I Said We Could Give It a Try

Chapter 1

To my elders, I was the perfect daughter.

To men, I was the safe, sensible choice.

After years of playing the field, my childhood sweetheart finally decided no one gave him less trouble than I did. So he came back and asked if I would consider marrying him.

I said we could give it a try.

When the woman he’d never gotten over married someone else, Julian Hartwell came to me, heartbroken, and asked if I would consider marrying him.

I said we could give it a try.

Then there was Adrian Cross, my ex-boyfriend, who was struggling to suppress his forbidden feelings for his sister-in-law. He came to me and asked if I would consider marrying him.

I said we could give it a try.

By the time I finished work that evening and dragged my exhausted body home, I was running on fumes.

The moment I opened the door, the rich aroma of dinner washed over me. Warm amber light filled the house.

Ethan Carter emerged from the kitchen carrying the last dish, a lollipop dangling carelessly between his lips.

“Perfect timing,” he drawled. “Come eat.”

“You’ve been swamped lately. Did you remember to have lunch at work?” As he spoke, he poured me a glass of warm water. Then he took my coat and hung it up before neatly arranging the shoes I would wear the next morning.

Ethan had a slight obsession with order and cleanliness.

Ever since he moved in, the house had remained spotless, with everything exactly where it belonged.

He had moved into the house next door a year earlier. At first, he claimed it would be convenient for us to look out for each other as neighbors.

Then one day, out of nowhere, he suggested that we try dating with marriage in mind.

I had only been working for a few years after graduate school, but thirty was already looming. My parents had begun pressuring me to settle down, arranging introductions and bringing up marriage at every opportunity.

Ethan had probably noticed, which was why he made the offer.

We had grown up together.

Unlike me, obedient and well-behaved from childhood, Ethan had always been rebellious and impossible to tame. He drew attention wherever he went. As an adult, he became even more uninhibited, moving from one girlfriend to the next and living a wonderfully colorful life.

I asked him why he had suddenly decided he wanted to get married—and why he had chosen me.

Ethan looked straight at me, his expression unusually serious.

“After everything and everyone, I realized we’re the best match.”

Who did he think he was fooling?

More likely, he had finally grown tired of playing around and decided I was the least troublesome option. He wanted the dependable woman to pick up where all the excitement had left off.

I had spent my entire life following the path my parents laid out for me, one careful step at a time.

Chapter 2

When we were children, the adults constantly compared Ethan to me. He had hated me for it, convinced that my obedience was all an act and that beneath it, I was just as false as everyone else.

Now he had either had his fill of fun or grown sick of his own family pressuring him to marry. Only then had he remembered me.

Believing in a reformed playboy made about as much sense as believing I could become queen.

Still, I didn’t reject his suggestion that we “give it a try.”

For one thing, having him around gave me a buffer against my family’s relentless matchmaking.

For another, I was curious to find out what being with a notorious playboy was actually like.

I reviewed Ethan’s health screening report. Everything came back clean.

The night I received the results, I verified his condition personally.

Compared with the men I had been with before, he was both inexperienced and impulsive. I could tell he was trying desperately to prove he deserved his reputation as an expert with women.

Honestly, his performance was mediocre.

If he hadn’t been so naturally gifted, his technique would have been downright terrible.

After that, Ethan simply stayed.

He took care of the laundry, cooked our meals, cleaned the house, and kept everything organized.

I found the contradiction entertaining.

Somehow, the notorious playboy and the perfect stay-at-home husband existed in the same man.

Ethan often said I was the first woman he’d ever gone to so much trouble to take care of.

Usually, girls were the ones falling all over themselves for him.

I could tell.

The morning after we first slept together, I picked up his phone by mistake. As luck would have it, we used the same passcode.

I’d used 6666 for as long as I’d owned a phone. Simple, easy to remember, impossible to get wrong.

Muscle memory unlocked the screen before I realized my mistake. The moment it opened, I was greeted by a sea of red notification badges.

His message threads were filled with profile pictures of beautiful women. Every last one of them was either sending him a good-morning text or asking him out.

For a moment, I had the strange impression that I’d slept with an exceptionally busy male escort.

Though, admittedly, the thought had crossed my mind before.

After one night with him, most of my interest faded.

For the year or so that followed, I stayed with Ethan less because I wanted him than because I enjoyed the convenience he provided. He spared me the trouble of finding another housekeeper who suited me.

After all, a housekeeper cost money.

Ethan didn’t.

Ethan chatted beside me about the minor details of his day.

As usual, I let my mind drift while I ate dinner and allowed myself to unwind.

Then he tapped the edge of my plate.

I looked up and met his faintly irritated gaze.

“Claire, are you even listening to me?”

Chapter 3

“Of course. Go on.”

Another perfunctory answer.

After more than a year together, Ethan should have been used to them. Even so, every time I brushed him off, anger flared in his eyes before he forced it back down.

I hated arguments. Work kept me busy enough, and I had no interest in wasting energy on things that didn’t matter.

Whenever we fought, I usually turned and walked away, leaving him alone to deal with his feelings. I only came back after he swallowed his pride and apologized.

After enough rounds of the silent treatment, Ethan had learned to rein in his temper.

He took a moment to compose himself. “We’ve been together this long. What exactly are you planning to do about marriage?”

“I know your parents have been pressuring you too.”

They had.

They were pressuring me to find someone else suitable.

My parents had never approved of Ethan. That was something both families understood without needing to say it aloud.

When I first brought him home as a buffer against their attempts to set me up, the Carter family had gone quiet.

Mine had erupted.

Neither family thought Ethan was good enough for me. His reputation preceded him, and nothing about the notorious playboy suggested he could settle down and build a stable life.

No matter how hard Ethan had tried over the past year, my parents had remained cold toward him.

Whenever he complained, I told him to be patient.

“What do you expect me to do? They’re my parents. Am I supposed to destroy my relationship with them for you?”

“If you hadn’t ruined your own reputation, they wouldn’t see you this way.”

Ethan had no answer to that.

So I gave him the same excuse I always did. “My parents don’t approve of us.”

In the past, he would have swallowed his resentment. He’d sulk for a while, then find some new way to seduce me, using physical intimacy to reassure himself that I still wanted him.

This time, however, he clearly wasn’t going to let it go.

“How much longer are you going to drag this out?” Ethan asked. “Claire, I’ve done everything I can. Can’t you fight for us, just once?”

He hated how calm and obedient I looked.

To him, my composure meant indifference. It meant I didn’t care about him or anything he had done.

He probably thought I was the perfect daughter, blindly obeying my parents because I didn’t know how to defy them.

But the truth was much simpler.

Ethan wasn’t worth fighting for.

Did he honestly expect me to take responsibility for a reformed playboy with a past like his?

I might have been patient, but I wasn’t stupid.

I shot back, “Even if I fought for us, how much would that change the way they see you?”

“Everything they know about your past is true, isn’t it?”

“But I’ve changed!” Ethan protested. “I was young and stupid back then. I know better now.”

“Everyone was young once,” I said. “How did you manage to be so ‘stupid’ that even my parents can’t stand the thought of you?”

There was no salvaging dinner after that.