The Decoy Girlfriend by Lillie Vale

Author:Lillie Vale [Vale, Lillie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2022-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

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Taft catches the tail end of Freya’s conversation when he returns home. He knew about the writing sprints and made sure to leave the house for a few hours to give her privacy. As he kicks off his shoes and puts away Hen’s leash, his lips quirk into a smile.

“Books over boys” is such a Freya thing to say, he thinks fondly as Hen trots off to greet her. Her stacks of books have started to cover most of the surfaces in his living room, bookmarked with envelopes filled with her looping scrawl. No scrap of paper is safe.

He rather adores his charmingly frugal pack rat of a roommate.

Roommate. The word sticks in his craw, ill-fitting and not the way he sees her at all, despite his best efforts. Taft’s mouth twists. But that’s all she can be. His rules had made sure of that.

And he’s regretted it every minute since.

Before, he might have jokingly announced, “Honey, I’m home!” The words still find their way to his tongue. He stuffs them back down his throat. Nope, not happening.

It’s nowhere as easy to ignore how he feels about her, though. Especially when the evidence is everywhere. His eyes skip over the writerly paraphernalia: the mood-setting licorice-and-lavender soy candle, the motivational word count tracker filled with gold stars for every one-thousand milestone reached, and a nearly empty pack of Haribo gummy bears. She’s saved all the green ones . . . for him?

Finally, his gaze settles on the moss-and-magenta-striped blanket Freya wraps around her shoulders on cool mornings, neatly folded over the arm of the couch. It was the last thing her mom ever crocheted, and it tugs at Taft’s heart that it’s the only way Freya can be hugged by Anjali Lal now.

“I’m back!” he calls out, following her voice to the kitchen.

Freya’s sitting at the table, chin propped on her raised knee, looking thoughtful. When he enters, she looks up from her laptop with a welcoming smile. “Hey. Good walk? You were gone a long time.”

Her smile hits him like a sucker punch. It’s a hell of a lot better than the tentative ones they’ve been exchanging post-rules. Taft can resist a lot of things but not the temptation that is Freya Lal. He dares any human to try. Didn’t even need all ten things in the ten-secret game to fall for her—hard.

“Yeah, we had fun. Hen introduced himself to everyone we met, including one very brave squirrel,” Taft says, forcing a laugh as he crosses to the sink to rinse out his reusable Gatorade squeeze bottle.

Guilt cramps his stomach when he realizes these are the first words they’ve exchanged today. The last few days he’s been starting the coffee for Freya, then slipping out the door for a crack-of-dawn run, returning rosy and sweaty only when he knows she’ll be deep in her writing.

But not even all those miles can put distance between how he feels about her.

Not now that he knows exactly what his sheets smell like when she’s slept on them.

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