Page 30 of The Love We Deny
He looks at me expectantly as anxiety churns in my stomach and my heart begins to pick up. The look on his face, his eyes trailing down my body—
He’s not flirting with me. There’s no way.
But it feels like he might be.
I look away, finding my wife in the crowd, still talking to her cousins, completely oblivious to my conversation with her brother and the strange feelings bubbling up that I push away as soon as they come.
I love Jess.
Will is an asshole who doesn’t know when to quit.
“Suit yourself,” he says with a shrug, standing up before I can address him again, leaving me with a nudge on the arm.
He was messing with me. Doing whatever he does to make me feel like this, all weird inside. I don’t feel anything for him.
I don’t wanthim.
Across the yard, Jess waves at me with a smile, and I lift a hand back. She starts toward me, and I remind myself how lucky I am. How good my life is. How much I love her and this family and this yard full of people who have taken me in as their own.
And when she sits down in my lap and wraps her arms around my neck, tipsy from the beer, I don’t look in Will’s direction one single time.
Now
Turns out, inviting Will to fix up the practice was a good idea.
He shows up on time. He knows what he’s doing. And to think I didn’t ask for any credentials before hiring him, I guess I should be pleasantly surprised that the wall in the waiting roomis unrecognizable already. Smoothed out, ready for paint soon, he’s even doing something in one of the rooms off to the side with a power tool.
Admittedly, I’ve walked past more times than necessary, trying to get a feel for where he’s at in the project.
I’m not hovering.
This is my place of business, and I want to make sure everything is going smoothly, not that it could look any worse than it does right now.
Victoria glares at me on my fifth time taking the long way back to my office, having caught on to my curiosity two days ago.
By five thirty, I meet her in the lobby where she’s pulling on her coat, the keys already in hand. “You go on, I can lock up.”
She pauses, looking toward the sounds of Will working with a raised eyebrow. “You sure?”
“Go ahead. I want to get an update on his progress before we leave.”
She still has that look, a disagreement somewhere in her eyes, but she gives me the keys and starts toward the door. “Alright, boss. Whatever you say.”
I find Will crouched in front of the far wall of one of the other exam rooms, the bottom of his shirt riding up slightly, showing a sliver of his lower back as he lines tape along the baseboard. “This room’s ready for paint,” he says without looking my way. “You got a color picked out?”
“The same as the other rooms,” I say, leaning against the doorframe. “There should be a can of it around here somewhere.”
He nods, standing with a roll of his shoulders, his shirt clinging to his back in a way that makes the muscles there stand out.
“I’m picking up dinner tonight,” I say, clearing my throat. “That new pasta place. The kids have been asking for it all week.”I stuff my hands in my pockets, sweaty from nerves. We haven’t done this since our argument, but things have been better, and it feels like it’s time to try again. “You should come.”
He gives me a sideways glance, so I continue. “You can ride with me.”
“Actually.” He pulls his phone out of his back pocket, holding it up for me to see. “Victoria downloaded this app for me.”
I step closer into the room to see.
“It’s called Uber,” he says, like he’s explaining the world’s next great invention. “It’s like a taxi. You put in where you want to go, and somebody comes and picks you up.”
