Page 56 of Wait for Him

“Extremely.”

She smiles, and I check the time. The day's finally far enough into the ground that I can close the laptop on it.

“You headed home?” She tips her head. “Want some company?”

I stop with my laptop halfway into the bag, because yes.

God, yes.

I want her company so badly that the answer gets halfway up my throat before common sense tackles it from behind. Freshly heartbroken, dangerously vulnerable Rose alone with me for a second night in a row is a colossally, catastrophically bad idea.

Mostly because I'm not in the fucking mood to be noble.

"I, uh..." I keep packing, eyes down and away from hers. "I've actually got to get home to the wife."

I take the one thing in my life I can't stand and hold it up like a shield, because it's the only shield Rose will never try to take from me.

The disappointment hits her shoulders. Barely. A tiny drop before she catches it and straightens again, so quick that anyone who didn't spend an unreasonable amount of time watching her would've missed it.

“Right.” She smiles. “Of course.”

And God, I wish I could tell her.

All of it.

Frank. Elyse. The arrangement. The five years. My father's freedom hanging off the end of the whole thing like bait.

There have been times I've almost done it. Nights when Rose and I have been sitting somewhere with a bottle between us and I've thought, Just fucking tell her. She'd understand. She might be the only person in my life who actually would.

That's exactly why I don't.

Because I know what happens next.

Rosalie Bennett would put on her lawyer hat, roll up her sleeves and start digging. She'd find contracts and statutes, and loopholes. She'd ask questions Frank doesn't want asked and keep asking them after smarter people would've decided to mind their own fucking business.

She'd try to get me out.

Not because I'd ask her to. Because that's Rose.

She fixes things for the people she loves.

And Frank would notice.

That's the part I can't risk. Men like Frank don't lose leverage. They replace it. The second my father stopped being enough to keep me compliant, Frank would start looking for something else I couldn't afford to lose.

And there is no fucking universe where I let that something become her.

So I don't tell Rose the truth.

I don't let her help. I don't give Frank a reason to look too closely at why Rosalie Bennett matters enough to me that I'd burn my own life down before I let him touch hers.

Instead, I zip my laptop bag and smile like I'm just another married man headed home to his wife, while my phone sits in my pocket with Stacy's address waiting on it.

“Happy wife, happy life,” she sing-songs instead, finger guns and all, repurposing the sting into a bit before it can cost her anything.

“You and your country music.” I give her the smug grin, grateful for the off-ramp she keeps building us both. “You can take the girl out of Texas. Come on. Give me a yeehaw.”

I slap my thigh for good measure.