The Imperfections: A Forbidden Romance

by Sam Mariano

  “You’re not going to lock my clothes away again, are you?” she asks as she folds the dress so it doesn’t wrinkle.

  “Are you my prisoner?”

  “I don’t know,” she mutters, carrying the folded garment over and putting it on top of my locked chest. “Am I?”

  “Probably should be after what you pulled back there.”

  Instead of digging in, her cheeks turn a deeper shade of pink and she avoids looking at me. “I’m sorry. I was mad at you, but I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Accused me of fathering a child that was conceived before I even met you? No, I don’t suppose you should have done that.”

  “We can still undo it,” she says, finally meeting my gaze. “She knows I was there on a date with someone else, so we can tell her I didn’t appreciate being treated like a hook-up and I only said that to scare you, for some kind of revenge. Make it sound like I was being spiteful.”

  “You were being spiteful.”

  “Well, you should stop talking about me like dating me would be the worst thing in the world,” she snaps back. “If you didn’t keep hurting my feelings, I wouldn’t get so mad at you.”

  “Getting mad at me is one thing. Angrily blurting things to Bri is another.” Walking over to her side of the bed, I hold her gaze and tell her, “I don’t think I have to remind you that’s exactly what I showed up in your house that first night to prevent.”

  Wariness in her gaze, she takes a small step back. “No, you don’t have to remind me.”

  “Doesn’t matter how mad you get, Alyssa—you have to keep your mouth shut about things Bri can’t know. That’s the whole gist of our arrangement. You only continue to draw breath because I thought I could trust you to do that.”

  She dims a little, but I don’t know which part it’s in response to—the reminder that I’m capable of taking a life, or the thought of me not trusting her anymore.

  I want to know. It shouldn’t even matter to me right now what her opinion of me is because she just proved herself more dangerous than I’ve thought she had the capacity to be since I brought her here the first time, but now I’m tangled up. Now I’m not as singularly focused on making sure she can’t make any more trouble as I was that first night—now I also care about her. Now I also want to know how she feels about me.

  That’s bad. I know that’s bad. I don’t need sharp instincts to surmise that much. That gives her power over me she shouldn’t have, and even though I don’t think she meant to, she just gave herself a little more when she told my sister she’s carrying my goddamn baby.

  Nothing about this can be clean now.

  Deep down in the most ruthless pit of my gut, the thought surfaces that I made a mistake letting her live that first night. I could’ve finished it all right then and no one would’ve been able to tie me to it.

  Now things are different. It’s not just my liking of the girl and my reluctance to hurt her; other people are involved. Bri, Dirk—two people right there know there’s something between us now, and that’s assuming Alyssa hasn’t also told her sister, maybe even her mom. Hell, for all I know she’s mentioned me to her niece or nephew. Bri could tell Theo, even though I told her not to. Dirk could even now be talking to his friends or guys he works with in the kitchen, telling them I interrupted his date and stole Alyssa away.

  My prints are everywhere now.

  Even if it seemed like the best option at this point, I can’t kill her and get away with it now. I gave her too much leeway, let her go back to her life when I made up my mind not to hurt her. Now I can’t change my mind even if she changes hers.

  This is why I don’t like to fucking trust people. People are so goddamn unreliable.

  She doesn’t know any of this, though. She doesn’t think the way I do, doesn’t know my hands are tied and I can’t hurt her now even if I want to. She got into my truck tonight thinking I might be back to wanting to kill her, and she did it because I threatened to permanently remove myself from her life.

  I do still have some control over this, over her. It’s her affection for me. She still has some, or she wouldn’t have been moved by a threat like that.

  Knowing that, I move to eliminate the distance she put between us. I reach around to the small of her back and pull her body against mine. She inhales sharply and brings her hands up to rest on my shoulders, then she looks up at me with remorse shining in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Brant. I don’t want you to think you can’t trust me.”

  Her words soothe part of my concerns. “And I don’t want you to think I look at being with you like the worst thing in the world.”

