Page 42 of Not You Again
“Of course.” He shoots me a look over his shoulder. “What’s the point of a pool full of money if you can’t dive into it?”
When I follow him into the room at the end of the hallway, I gasp. It’s a grand room—a modern four-post king bed, made up with way too many pillows and a comforter with shimmering gold filigree embroidered on it. There’s a separate sitting area made of the same buttery furniture as the living room.
I stare at the bed, biting my lip. When I tuck my hands into my skirt pockets, Kit snorts a laugh. “Go on. I know you want to.”
“I couldn’t.” I shake my head. But I’m bouncing on the balls of my feet.
“The opportunity expires in three … two …”
I squeal with delight and run across the room, launching myself onto the mound of pillows. Kit’s laughter chases away the fear that the camera might have gotten a flash of my underwear as I jumped.
I nestle deeper into the pillows, until I can pretend the cameras aren’t here at all. The mattress dips when Kit joins me, digging his way to me through the mess.
“Are you sure we have to live in that little apartment?” I ask when his nose is inches from mine. His brown eyes are bright with laughter, and it’s almost like we’ve traveled back in time to a dorm room night at Georgia State.
“That’s the deal, yeah?” He smiles, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “For richer or poorer, remember?”
“I prefer richer.” Ignoring the flicker of doubt in his eyes, I scoop up one of the down-filled pillows, squeeze it against my chest, and bury my face in it. “Can we at least take a pillow?”
Kit laughs, tugging the pillow away from my face. “They belong to the Colonnade, remember?”
“There’s so many pillows,” I complain. “They won’t even notice one missing.”
“You’re in this place for three seconds and you’re already a pillow snob.”
I grab a smaller throw pillow and whack him with it. He’s unbothered. Rude. “I’m in my thirties. A good pillow is worth its weight in gold.”
“Maybe I’ll get you a nice pillow for Christmas.” He shrugs, like it’s no big deal to think we’ll still be together after the cameras are long gone.
When I’m silent for too long, he slides off the bed and offers me a hand to get up too. But I don’t miss how he sneaks one of the Colonnade’s pillows into the bag we take home. Or how he hangs his mere three suits in one corner of the closet, careful not to take up too much space.
CHAPTER EIGHTEENKIT
I smile as I pull into the dirt driveway in front of my mom’s place Wednesday evening. It’s been a long few days since we returned to Atlanta. Catching up at work after a week away, plus being filmed every time I come home, and moving into a tiny apartment with Andie—I’m exhausted. I’m looking forward to a regular dinner where I don’t have to be Perfect Husband Kit for a couple of hours.
As I walk up the steps, I note that the landscapers I sent to clean up the yard did some great work. I’ll add them to the list of companies I can trust to take care of things when I’m halfway across the world. My steps slow as I approach the door. Living in a new country doesn’t sound as exciting as it used to, for some reason. Probably because I know my mom is still struggling with her health. Once she’s on the mend, I’ll want to travel for work again, I’m positive.
She answers almost as soon as I knock, a broad smile across her face, despite the exhaustion hovering just behind her eyes. “Welcome back, Kit.” She grips my arm as I cross the threshold. “I hope you’re okay with some casserole; I didn’t have the energy for much else.”
“Casserole is perfect.” I bow to kiss the top of her bald head and let her lean on me on our way to the couch. She seems so much frailer than I know her to be. The doctors warned me this wouldn’t be easy—for either of us—but I’m not sure what to do with this version of the woman who raised me.
I clear my throat and say, “I was thinking—what if we took that trip to Paris?” Talking about it with Andie has my mind spinning on all the things I haven’t done, even when they were right in front of me. It’s like she shook open the curtains on the periphery of my tunnel vision and asked me to look out the window, for fuck’s sake.
“I can’t travel right now.” Mom waves it off.
“But when you’re done with chemo and radiation,” I counter. “We’ll go. We’ll do everything we planned, and anything else you want. Spend the summer exploring Europe, maybe.”
She tilts her head to study me like a specimen. “You can’t take all that time off work, can you?”
“I—” I want to say that of course I can, but I don’t know if that’s true. I never ask for time off. Hell, I told my job I had a lead on a property in Costa Rica, so I wasn’t on my honeymoon, really. I was scouting the potential investment. And I’ve been at work since seven this morning, trying to catch up from the single week I was gone. Every email I missed was a notch on the vise strapped around my chest, cinching tighter every day. A simple reminder that if I fail at this job and they let me go, the life I’ve built is moot.
The oven timer beeps, and I gesture to my mom to sit while I take care of it. It only takes a few minutes to turn off the oven and serve us up a couple of plates of a noodle casserole where most of the ingredients probably came out of a can. It will taste like home, I’m sure of it. Mom refuses help to the small table, teetering into her seat with a heavy sigh.
I push some food on my plate, my mind back at my penthouse at the Colonnade. That large dining table I never use and never invite her to sit at. The world-renowned meals we have the option to eat, but for some reason I never thought of it until Andie was standing in my space, looking at it like it hurt her.
“What do you think?” I ask, spearing some green beans along with an egg noodle. “About Paris, I mean?”
She gives me a long look across the small table. “Is there a reason why you’re not telling me about your new wife?”