Page 16 of Pretend
“At least I try,” Eric said, making her frown.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That you don’t date,” Eric pointed out, making her go still.
“We’re not talking about me,” Morgan reminded him.
“Maybe we should,” he said as Morgan narrowed her eyes on the large bastard that was trying to piss her off.
“You still haven’t told me why you left my bags behind,” Morgan said, hoping to distract him from all those things that she didn’t want him to know about.
“You know why,” Eric murmured, looking lost in thought as he reached over and gently swept a strand of hair behind her ear.
She did.
“I love my tee-shirts,” Morgan mumbled sadly, watching his lips twitch because they both knew that she was lying. They served a purpose, allowing her to hide away while she wallowed in self-pity.
“You hate them,” he said with a teasing smile as he pulled his hand away, the move causing his fingertips to brush against her cheek, making her swallow hard as she struggled to ignore just how good his touch felt.
She barely bit back the soft sigh of pleasure when his fingertips trailed down her jaw. She loved the way that he touched her, always had, and that…
That was the problem.
When they were little, she never hesitated in climbing onto his lap, grabbing hold of his hand and dragging him everywhere, or simply curling up on the couch with him to watch cartoons. Then, somewhere along the line, his touches went from warm and comforting to turning her into a nervous wreck. All he had to do was brush his fingertips against her skin and she forgot how to breathe.
She’d hoped that her reaction to him would diminish with time, but if anything, it only got worse. Now, all he had to do was look at her from across the room and she just-
“I don’t need you to take care of me, Eric,” Morgan said, cutting off that train of thought before it went somewhere that she’d resigned herself to living without, knowing that it was pointless.
“I like taking care of you,” Eric murmured softly with one of those looks that had her swallowing hard as she looked away.
“Why did you ask Amber to marry you?” she asked, hoping to change the subject since she really didn’t want to talk about this right now.
“Does it really matter?” Eric asked, trying to shrug it off.
“Yes.”
Sighing heavily, Eric admitted, “I honestly don’t know.”
“You were willing to spend the rest of your life with her and you don’t know?” Morgan asked, genuinely curious about why, out of all the women that Eric dated over the years, that he’d settled onher.
Amber was…
An absolute nightmare.
There honestly was no other way to describe the woman that went out of her way to be a bitch to her every chance she got. The first time that Eric introduced them, Amber pasted a sickly-sweet smile on her face as she wrapped her arms around Eric with a look that told Morgan that she knew exactly how she felt about him.
“I wanted something more in my life,” Eric admitted on a sigh as he rolled onto his back so that he could glare up at the ceiling.
“So, you were willing to settle?” Morgan asked, even though she knew that she should just let it go.
“I didn’t have a choice,” Eric said, slowly exhaling.
“Why not?” Morgan mumbled, closing her eyes as the exhaustion that she’d been battling all day slowly started to pull her under and-
“Because women only see me as a fuck buddy or a brother.”
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