  She averts her gaze. “You make it seem that way sometimes.”

  “Well, I won’t anymore,” I promise.

  “Because you’re gonna kill me and dump my body in the lake, or…?”

  My lips curve up ever so slightly. “I hope not. The way I see it, we’ve got three options going forward.”

  Her eyes widen slightly, her attention rapt. “What are they?”

  “Option one, you can keep being pissy and spiteful and running your mouth, saying things you shouldn’t. Obviously, this option means I have to kill you and toss your body in the lake.”

  Alyssa wrinkles up her nose in disapproval. “I’m not a fan of option one. What else have you got for me?”

  “Option two, we can tell Bri you were lying about me being the father because you were being a little brat, but while in the short-term this seems okay, this is actually a bad option. This option means Bri starts trusting you a little less, maybe seeing a side of you she didn’t see before. This option means as time goes on, maybe Bri starts noticing things now that she’s looking, and maybe down the road she finds out about you and Theo, finds out the baby’s his… Your baby would have a chance to be born beforehand, but this option also has a lot of potential for you ending up at the bottom of the lake.”

  Her frown deepens. “That’s disappointing. I was hoping only option one ended up with me in the lake. I’m starting to get really concerned about option three.”

  “Option three does not end with you in the lake, unless you throw yourself there,” I assure her.

  Her frown eases. “Oh, good. Let’s go with option three, then.”

  I cock an eyebrow at her. “You haven’t even heard what it is.”

  “Doesn’t matter, does it? It’s the only one left, and the only one that doesn’t make me fish food. I’m going with door number three.”

  Tightening my arms around her so her body’s fitted snugly against mine, I look down at her. “Option three isn’t easy, either. Option three is going to mean living a lie like it’s the truth. I’m not opposed to that because I think it’s the only way any of this can happen, but that’s what it’ll mean, and not everyone can pull off a large-scale, long-term deception. Can you lie?”

  “I don’t like to lie, but if it means sparing someone from being hurt, I think so,” she tells me.

  “Now, while it’s gonna mean lying to other people, option three only works if I can trust you completely. I’m talking 100 percent trust. Trust you with my life kind of trust.”

  Nodding vehemently, she says, “You can. I promise, nothing like what happened back at the fair will happen again.”

  “That’s not the only way I mean.”

  Her frown makes a reappearance. “How else do you mean?”

  “I’m not the kind of man you commit to and then change your mind about,” I warn her. “You and I are in different stages of life. You’re young. You’ve still got a lot of growing up to do. I don’t mind that, as long as you grow with me instead of away from me, but if you grow way from me, we’re gonna have a problem. I am not a temporary fix to your problems. I take my commitments seriously, and I expect the same out of you. By this point in my life, I didn’t intend on ever getting married, but you better be clear that if I do, I’m damn sure not getting divorced.”

  “Married?” she asks, having the gall to look taken aback.


  “Don’t act surprised. I may have been drunk at the time, but I told you what would happen if we led my family to believe that baby you’re carrying belongs to me.”

  The pitch of her voice rising a little, she argues, “Well, yeah, but we were going to date for a while first to make sure we’d be a good fit.”

  I nod patiently. “Yes, we were. But you took that out of my hands, didn’t you? Now it’s done. If that baby’s mine, you’re gonna marry me.”

  “But the baby’s not really yours.”

  “It is now.”

  Wide-eyed, she takes a breath and lets it out. “Wow. You move fast. From not even willing to date me to… let’s get married and have a baby together.”

  “Dating can end. Marriage can’t,” I explain.

  “I mean, it can.”

  “Not marriage to me,” I warn.

  Since she’s absolutely batshit crazy, a faint smile tugs at her pretty little lips. “Otherwise, fish food?”

  I shake my head. “Not you, but anyone you try to leave me for, absolutely.”

  “That’s kinda hot,” she tells me, dipping forward and brushing her lips against my shoulder.

