Not the Girl You Marry Read online

  Because she was.

  It was all he could do to stop himself when she wound her fingers through his hair and rode his face. He did a swirly thing with his tongue until she made a keening sound combined with words that didn’t make sense. He kept going until he’d completed his mission and she came all over his face, nearly pulling his hair out at the ends.

  He rose onto his knees and pulled her dress down, a mirrored sense of satisfaction melting through his chest. She had her forearm blocking her eyes, but he wished that she would look at him. He didn’t deserve them, but he wanted her eyes.

  Looking at her kiss-swollen lips and flushed skin, he couldn’t help wanting more from her. His libido was certainly on board with that idea, but he had to draw a line somewhere. After all this was over and she found out that he’d lied to her, he wouldn’t be able to live with the guilt of taking pleasure from her if it was based on a lie.

  Over the next two weeks, he would probably wear the skin off his dick from jerking it, but he wasn’t about to be that guy. He’d have to seem like that guy for the article, but he wasn’t going to take advantage of her.

  That was the only way that maybe she’d give him a real shot at being her real-life boyfriend at the end of this. If he let her use him for this whole two weeks, maybe he’d have a chance of convincing her that he wasn’t a totally morally bankrupt asshole and that she could give him a shot.

  In the time that it took her to recover and look at him, he’d made the decision that he wouldn’t get his rocks off with Hannah until this whole farce was over. Immediately, she tested that determination when she reached for his belt. Knowing that he would break his promise to himself and to future Hannah who might want to be in a relationship with him, he twisted out of her grasp and off of the couch so quickly that he knocked into the coffee table and spilled both of their drinks.

  “Shit!” He yelled louder than he intended to. His brother had made the coffee table for him out of old railroad ties, and he would get a hard glare the next time Michael came over if there were watermarks on the wood.

  “I’m so sorry!” Hannah sounded horrified, and he immediately felt like a huge asshole. Even through her hard-ass exterior, he’d read some vulnerability in her wariness. She just seemed like someone very accustomed to calibrating her behavior to a situation. Even though he was using her for a story, he needed to find some way to be careful of her feelings. He had to make her realize that whatever he did to her to get her to break up with him was because of his damage, not hers.

  They both rushed toward the kitchen, but he grabbed the paper towels and kept them away from her. “Not your fault, Duchess.”

  “Sure. Right.” Didn’t sound like she believed him.

  He cleaned up the spilled liquor and righted the glasses before straightening. Hannah stood on the other side of the couch, worrying her bottom lip, and she made his heart skip. He hated that she felt bad, and he couldn’t seem to stop wanting to make things right for her.

  Part of him just wanted to tell her right now, the whole story. But he stopped himself. He’d spent his entire adult life trying to make things right for the women in his life. If he was honest with himself, he’d been trying to make things right for the women in his life since long before his mom left to follow her bliss.

  And it had never worked. He’d been walking on eggshells with every woman he’d ever dated, and they always still walked away. Being the best guy they’d ever dated had never kept them from walking away from him and following their bliss. Bliss always won out, and he’d never been anyone’s bliss.

  No matter what he did to make Hannah happy, anything they had would be temporary. He’d be the great, solid boyfriend she deigned to be with until something more fun and shiny happened along. He would throw his whole being into giving her everything he could, and it would never be enough.

  So he could throw away a chance to finally make his career happen. If he could get into the game of real journalism, maybe he wouldn’t need to put so much effort into relationships. Perhaps he’d be the kind of shiny, exciting guy who didn’t have to be the perfect boyfriend in order to get a woman interested in him.

  “I had a lot of fun tonight,” she said.

  He had, too. He didn’t want to end it here, but he couldn’t guarantee he’d be able to resist if she went in for his fly again. “Let me get your coat.”

  “You sure you want me to leave?” She looked down at the front of his pants with a pouty look on her face.

  He painted a smirk onto his mouth. It took a little effort, but he needed practice in the whole being-a-callous-dickstick department. Coming up with a fast, believable lie wasn’t really his forte. “Yeah, I have an early-morning meeting tomorrow.”

  He grabbed her coat from the rack by the door and helped her into it. Hey, some habits couldn’t be unlearned. She had the fall of her hair over one shoulder, and the skin on the back of her neck proved to be way too tempting.

  After laying a peck on that soft stretch of skin, he said, “Sleep well,” knowing that there was no way that he was going to be able to sleep tonight without a long, cold shower.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE CLOSEST TO YOGA that Sasha ever got was SoulCycle, but Hannah’s best friend had a mantra. Since college, whenever Hannah had a wild hair up her ass to do something crazy, which was often, Sasha said, “I’m not judging you, but are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  It usually made Hannah pause for at least a moment to reconsider.

  As they mounted their stationary bikes at cycling class the next day, Sasha squinted at her as though she were a steely-eyed detective in a procedural drama winding up to interrogate a suspect. Hannah only hoped that she kept the I-just-had-the-best-orgasm-of-my-life glow to a minimum after her fitful night’s sleep.

  Luckily, her roommate had already been asleep when she’d arrived home. The debriefing she’d been spared the night before and pre-caffeine was apparently going to happen right before cycling class.

