“I know,” she whispered. “I care about you, too.”

“Then what am I missing?” he asked, giving her the slightest shake in a desperate attempt to make it better. “What sent you running out of your house with no keys or phone and mismatched socks?”

She glanced down and winced. “I was in a hurry to talk to you.”

“About?”

Slowly she dragged her gaze back up, but only as far as his Adam’s apple. “About us getting married. Shouldn’t there be… more?”

He swallowed, though it felt like a Herculean effort. “Do you want there to be more?” he asked roughly, needing to ask the question even if he wasn’t at all sure that he wanted to know the answer.

Audrey was quiet for what felt like eons. She just stood there in her mismatched socks and messy ponytail, looking slightly bewildered but also strangely more determined with each passing moment.

Finally she looked up once more and took a deep breath. “I don’t think I can do it.”

Clarke let out a harsh breath, feeling as though his chest had just been shattered and the broken pieces were falling around his feet. “You don’t think you can marry me?”

“Not the way we’ve talked about. I don’t think I can have an open marriage. I guess I’m old-fashioned, but I can’t be okay with calling you my husband, you calling me your wife, sharing meals and stories about our days, raising a kitten together, and spending Christmas together, but then also knowing some other woman is sharing your bed. I mean, what happens the morning after? The three of us have coffee together?”

She took a deep breath. “But I also realize I can’t exactly ask you to be celibate for the rest of your life. I don’t want to be celibate for the rest of my life.”

Clarke’s jaw tensed at the thought of Audrey being non-celibate with anyone but him.

“I have to ask you something,” she blurted out.

“Sure,” he replied cautiously.

“That day at the ski lodge,” she said, her eyes locked once more on his throat. “When you kissed me…”

He voice was gravely. “Yeah?”

“Did you know Elizabeth was watching us? Did you kiss me because she was watching us?”

He knew what she was really asking. Had he kissed her for show? Or had he kissed her for real?

But he didn’t know how to answer her. Play it safe and lie to keep them from going someplace that could destroy them? Or tell the truth and risk everything? It took him only a couple of seconds to realize there was only one answer. The truth. He owed his best friend the truth.

Clarke exhaled. “No.”

“No, that kiss wasn’t about Elizabeth?”