One Week Later
It was easy.
Happiness.
Life with Duke.
Maybe because I knew it wasn’t real—because it was temporary—so I was living like I was dying. I knew this relationship was terminal so I was sucking all I could from it while I had it.
Of course, it was not at all the healthiest way to approach this situation, and the me from a month ago would’ve been disgusted at my actions.
It felt insane that I had only been here a month, that so much had changed. And it was even more insane that the fact I was testifying against a brutal and powerful murderer was barely even on my mind.
Part of the success of these past weeks of happiness was being careful not to inspect too much, not to think too much. To not try so fucking hard at being Anastasia Edwards and find out who I was—who I really was.
I was a woman with an eating disorder that she was slowly managing, thanks to Anna’s amazing cooking and the fact I worked so hard every day I needed the energy that food gave me.
I was a woman who could now successfully cook a lasagna for a family of people and not poison a single one.
I was a woman who laughed easily and had her own horse called Spearmint.
I was a woman who slept in a cabin designed for a man and his eventual family.
I was a woman totally and terminally in love with Duke.
Even though I was a practiced liar, I was finding it impossible to lie to myself, to distinguish where the act of our relationship and the truth behind it started, and ended. I hadn’t said those three big words to Duke, of course. I wasn’t stupid. Falling in love with him was outside of my control, but I could control whether he ever knew it or not.
Sometimes, like when I was falling asleep and I felt his lips gently touch my forehead, or when I caught him staring at me while I was reading a book, I liked to fool myself that he felt it too.
He was fond of me, to be sure. Duke was a man who didn’t hide his feelings, didn’t shy away from affection. But that was because he was a macho-man. He was an alpha male. It was part and parcel of it all.
So he was fond of me. Loving me was a whole different story all together.
I didn’t dwell, though.
I lived. I experienced.
Although I couldn’t help the way my heart skipped when I saw him walking toward me. We’d only been apart a couple hours, but I’d missed him. Craved him.
“Hey,” I said, breathless from the ride, from happiness that filled every part of me, right to my fingertips. “I helped your brother lasso a fucking cow. Lasso. Like I didn’t know they really did that shit anymore. I thought it was stupid Hollywood shit. But it’s real. And I did it!” I was practically shouting now.
Tanner chuckled beside me, clapping me on the shoulder in a casual, brotherly gesture that filled me up further. “She did fuckin’ good, bro. I swear she’s more suited to being a rancher than anyone else is. Taken to it like a fish to water.” He eyed me. “Sure you don’t want to give up making millions in movies and come help us run the ranch?” His eyes twinkled.
Not for the first time, I tried to think of a way to help him get his wife back. “Don’t tempt me,” I said seriously, too caught up in this little moment in my life to remember that that would never happen.
As it was, moments of happiness were only moments, fleeting. I knew that with the look on Duke’s face, one that I hadn’t noticed until now because I was too busy being happy, believing in things I knew were only in the movies.
Tanner noticed it about the same time as I did, since his smile disappeared and his body stilled.
“Duke?”
The man in question didn’t answer his brother. Didn’t even look at him. His eyes were on me. “Baby, I need you to brace,” he murmured in a voice I didn’t recognize, one that sucked all that happiness from me. Dread filled me up, right up into my fingertips.
“What’s going on?” I demanded.
He stepped forward, like he was going to touch me, like he was going to catch me, like he expected me to fall.
I stepped back, my feet steady. No one needed to catch me, not even Duke. Especially not Duke. I didn’t fall, because I’d never had anyone to catch me and I still didn’t, no matter what lies happiness told me.
He didn’t like me stepping back. Not at all. But he stopped moving forward because he knew I’d run the length of this whole fucking state, until my feet bled and my muscles failed, before I’d let him catch me. Save me from whatever blow he was about to land.