whispered, and I smiled at her. “I mean, what would have happened if you weren’t there?”

Those were games every surgeon tried not to play. I hated thinking about how scared that boy had been. How much worse it could have gotten without a hospital’s intervention.

“I was there,” I said. “And everything is going to be okay. Come on, let’s get you to bed.”

Harmony put her hands on my face, cupping my cheeks, her eyes searching mine.

“Harmony,” I laughed, suddenly uncomfortable with the scrutiny. I was a doctor, I was in the right place at the right time and Dr. Blackfeather was the one to summon the resources we needed. I wasn’t the hero she was making me out to be.

“You have to know something,” she said. “I have to say it. At least once. I love you.”

And then she kissed me.

It was like being in suspended animation. I lost touch with the world. With the night. My life. It was just us. Harmony’s lips against mine. I couldn’t even breathe. It was everything I’d wanted the last few weeks. Months, really.

Everything she’d held back from me.

I love you.

I could taste those words on her lips. Sweet and sharp all at once.

Her lips opened against mine and I eased in, careful and hungry.

Her arms came around my shoulders and she held on to me like she would never let me go.

She moaned against my mouth and I felt it in my chest. It reverberated in my brain and in my blood.

I slid my hands up into her hair, holding her the way I wanted so I could taste more of her.

All of her. I kissed her like she was the answer.

God. She was sweet. Perfect.

“Is it happening?” I asked, against her mouth.

“What?” she asked.

“The curl and catch?” I said, smiling as I kissed her.

She laughed against my lips. “It’s the catch and curl. I told you, it’s important to get the C’s in the right order. And yeah,” she whispered, licking my lips, sucking my tongue. “It’s happening.”

Me too, I thought, and I picked her up and carried her upstairs to our room where I laid her out across my bed and kissed her some more.

I kissed her until it wasn’t enough. Until she was arching into me and making those needy noises in her throat.

I pulled back, stripped off her clothes and then mine in record time and then kissed her again.

Kissed her like I couldn’t breathe without her.

I let her slide the condom on me, because I was too busy memorizing the inside of her mouth.

The sharp edge of her teeth. The way her tongue felt against mine.

She lifted her hips and I slid into her and cried out, shaken. This was heaven. It was beyond sex. It was everything I never knew I wanted.

Home. Right here.

Harmony

The silence, as we lay there, sweat cooling on our bodies, heart rates coming back into normal range, was excruciating.

The weight of everything we weren’t saying and everything I had said pressed us flat to the bed, our hands touching.

Our knees. But I didn’t know what he was thinking.

I didn’t know what I was thinking, except…

The festival is in one week.

One week until we got that blue ribbon back.

Fulfilled the terms of the will. Saved the ranch. Saved the town.

Then Ethan would go interview for that job in Arizona. He was going to get it, of course he would.

Then we would have to somehow start the process of unraveling this lie we’d told.

Maybe I shouldn’t have told him I loved him. I knew it was reckless. As were the millions of kisses we’d just shared.

But it was true and it was real. And that was worth something. Not enough to save us, but something.

Right on time, my heart was breaking.

Once, when I was a kid, I dislocated my finger and my dad took my hand in his and looked me deeply in the eyes and said, “I’m going to count to three and-”

Before he even finished the sentence he’d popped my finger back into place. I had to do that, but with Ethan and my heart and this stupid fake marriage we were in.

We were out of place and it was time for me to pop us back where we belonged.

I stood up on legs that wobbled.

“Harmony?” he said, from the side of the bed where he was sprawled. I couldn’t look at him. His ruffled hair, his swollen lips. He was so beautiful, but in my mind he was already gone.

I wanted everything with Ethan but that wasn’t going to happen. He was too big for me. I should have seen that back in high school. I definitely saw it when he was in action last night. Someday, I hoped he would see that I’d made this sacrifice for him.

Taking a deep breath, I found my clothes, holding myself together with sheer will and the elastic of my bra.

