Confusing didn’t even properly describe it all.

I knew Steph would sniff out my situation and she’d probably tell me how I actually felt. For some reason, I was too scared to give her the opportunity. Right now, I was going to do my best to pretend I had everything under control. Everything was fine. Dean was just a guy I needed something from.

After all, that’s how guys looked at me, wasn’t it? The relationship was a transaction. Something from me for something from them.

That’s all this was, and maybe if I kept telling myself that, I’d start to believe it.

22

DEAN

Pearl had her own queen bed, which was separated from mine by a respectable foot or two of space. She’d taken a long, steamy shower and was sitting up against her pillows with her paperback in hand. Her hair was done up in a tower of towels and she had on her little reading glasses, along with the scratchy robe that was hanging in our hotel closet.

I knew I should just roll over and go to sleep, but my mind was buzzing.

It was late as hell. I’d been driving all day. I should’ve been able to fall asleep in a blink, but my thoughts were racing with bits of the conversation we’d had in the car and moments from the drive. I remembered seeing her with her head rolled to the side as she dozed. Dappled sunlight through the trees had played across her skin so she looked like something straight out of a fairy tale. There I was driving and my own personal fantasy woman was dozing right beside me. It felt too perfect. Too good for me, by far, but that didn’t stop me from sinking into the fantasy for a while and letting myself imagine what it would be like–what it would be like to know Pearl was really mine and trust myself to treat her the way she deserved.

I thought back to her smile when we swapped stories about our worst exes. I remember laughing my ass off when she somehow managed to spill her fries while getting into the car. She’d gotten out, collected them all back into the container, and then spilled them again.

There was a kind of fleeting, magical flavor to everything that had happened. It all felt temporary and dangerous. Temporary because I had no doubts the plan was to dissolve our little fake relationship as soon as the wedding was through next week. Dangerous, because no matter how hard I tried to convince myself otherwise, I couldn’t seem to stop wondering what it would be like if our fake relationship wasn’t fake.

But there were two problems with making things real. On the one hand, I didn’t feel ready to be let down again. It was why I swore off relationships six months ago. I guess one man could only take so much failure. Annabelle cheating felt like the final straw–the moment I knew one more relationship in flames might just do me in. I’d played it off like it didn’t hurt, but that shit had stung. Not because Annabelle was anything special, but because her cheating felt like the final piece of a puzzle coming together. That puzzle spelled out how doomed I was. It told me true love may be real for some people, but I could either spend my life searching for it and failing, or I could give up and save myself the heartache.