Page 20 of In Love with My Secret Husband

I never stopped wanting you back.

And even though she knew that shouldn’t be enough to make herself forget three little things...

Oh no no no no.

She only managed a step back inside her room...but since he was really fast like the athlete he was, that was it. He was in her room, too. And then his mouth was on hers, and her back was against the door, and his hands were in her hair, and she was gripping the front of his shirt the way she always gripped the front of his shirt, and somewhere between the door and the bed, their clothes had started disappearing one at a time, and Laina...

She was so, so tired of the truth.

She just wanted to pretend.

Just this once.

“Stop thinking,”her husbandgrowled, and yes, that pretty much did it. She was already pretending, with her eyes closed, and her husband kissing her like their marriage had never been on the rocks. His mouth traced the line of her throat. His hands found her waist, pulling her closer, and the sound she made when his lips reached her collarbone...

Oh, if only they could keep pretending like this. With his body covering hers, and his breathing rough against her neck, and her fingers digging into his back as he started to move. With her whispering his name against his throat, barely, like it was a secret even from herself.

Oh, please.

Let this last.

Please.

Troy made love to his wife like tomorrow might never come. Kissed every inch he could reach. Claimed every part of her body he could claim. Her gasps. Her shivers. The way her back archedoff the bed when his mouth found the spot below her navel. He wanted the night to last forever because a part of him was terrified when he woke up...she would be gone.

And she was.

He told himself that was normal. That she still needed to go to work. But he didn’t really believe it until he walked back to the master’s...and he saw one gold star sticker on his bathroom mirror.

Chapter Five

LAINA MANAGED TO KEEPit together for the first three periods.

She read the morning story without her voice cracking. She helped Lotty glue macaroni to a paper plate without bursting into tears over the glue stick. She tied four shoelaces and mediated a dispute over the red crayon, which was the same red crayon that caused a dispute every single day, because five-year-olds had very strong feelings about the color red, and Laina Blackett Barrymore was a professional who could absolutely handle a crayon dispute even when her personal life was in shambles.

She kept it together through all of that.

But by the time the lunch bell rang and the classroom emptied out, Laina was alone at her desk with twenty finger-painted self-portraits drying on the windowsill and the faint smell of Elmer's glue in the air, and that was when she got the call from Aunt Trisha.

And the fact that Troy's aunt already knew...

I heard from Troy.

Even now, she was still like a brick around her husband's neck, but he was just too honorable to say it to her face.

Even now, he could only speak the truth to his relatives but never to her, the woman who never had what it took to become his wife.

Laina had thought last night was perfect, but now...

Now she knew it was just a mistake, and that she...she still wasn't good enough for him. Not now. Not ever.

Oh no.

She pressed her palms flat against the desk and squeezed her eyes shut, but the memories came anyway. His hands on her waist. His mouth on her throat. The sound he made when she whispered his name, and the way her body had arched into his like it had forgotten they were supposed to be over.

Stop it.

But her body didn't listen. Her body hadn't listened since the day she met him, and it certainly wasn't going to start now, when it could still feel the press of his fingers on her hips and the ghost of his mouth below her ear.