“What are you doing?” he said, his hand on my shoulder, and I couldn’t stop my flinch. He pulled his hand away and sat up, too. I glanced at his face and then away. It hurt too much to look at him.

“I think I’m going to go,” I said, after clearing my throat.

“Back to your room-”

“Home,” I interrupted. “Back to my mom’s house.”

I pulled on my jeans and did up the button. I found my t-shirt.

“Harmony. What do you mean?”

I heard all this regret in his voice and maybe confusion too. He didn’t understand that this was goodbye for me, even after I’d confessed I loved him.

“This won’t mess up the festival.” I said. “If anyone asks, I’m just staying with my mom for a bit because she misses me and I’m helping out around the house.”

More lies.

“Also, we can start softening up the ground for our eventual break up,” I added.

“And what if I don’t want to break up?” he asked. He was next to me and staring at me so hard I forgot what I was saying. What I was doing.

Letting him go.

“You have that interview the day after the festival and we both know you’ll get the job. You’re too big to stay here, Ethan. You’re meant for bigger things.”

“You’ll come visit, right? That’s what I was going to say last night before the accident. We could do the long-distance thing for a while. See if we can find a situation that works for both of us.”

I closed my eyes. Swallowed the sob in my chest.

“What does that look like to you?” I asked. “What situation could possibly work for both of us? You hate this town and I love it. My life is here. Your life is in Arizona.”

“Harmony,” he said, and I could hear the pain in his voice. “You said you loved me.”

And you asked if I wanted to date long distance.

The disconnect was staggering. The fall was deadly.

I took a deep breath and just popped everything back to where it should be.

“Come on, Ethan, we already know how this story ends. You’re a McGraw and I’m a Calloway, and, frankly, one little divorce is nothing between our families.

” I slid the beautiful emerald ring he’d given me months ago off my finger and I immediately felt naked without it.

I set it on the bedside table where it gleamed and winked in the lamplight.

“Come on, girls,” I said to the animals, still tucked into their beds. “It’s time to leave.”

I closed his door behind me and went to my room to get my things.

Packed, with two bags over my shoulders and my animals following me, making baffled and worried noises because they knew something was going on, I made my way downstairs.

Dawn was a light lavender out the windows, there was no reason to believe that anyone would be awake. Except, of course, as soon as I got to the front door, Carter was coming in.

“Hey!” he said, with a welcoming smile.

So different from that time he caught me coming out of Ethan’s room half dressed. Like he was beginning to accept my place here in this family.

I tried to smile. Tried even to wipe my tears away, but that only drew his attention to them.

“Harmony,” he said, stepping closer, his arms out wide like he might hug me. “Are you all right? What happened?”

“Nothing,” I said. Which was such an obvious lie.

“What did that idiot do?”

“Nothing that wasn’t going to happen sooner or later.”

“He broke up with you,” Carter growled. “Now?”

“No. I broke up with him. If that’s what we’re calling it. Remember, this was fake to begin with. But it’s fine. We still know what we need to do. We’re not going to let you or the Swinging D down. I promise.”

He grunted. Then he took my bags off my shoulder and I followed him outside to my truck.

He put my bags in the back of the truck and opened the back door, giving the girls a boost when they needed it.

“For what it’s worth,” he said. “I really thought the two of you had something special. Something real.”

We did, I wanted to say.

Instead, I got in the truck and drove the couple of miles from the McGraw lodge back to the Calloway cabin.

It felt like I’d gone back in time, walking up to the front door. My mom’s diet coke can artwork out front. The sound of the alpacas waking up in the side yard. How was I back here again? What was wrong with me that I couldn’t move on? Why was I stuck?

When I came in the house, the animals surging ahead of me to sniff their familiar ground, Mom came out of her bedroom in her robe, her hair in a long braid down her back.

“Harmony!” she said. “What are you…?”

I couldn’t hold back the tears anymore and I dropped the bags at my feet, shoulders slumped, and just wailed. Mom rushed across the room and pulled me into her arms. I braced myself for all of it. The I told you so and the McGraws cannot be trusted .

But all she did was hold me and let me cry.