  Affection for this crazy little shit wells up inside me, and I can’t help smiling as I look down at her. “Yeah?”

  “Mm-hmm,” she verifies, kissing my chest then looking up at me, all innocent. “I could get used to having a husband who says such sexy things.”

  “Long as you understand he means ’em,” I tell her, absently caressing the curve of her lower back. “Lot of men might talk a big game, but I’m not just talking.”

  “Oh, I don’t doubt you,” she assures me, looking faintly amused.

  A moment passes, me holding her, her seeming so comfortable in my embrace despite all the reasons she has not to be.

  A thought crosses my mind: I sure am lucky to have found such a perfectly misshapen human being. I don’t like all the things she experienced that made her the way she is, but I sure do like how she turned out.

  “You should move in,” I say suddenly, breaking the companionable silence.

  Her eyebrows rise and she looks up at me. “Yeah?”

  I nod. “Might as well. I’d rather get married sooner than later, if it’s all the same to you.”

  Her voice lightly teasing, she points out, “I didn’t exactly say yes, you know.”

  “I didn’t exactly ask,” I remind her. “You’re marrying me now—that’s a fact. You don’t get a say in it.”

  Grinning, she locks her arms around my neck and pulls herself closer to me. “I really like you, you know that?”

  “You’d better,” I tease, giving her a little squeeze. “If my wife doesn’t like me, that’s bound to make marriage a little harder.”

  “Marriage,” she says, shaking her head slightly, as if overwhelmed by the word. “Definitely did not think I’d be getting engaged tonight.”

  Rolling my eyes, I tell her, “Well, of course not. You went out with fucking Dirk.”

  Rolling her eyes right back but with more good nature, she insists, “Dirk’s not a bad guy. I know you insist he’s an asshole, but I don’t think he is, and I have a good sense about these things.”

  “No, you do not,” I return, almost laughing at the idea of her saying a thing like that with a straight face. “You think I’m a good guy. I love you for it, but when it comes to men and what they’re worth, your judgment is shit.”

  The words tumble out of my mouth without thought, and I don’t even hear myself until her eyes widen and I replay what I said.

  Losing my humor, I feel my blood freeze in my veins. “I didn’t mean—”

  Nodding quickly, she tries to cut me off. “I know. It’s fine. I knew what you meant.”

  “It’s not that—I mean, obviously I like you a lot—”

  Grimacing, she removes a hand from around my neck to hold it up in a halting gesture. “Please, stop. You don’t have to explain. I didn’t think you meant it that way, and you’re just gonna make it weird.”

  “I just don’t want you to think—”

  “We’re getting married, so I hope we do love each other someday. When that day comes, we will look back at this and laugh, but in the meantime, you promised not to hurt my feelings with your stupid rejection anymore. If you insist on clarifying that you don’t love me—especially right on the heels of the worst marriage proposal of all time—I’m just…I’m going to cry.”

  I frown. “The worst marriage proposal of all time?”

  “It was less a proposal and more a demand,” she states, not unreasonably.

  She does have a point, I suppose. Pressing my lips together grimly, I look down at her. “You want me to ask?”

  Hiking up an eyebrow, she says, “Why? As you so audaciously informed me, I don’t really have a choice. It’s wedding bells or fish food, and we’ve already covered my opinion of fish, so I’m not about to sacrifice myself for the sake of their nutrition.”

  “Sure, but if you want the moment, we can pretend you have a choice.”

  Wrinkling her nose up and narrowing her eyes, she swats me on the shoulder with the back of her hand.

  Unfazed, I add, “I can even get down on one knee if you’d like. Of course, I don’t have a ring yet.”

  Alyssa rolls her eyes at me. “I don’t need a pretend proposal. I actually quite liked your marriage command, but as proposals go, it’s still a massive failure.”

  Tightening my arms around her, I tip my head to steal a kiss. “You like my commands, huh?”

