Joe ate another bite of lasagna and then pointed at her with his empty fork. “I bet you were a model student.”
“That depends on who you ask.”
His eyebrows rose. “Okay, you’ve got to elaborate on that one.”
Fiona paused to sip her wine and gather her thoughts. “I used to call my older sister the Stepford Child. She was the kind of kid every parent dreamed of having: straight As, honor society, math club, band geek, never served a day of detention or got called to the principal’s office. She was one of those students who didn’t date, didn’t go to parties, didn’t smoke or drink or even curse.”
Joe paused, his fork halfway to his mouth. “Christ, was she grown in a lab?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Fiona replied. “I’m a few years younger, so when I hit high school and wanted to go out with my friends and have a boyfriend—you know, the normal stuff that most teenagers do—they didn’t know how to deal with me, because they’d expected me to behave just like her. Honestly, I thought I was fairly normal, but my mom acted like I was some sort of demon spawn.”
Joe snorted. “Did the cops ever come to your house looking for you?”
“No.”
“Then your parents got off easy. By the time I graduated from high school, my folks were on a first-name basis with half the beat cops in town. I wouldn’t be surprised if they all chipped in and had a block party when I enlisted.”
Fiona broke off a piece of bread and used it to sop up some of the sauce on her plate. “What did you do in the Navy?”
“I was a combat medic on a SEAL team.”
Her eyes widened. That explained why he was built like something fresh out of a fitness magazine. “Wow, I’m impressed. I’d ask about what kinds of missions you were on, but I suppose that’s classified, right?”
“Something like that.” He ate another bite of lasagna.
“Why did you leave?”
Another shrug. “It was time to move on, do something different.”
On the outside, he seemed relaxed and aloof, but she sensed an underlying tension lurking just beneath the surface.
“Did I touch on a sensitive subject?”
“Tangentially.”
She gave him a point for honesty. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude.”
“Don’t be. I served my country honorably. It wasn’t like I got kicked out or anything. But my reasons for leaving were…complicated.”
“Fair enough. We don’t need to know every little detail of each other’s lives, just enough to convince people we’re an actual couple.”
The ghost of a smile warmed his mouth. He drank the last of his wine, picked up the bottle, and filled his glass halfway. Then he brought the bottle to her almost-empty glass and filled it as well.
“Thank you.” As she reached for the glass, her gaze met his, and for a moment or so she lost herself in the warmth of his chocolate-brown eyes.
The sound of her phone buzzing to signal an incoming text broke the spell and made her jerk in her seat. She’d meant to switch it off before she came downstairs, but it must have slipped her mind.
“Do you need to answer that?” Joe asked.
“It’s probably Dennis.” To be sure, she got up, crossed to the phone, and checked the screen. Yep, it was him. She turned off the phone without reading the text and returned to her seat. “Sorry about that.”
He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “There’s nothing for you to be sorry about. It’s not like you can control when he’s going to call. If you don’t mind me asking, why did you stay with him for as long as you did?”
“I’ve thought about that a lot since I left.” She had the therapy bills to prove it. “When we first started dating, Dennis seemed like the perfect guy. He was sweet, and considerate, and he made me feel like I was the only thing that truly mattered in his life. It was intoxicating.
“But things changed when we moved in together. It was as if he didn’t feel the need to keep the mask in place anymore and his true personality began to seep out. It wasn’t all at once, though…just a little at a time. Over the course of a year and a half, he went from ‘You’re wearing that tonight?’ to ‘You’re not wearing that tonight, are you?’ Eventually, he felt confident enough to say, ‘You’re not wearing that tonight,’ and ‘No woman of mine is leaving the house dressed like that.’ The change was so subtle I barely even noticed it, kind of like the proverbial frog in the pot of water.
“In my gut, I knew something was wrong, but I kept telling myself that I was overreacting. But the escalations continued, from what I was wearing to who my friends were and who I associated with at work. If somebody called or sent me a text, he’d demand to know who it was and what they said. It got to the point where I felt like I was walking on eggshells all the time. The only time I felt happy was when I was at work, and as soon as I got in the car to drive home, I could feel the stress start to build.”
