“Aleck…”

“Mm-hmm?” he hums over my other breast.

When I don’t answer, he looks up, his bright blue eyes searching my face with a question he already knows the answer to. He braces his weight on his arms and stares down at me. Trying to form a sentence that doesn’t put him on the spot or ruin this moment between us churns my stomach.

This entire situation churns my stomach.

“This is our last day together,” I whisper. The words feel somehow more real now that I’ve said them.

How did this happen? How did I fall for him? The man who compared my appearance to a fucking boulder. The man who waltzed into our suite the first night with a hard-on and two shiny women. The man who still listens to R&B for god’s sake. How?

When he says nothing, my eyes drop between us. I can’t look at him. The swarm of painful realizations quakes my body from the inside out.

“You’re a fling, Winter. Easy to fuck, but not good enough to date. He won’t extend your little arrangement because you’re not on his level and he knows it.”

“Hey,” he says, tilting my face up by my chin. “We’ll figure it out, Winter.”

What’s there to figure out? You either want me or you don’t. But I don’t say it. If a few last moments are all I’ll get with Aleck, I’ll take them. Because although I know I shouldn’t have, I fell for him these past two weeks. I fell for him hard, and I’ll take him any way I can get him.

Until I can’t.

* * *

“You’re getting fucking married today!” Keith booms, seconds before the loud pop from the champagne bottle echoes across the room.

“Yeah, finally.” Sondra fidgets with the hem of her long white silk wedding dress. “Remind me to keep this flame alive because I am never going through this process again.”

“Honey, do I have to remind you that Winter went through this process for you?” Keith adds.

“Oh, yeah.” Sondra looks at me through the mirror. I smile and finish pinning the last piece of her hair into a braided bun. “So I never have to put Winter through this process again,” she amends.

“Done,” Dottie says, taking a step back. “You look absolutely gorgeous.”

Sondra looks in the mirror closely, observing the makeup Dottie applied, and smiles warmly. “What would I do without you guys?”

“Well,” Keith starts, handing Sondra a glass of champagne. “You’d have to do your own taxes, for one.”

Dottie laughs. “It’s becoming clear to me we do all of Sondra’s grunt work.”

“Should I not tell them I did all of your chemistry homework in high school?” I laugh, spraying Sondra’s hair down with a thick layer of hairspray.

“No, please, don’t tell them that.” She rolls her eyes, coughing through a cloud of Aqua Net.

A flash of light from the corner of my eye alerts me to a text. I smile, knowing it’s Aleck, then walk to the desk in the corner of the room, and pick up my phone with a grin so big it makes my cheeks ache.