  “Mm-hmm,” she murmurs, rising up on her tiptoes to kiss me back. “You’re lucky I’m into bullheaded, bossy men.”

  Tapping her on the edge of her little button nose, I tell her, “Actually, you’re lucky you’re into bullheaded, bossy men. I’d have sacrificed you to the fish a long time ago if you weren’t.”

  With an exaggerated pout and big eyes, she asks, “You wouldn’t really sacrifice me to the fish, would you?”

  “Nah.”

  She grins. “Good.”

  I grin back. “I’d bury you somewhere on my property, that way I could still visit you from time to time.”

  Her smile wanes and she offers me a decidedly unimpressed stare instead. “Really?”

  I nod. “Pack a picnic, bring Scout. We’d all have a good time. Well, maybe not you. Me and Scout would, though.”

  Alyssa shakes her head in disapproval. “That’s no way to talk to your wife, you know. You’re older than me, so I’m bound to outlive you. That means I get to decide what to do with you when the time comes. We’ll see how you like it when you’re fish food.”

  “You can feed me to the fish,” I tell her. “I’ll be dead—can’t imagine I’ll care much.”

  Alyssa frowns. “All right, that’s enough death talk. It’s funny when we talk about you murdering me because I know you really won’t. You really are older than me, and I don’t want to think about that.”

  It’s kind of sweet that it makes her grumpy to think about me dying. “Don’t worry,” I tell her, kissing the crown of her head absently. “I’m healthy as a horse. I might outlive you. You never know.”

  Before we abandon the topic of our own mortality altogether, Alyssa looks down and asks, “How are you planning to break the news to Theo? He thinks I already am fish food, so he’s probably going to be pretty surprised when I show up on your arm instead.”

  “I couldn’t give fewer fucks about Theo’s opinion of our relationship.”

  “I know,” she says, nodding, “but I think he’ll be really surprised I’m even alive, so maybe it would be better if you told him first? What if we blindside him in front of Bri and then his reaction is really suspicious because he’s not prepared for it?”

  “To be honest, I’m figuring Bri will tell him she saw you tonight, so he’s already gonna know you’re not dead.”

  “You told her not to, though.”

  “I did, but she’s not as good a listener as you are,” I offer b
ack lightly.

  Normally, she’d pick up the gauntlet and lob a light retort back at me, but something must be weighing on her mind, because she barely lifts her lips in a faint attempt at a smile. “Should we maybe talk about why Bri thought… what she thought?” she finishes after a brief hesitation.

  “That I’d hurt you?” I offer, my tone even. “She knows I’ve hurt people before. You knew that, too,” I remind her. “I told you the night we met.”

  “You did, but…” She trails off, looking up at me for help, but I don’t offer any. “I don’t know, it seemed different… scarier.”

  I watch her struggle to sort out all her thoughts and feelings about this. I plant my hands on her shoulders, then lightly drag my palms down her arms. “That’s because you knew you’d crossed me,” I say, bluntly. “Don’t do it again and you don’t need to worry about anything Bri was talking about.”

  Rather than accept my evasion and move on, she looks up at me and pries. “Who’s Nicole?”

  I keep my answer vague. “Someone I loved once. No one I want to talk about tonight.”

  She’s quiet for a moment, then she says, “If we’re going to build a life together, you shouldn’t keep things from me, even dark, ugly things. I need to know you inside and out, the warm and fuzzy sides and the dangerous sides, too. I’m not a fool, Brant. I know you’ve maybe done things that would make me shudder, but I need to know about them. If you… hurt someone you loved before, you need to tell me about it.”

  I know she’s right, but I’ve already opened up to her so much more tonight than I intended to. Maybe I didn’t vocalize all of it, maybe she doesn’t know how much more I’ve opened myself up to her than I have to anyone in years, but whether she knows or not, I did, and I can feel the aftermath of those efforts. The moments when I was afraid she’d seen too much and she’d reject me now—even if she didn’t know those moments happened for me, they still did.