  “You had sex with him, didn’t you?” What the hell!? Does Sasha have orgasm radar or something?

  Her face heated, and she thanked whatever asshole decided that putting spinning in the dark would make it a whole new, very trendy thing. Her mental gears locked for a moment, as she wondered how she could answer this without revealing how intimate she and Jack had actually gotten.

  Finally, after the clock in her head resumed its ticking, she said, “He did not put his penis in my vagina.” She hoped that sounded as confident as she was trying to make it seem.

  After looking around to make sure that the other early-morning exercisers were not listening, Sasha quietly asked, “Finger stuff or mouth stuff?”

  “Both.” She could not be dishonest with her best friend, as much as it would help her seem more serious about this whole process.

  Sasha pursed her lips slightly. “Well, was it at least good?”

  Hannah let everything go at that point—the false confidence and the illusion that what had happened with Jack had not affected her. “It was so good that if he ghosts me after last night, and I see him months or years from now, I will give him the roundhouse high five from the homoerotic volleyball scene in Top Gun.”

  “That good?” Her best friend’s eyes widened as though she’d never heard of sex that good before.

  Hannah nodded.

  “Like top and bottom fives?” She mimicked the motion of the high five in question.

  “Top and bottom.”

  Sasha turned and clipped her shoes into her bike before responding. “Shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  Luckily, she was saved from spilling her guts further when the instructor walked in. It was “It’s Britney, Bitch” day in class, so she was hoping that she could lose herself in the lyrics and pulsing beats. As many times as she’d replayed the events of the date over in her head, she couldn’t figure out
where she’d gone wrong.

  As soon as he’d made her come, it was like he hadn’t been able to get her out of his apartment fast enough. She’d been primed and ready to return the favor—her promise to Sasha that she wouldn’t screw him on the first date be damned.

  But he hadn’t wanted her. Throughout the warm-up song, that thought rang through her brain, and it elevated her heart rate more than the movement of her legs. For part of last night, she’d thought that it was going to be easy to string him along for two weeks. But her attraction to him, and his reticence, complicated things. She wished she could read his mind and know exactly what he was thinking.

  Maybe he’d realized that he really had a problem with pubic hair like midway through the act, and been totally turned off. The bulge in the front of his slacks told her that that wasn’t the case, but what did she know?

  Through the first set of hills, she puzzled over whether he had some weird thing about sex. One of Noah’s many, many problems with her had been how much she’d liked sex—how much she’d needed it to feel like they were connecting. Combined with his strict religious upbringing and generally conservative attitudes, her wanting to jump him had been anathema to him.

  In most ways, Jack seemed like a totally different kind of guy. But maybe he was suffering from some Catholic shame. She wasn’t going to feel bad about what they’d done last night. He’d offered, after all. Granted, he didn’t know she’d been coming off a long drought, so he may have gotten more than he bargained for. But she’d have been just as eager to take what he was offering regardless.

  This all went to why dating Jack was such a bad idea. He was way too smart, and she had the feeling that he saw things about people that people didn’t want him to see. He could probably tell that she had ulterior motives for dating him. And that was what she had to think about instead of how good touching him and kissing him had felt. As soon as “Oops! . . . I Did It Again” came blaring through the speakers, she remembered why she didn’t do this anymore.

  On her own, she didn’t have to think about anyone else or worry about what they thought of her. What she needed and wanted was between her and her small but worthy collection of sex toys and porn GIFs. Bringing someone else into it, opening up to him, was a huge mistake. It didn’t matter that he was handsome, or that she liked the way he smelled, and he was a veritable savant at eating pussy.

  As she sprinted through “Toxic,” she realized what she needed to do to get through the next few weeks with a fake boyfriend and a promotion. Even though Jack seemed different, she had to remember that he was operating off the same fumes of toxic masculinity that wafted through every bit of this relationship shit. He might appear to be a good guy, but she didn’t really know him. If she allowed for the possibility of his charm—the general sense that he was a lovely human—to be real, she would be lost.

  She’d end up locked in her room again, eating cold Pop-Tarts and crying about the fact that she would definitely, for sure, die alone. And that was unacceptable. There was no way that one date—no matter how good—was going to knock her off track. She was going to kick ass, take names, and become the most sought-after event planner in Chicago.

  Even if she killed the possibility of a fulfilling relationship with Jack to do it. They could never work out anyway. She just didn’t have what it took to do relationships. And she’d accepted that.

  She had.

  By the time she climbed off the bike with wobbly legs, she felt . . . not exactly better. But more like herself again. The ache in her chest spread out to her well-used limbs. The echo of pleasure from having Jack between her legs the night before had dissipated.

  Sasha must have seen the shift, too. As shitty as she was about seeing how guys were always going to screw her over, her best friend was perceptive. Because Hannah wasn’t always great about sharing how she felt, intuition was an essential quality in her best friend.

  “You feel better?”

  “Much.” Even though this was a lie, she couldn’t tell her friend that she wasn’t exactly accurate. Before sweating out her complex feelings about Jack, she’d been like a puzzle with a few pieces askew. Right now, she felt like the pieces had been clicked into place but the other ones were missing.

