Wendy could hardly blame Jonathon’s family. By the end of the week, she was sick of talking to Helen. The only thing worse than dealing with her was dealing with Jonathon.
At the end of each day, he’d arrive home and she’d have to—once again—pretend to be a loving wife. With the tension between them as strong as it was, she doubted she fooled anyone. Jonathon, however, did a bang-up job. She could barely turn around without having him there to touch her. To wrap his arm around her shoulder and drop a careless kiss on her forehead.
The nights were the worst. She could make it all the way through the day, she could even pretend in front of her parents, but her stomach knotted every time they closed and locked the bedroom door. She didn’t know if her family found it odd for them to be locking the door, but she didn’t dare risk having them walk in unannounced and seeing his pallet at the foot of the bed, where he’d been sleeping. The closest they came to communicating was the moment each night when she threw the pillow at him. Unfortunately, he always caught it. Damn him.
And before she knew it, it was Thursday. The week had slipped by and they’d be driving out to Palo Verde in the morning.
She lay there in the dark, unable to sleep and staring at the ceiling, irritated by the rhythm of his slow, even breathing from the foot of the bed. Thirty minutes passed. Then another twenty. Then she heard him roll over and sigh.
“Are you still awake?” she whispered in the dark.
“Of course. I’m on the floor and you’re tossing and turning so much it sounds like a bounce house over there.”
She bolted upright and snapped on the bedside lamp. “Would you just get into bed.”
He blinked up at her, wedging his elbows under him. “Turn off the light. Try to get some sleep.”
“I’d be able to sleep better if I didn’t know you were uncomfortable sleeping on the floor.”
He lay back down and stared up at the ceiling. “It’s not that bad.”
“It’s two blankets and a pillow. It can’t be good. You’ll be safe sleeping in the bed. I’m not going to attack you or anything.”
“It’s just better if we limit our contact as much as possible. I’m trying to be noble here.”
“Yeah.” She snorted, falling back onto the bed. “I think that ship sailed the day we had sex on your desk.”
“You’re going to wake up Peyton.”
Even though Big Hank had left, they’d decided to keep Peyton’s crib in their room. She’d slept so much better when she was only a few inches away from them.
And though she knew Jonathon had a point—winning the argument wasn’t worth waking Peyton, who would want to be fed in a few hours anyway—it only irritated her more. She yanked her pillow out from under her head and threw it at him. There was a satisfying whump as it landed on his torso.
“I already have a pillow.”
“I know. I just wanted to throw something at you.”
“Very mature.”
“I know.” Smiling, she snapped off the light.
He brought the pillow back to her, standing next to her side of the bed in the dark and holding it out to her. “I don’t need it.”
“Keep it. Maybe it’ll make the floor a little less uncomfortable.”
“Wendy—” he growled.
“I’m trying to be noble.”
“Fine,” he snapped and went back to lie down.
It was wrong how pleased she was by the irritation in his voice. He may act as if he was completely indifferent to her, but she was still able to get under his skin. That shouldn’t make her happy. But it did.
A few minutes later, she fell asleep smiling. And woke up in the morning with the pillow under her head.
At eighteen, Jonathon had left Palo Verde with $5,168.36 in his checking account—all earmarked for living expenses. His only other possessions were a partial scholarship to Stanford, two suitcases, a desk lamp, a used laptop, a backpack and a veritable mountain of student loans. He’d hitched a ride from their hometown to the coast in Matt’s BMW. Jonathon hadn’t been back since.
Palo Verde was a small but historic town on the highway between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe. When he’d left in the mid-nineties, it was only just beginning to climb out of the economic slump that had cursed it since the gold rush ended more than a hundred years before. Now Sacramento had grown enough—and was expensive enough—for people to commute from Palo Verde. On a purely intellectual level, Jonathon supposed Palo Verde wasn’t such a bad place to live. The town had a certain charm to it. Not the sort that any teenage boy would appreciate, but surely plenty of people liked musty old buildings and the gently rolling foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains.