I pour myself into the kiss, willing myself to feel whatever it was that made this feel so good before Easton came back to town. But every movement of our lips and tongues seems clinical. I want to melt, but kissing George feels wrong.

George backs toward the bedroom, his mouth still on mine. “Come on, Buttercup.”

I pull back. “What did you just call me?”

He blinks, but color rises into his cheeks before he hides his face in my neck again. “I don’t know.”

“You called me Buttercup.”

He shrugs. “You’re cute.”

“You’ve never called me that before. Do you call someone else that?”

He licks my collarbone. I hate that I can’t see his face. “Who would I call that?”

“I really don’t know.” I just stand there as he trails kisses up the side of my neck and strokes up and down my arms. Buttercup. I can’t deny the coincidence.

“Come to bed with me. We haven’t been together in two weeks.”

I wriggle out of his embrace. Buttercup. What is this I’m feeling? It’s not jealousy. It’s not even hurt. It’s disgust. “Stop.”

He steps back, letting me retreat. “Seeing that ring gave you a convenient excuse to pull away, but what’s your excuse now?”

“I don’t need an excuse. I’m not in the mood.”

“Seems like you’re never in the mood anymore. Not since that football player came to town.” And there it is. His dark eyes are colder than the snow piling on the windowsills. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You’re chickening out about the jobs, about moving away, not because you’re serious about this genre-fiction whim but because you don’t want to move away from him.”

There is so much in that statement to unpack. I start with the part that pisses me off the most. “Genre-fiction whim?”

He rolls his eyes. “What do you want me to call it?”

“I don’t know—my novels, maybe? My potential career as an author? My dream that this fucking institution beat out of me for no good reason? I’ve been writing novels since I was eighteen. Twelve years isn’t a whim.”

“Okay.” He holds up his hands. “Hell, Shay, you can’t be pissed at me about me not taking this seriously when you’ve never breathed a word about it to me before.”

Because I didn’t tell anyone. No one but Easton. “That’s fair, but I have told you—and many times—how important my family is to me. I hate the idea of leaving them, and I won’t uproot my life for a job I don’t want. Considering my options at this stage of the game isn’t cowardly; it’s prudent.”