Robert.
I froze where I stood the second the words left her mouth. Her voice had been quiet, soft even, but it hit me harder than a punch to the ribs.
We're married," she whispered, her voice wavered, but her conviction didn't. "Couples stay together."
Indeed couples stay together, but we aren't even a relationship couple. And staying in the same room as her…Of all the possibilities I had prepared myself for, anger, fear, confusion, rejection, I had not prepared for that.
To her we were married. The ring on her finger proved it, the papers filed somewhere in a drawer proved it, but knowing it and living it were two very different things.
Especially after that night.
My jaw tightened, memories trying to surge forward, the heat, the closeness, the way her hands fisted in my shirt, how her breath had ghosted across my throat, the sound she had made when I…I shut the thought down before it swallowed me whole.
