He put us in this position. He made me become her. I didn’t have any other choice.
Gage, my business partner and my best friend, made the biggest mistake he could make: he gave his father control. Sure our business got it’s start on the family money, but his vindictive father only did that to keep his son in line. When I found out all the details I tried to hate Gage, but truthfully I didn’t have time for hate. I had a problem to fix.
His dad wants to know his legacy is secure, and that means a girl for his son. Without any other option, I had to become her.
Gage needs to show his dad that he’s got it in him to continue the family line. But he’s far too much of a romantic to simply have a kid with any woman out there and in holding out for ‘the one’ he’s only run out of time. Now his father is dying and he’s asking to meet the woman in question, and I have to fill her shoes.
I agreed to become her, but I didn’t count on loving being her too. I play the role so well, but that’s only because it’s as natural as breathing for me.
And I keep on wondering whether Gage is a better actor than I always thought he was. Because he makes me believe that he’s truly in love with me. He makes me believe that all our lies are real.
And he makes me want, for the first time in my life, to give up on holding back and give in to love. And he makes me want to be her.
I know I’m fooling myself. Any minute this house of cards is going to come crashing down and me in it.
But will Gage be there to catch me when I fall?
Excerpt
“You should stay here tonight,” I say to him, swinging my suitcase off the bed and pushing it into the corner, “With me.”
“I should?” he asks, and I don’t look so I don’t know how he looks.
“Yeah it makes sense. We’re in a relationship. I’m here for the first time. We’re obviously not chaste.”
“Wait,” he interrupts, “We-“
I cut him off by turning and pointing right at my belly. The belly that is, presumably, currently gestating a child for us.
“Oh right,” he says dumbly, “Right.”
“So you should spend the night,” I continue, “And then you don’t need to worry about you talking in your sleep and having it get caught by hidden microphones or something like that.”
“Yeah,” he says, “That does make sense. I guess I’ll just go to grab clothes.”
I shake my head and bounce into bed, pulling the sheets up, “Dude just strip down to your boxers and get in, it’s late and we’ve got a whole day of your dad interrogating us again tomorrow to deal with.”
He doesn’t look sure about this. He fingers his jacket and he glances towards the door and finally I sit up in bed and give him the laziest withering glare I can manage.
“One,” I start, counting off my points on my fingers as I go, “We used to share a bed when we were living in that basement before the company took off, so that’s nothing new. Two, I’ve been like swimming with you before, so I’ve already seen everything that you’re going to show. Three, we’re going to be sleeping, so it’s not like either of us has anything to worry about.”
Finally, smiling wickedly, I cradle my belly as if I’m really with child, “And fourth, you’ve already taken my dignity, so to speak. So what’s the worst that could happen?”
A beat passes between us before I laugh, flinging myself back into the bed at the sight of his eyes going a little bit wider. Gage says something about me being a dick and I can’t respond currently because I am overcome with bemusement and laughter at my own cleverness. By the time I do fully recover, enough at least to see, he’s already halfway ready to come to bed.
So I get a glimpse just as he’s peeling his dress shirt off and draping it around the back of a nearby chair. His back first, broad and full and tight with muscle. The side profile next with his bulging biceps and pecs and the thin but tightly compacted draw of his abs. Finally the front of him, sculpted like he was built in a lab but goddamn he’s all natural and like always, I feel a pang of jealousy at him being born with the genetics to be able to have a body like that.
But this time, just maybe, I feel a bit more.
Gage doesn’t pose or anything. He half shivers in the cool of the room and rather ungracefully plunges himself under the covers and pulls them up. It’s only with him in here with me that I realize there isn’t a whole lot of space in this bed.
Because he’s pressing against me and he’s big next to me. And through shifting and negotiating we find the only real way we can both be comfortable is with far too much pressed up against each other.
In the end we’re back to back, a terse goodnight that isn’t cold but is nervous on both our parts. And I don’t know who falls asleep first and who is just pretending. But I do know that both of us need to do that to keep from making this situation more…
It isn’t awkward. Somehow it isn’t awkward. And maybe it’s just that it’s not awkward because it’s Gage and I’ve known him for a lifetime and he’s my best friend. But it doesn’t feel that way.
And I don’t know how and I don’t know why and I don’t want to start to ask questions.
We fall asleep back to back, but we wake with him wrapped around me from behind, my body spooned into his and his arms around me. And though I’m the first to wake, I don’t say a word and I don’t move a muscle.
I just feel. I just listen. I just be.
I just don’t know.
I don’t know that I know anything for certain anymore.