  Thankfully, Sasha didn’t pick up on the intricacies of her inner workings right then. “Mimosas?”

  “Like a thousand of them should do the trick.”

  * * *

  —

  JACK PLAYED BASKETBALL WITH Chris, Joey, and Father Patrick Dooley—otherwise known as Chris’s much less idiotic older brother—every Saturday morning on the courts outside of the church they’d all attended as children. Unlike when they were pip-squeaks, Jack, Chris, and Joey didn’t return to the church on Sunday morning unless it was Easter or Christmas. Pat was kind of required to be there for every Mass—given that he was the parish priest and all.

  Patrick was sort of the conscience of the group, and Chris’s Irish twin at thirteen months his senior. Although he’d participated in his share of the tomfoolery they’d gotten themselves up to in their adolescence—petty acts of vandalism and minor shoplifting—he was always the first to fess up and take the punishment. Although he’d never mentioned wanting to become a priest while they were suffering through catechism classes, the role sort of fit his slightly older friend.

  Still, at times, Jack felt his buddy’s conflict about his calling as though it were a palpable thing. Back in college, Patrick had been a hard-partying ladies’ man. With his black-Irish good looks and one dimpled cheek, Patrick hadn’t had to work that hard to blow up skirts all over the Loyola Chicago campus. The few times Jack had visited his buddy in the dorms, it had been clear to him that Patrick had a reputation as a big man on campus—in more ways than one.

  The shock of his mother’s death had changed Patrick, though. Where Chris had grieved and clung to Bridget, Patrick had drawn into himself and become much more serious. His once-easy smiles had become hard-won and rare. Jack had worried about his older friend. Doubly so with his sudden calling to the priesthood.

  Patrick threw the ball at Jack’s chest with more force than necessary and said, “Check.”

  Jack caught the ball and started dribbling up the court, Patrick on his tail. “Kind of harsh, Father.”

  Arms in the air, trying to block Jack’s options for passing to Joey, Patrick replied, “My idiot brother tells me you met a girl. Again.”

  Because of his role as conscience and confessor, Patrick knew all about the fact that he’d sworn off dating for a while. Jack had come to the conclusion after sharing some very fine scotch he’d gotten while doing a “How to Drink Scotch and Not Look Like a Pretentious Idiot” story. Hell, Patrick might have suggested his hiatus.

  Jack shot a glare at Chris and used the opportunity to fake out Patrick and dish a no-look pass to Joey. For once, Joey didn’t have a thumb up his ass and got the layup.

  Joey and Chris went to midcourt, and Jack looked back at his friend the priest. “It’s for a story.”

  “Chris told me that part, too.” Patrick’s forehead crinkled in pastoral concern. “It seems kind of mean.”

  Patrick’s previous way with women was one of the many reasons Jack had always looked up to him. Even though he’d dated up a storm through sophomore year, he’d never left a woman angry with him. He was still friends with most of his exes—perhaps because he’d left them behind for God rather than another girl.

  That was why Jack hadn’t been about to tell him about this assignment. Or Hannah and his very inconvenient feelings for her. This whole thing had every indication that it would blow up in his face. And leave Hannah hurt and even more bitter about men.

  Jack sighed, frustration building. He wasn’t sure if it was with himself or with his anthropomorphic conscience beating up on him about as hard as he’d been beating up on himself. After Hannah had left the night before, he’d planne
d to spend some quality time in the shower with his right hand. But his enthusiasm for the endeavor had deflated as soon as Hannah’s disappointment and confusion had registered in his brain.

  He wasn’t sure he was cut out for this whole losing-a-girl-on-purpose thing. Even though he’d been decided and determined to follow through the night before, doubts dragged on him. Now, looking at Patrick and his rolled-up forehead, he was thinking that it was simply his Catholic guilt getting the best of him.

  “I have to do it, Patrick.” He looked over at Chris and Joey, who were dodging their morning workout by standing around and talking shit—the usual—to make sure they weren’t paying attention to this conversation. They were the guys to go to when he wanted to crush a few beers, not the kind he wanted to have a heart-to-heart with. “It’s the only way I’m going to get to cover politics for the magazine.”

  Patrick knew how much Jack wanted to get off the how-to beat, how much he needed to carve out his own place in the world. That was what made this so hard. By going through with the story, he felt as though he was finally making the right choice with respect to girl versus career.

  And his friend must have seen the conflict on his face because he smiled and said, “Let’s get back to this game. I need to win so you have to buy the beer.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  JACK OPENED HIS NOTES app and titled a new document: “How to Lose Hannah.” And then he looked at Chris and waited for him to tell him how to mess up a relationship. Being a perfectly decent but boring guy was Jack’s only move when it came to losing girlfriends, and that was really more of a long game. He needed to get out of this thing with Hannah fast if he hoped to file his article on time.

  “You have to send her a dick pic.” Chris was probably right, but that was way further down the line. Patrick had left a little while ago—church emergency—so they were free to brainstorm about this shit. “Or, if she tells you that she feels fat or bloated, write out an exercise and diet plan for her.”