Page 93 of Beg Me

I’m not sure what his reaction means, or what the knot in my stomach’s telling me, but I have no idea if we qualify to be on the dance floor.

Sure, we’re fake dating. But standing next to him with his eyes on me like this, that label feels inadequate. I don’t know what we are anymore, but it doesn’t feel like we’re only playing pretend.

“Couples,” the DJ repeats. “If you’re a couple, please find your way to the dance floor.”

“Come on,” he says softly.

“Really?”

He takes my hand and slowly leads me back out onto the floor, and the entire room disappears. As the first notes of Keith Whitley’s “When You Say Nothing At All” play through the air, Jory pulls me against him with a look of such affection that it makes my breath stutter.

My heart swells as a peace, a brilliant stillness, settles through me.

His arms wrap around me, holding me tight, as we move to the music. My eyes flutter closed as I melt into his arms, the only place I’ve been able to breathe in a long time. Because when I’m with him, I’m not on edge. I’m not fighting for the next thing. I don’t have to keep my guard up, firmly in place, so I don’t get chopped down when I’m not looking.

There’s no competition, no proving myself—I don’t have to explain anything.

And, my goodness, what a relief this has been.

No other relationship, fake or not, has been like this. So easy and gentle, but fierce and solid at the same time. It’s too bad that this can’t be real. That it can’t always be this way.

I look up into his flecks of jade and swear I see the same thoughts rolling through his mind. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, and it probably is, but the moment of hope it gives me that maybe things will work out for us is the first taste of hope I’ve had in a really long time.

“Are you okay?” he asks, searching my eyes.

“Of course. Why do you ask?”

He grins. “Just making sure.”

I rest my head against his chest again, craving the connection while I can get it.

There was a time when I thought Jasper could’ve been the one. I could’ve fallen for him, had it gone on much longer.

But Jory? I think it’s too late.

And even though I think he might actually like me, too, I can’t ask him. He has too many decisions to make, for one. And, for two, I’m afraid of his answer.

I don’t want to be disappointed … because being disappointed by Jory Plath might destroy me.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-SIX

Markie

“Can you strain the potatoes, Mira?” Lolly asks.

“Sure.”

The kitchen’s warm, filled with the scents of fried chicken and apple pie—two not so great choices to cook when it’s so hot out—but when Lolly asked Jory for Gus’s favorite foods last night at the wedding, that was his answer.

“I just know Martha Reed is going to give me hell about not attending church this morning,” Lolly says.

“I’m not saying that I understand spiritual rules or anything,” I say, adding the bacon to the broccoli and cauliflower salad. “But I think saying ‘give me hell’ when you’re talking about the pastor’s wife and church is probably a no.”

Lolly rolls her eyes. “It’s the same as saying give me heck.” She looks at me over her shoulder. “And like you have any room to talk. You were practically fornicating with your new hottie in front of the pastor last night.”

I gasp. “I was not.”