by Elle Chance
Josh laughed. “Wonder why that part didn’t make it into his book. So you think I could win him over by bonding over hypothermia?”
“Maybe leave out the dairy calf part. And the crying yourself to sleep. But those are my favorite parts, just so you know. But I think he’ll appreciate a man who strikes out on his own.”
Josh’s grin was a little crooked. Weird, I hadn’t noticed that before. “I think that’s the most optimistic spin on that story that exists.”
I lowered my voice as though I was speaking confidentially. “I’m learning a thing or two from this person from Homesburg.”
“Oh, yeah?” Josh asked. God, I wanted to revel in being back to having him be fun and goofy. I wished we could stay in a bubble together forever.
“Your brother Cory,” I told him, keeping my voice light.
Josh laughed at me, outraged. But then he began humming along with a song on the radio, giving the article another final once over.
And I thought about the story he told me. I could imagine his big, dark eyes, his innocence, and bravery at running away to save his calf. And more than ever, I reminded myself that I didn’t want to drag Josh out of his happy life, into the spotlight where he’d have to look over his shoulder every day.
It wouldn’t be long before he’d have to run from me and everything I had to deal with. But I told myself until then that I could sink deeper into flirting with him. I wanted to take all of him I could get while I had Josh by my side.
JOSH
I WAS NERVOUS to see Sofie’s father for the second time. She had told me her father was feeling less sure about the treatment, and it was deep into the later parts of it. Mark had a couple more weeks out here before he’d find out what the next steps were. Or if it was working at all.
And I was sure an angry Mark Barlow would be as ornery as an itchy bull. And seeing his face as we walked into his little private suite in the hospital, I saw I was right.
“You’re late,” Mark said to Sofie as soon as she took off her coat. “And your brothers called to say they won’t be able to come up later this month. And I want to go outside.”
Sofie stiffened at the onslaught. “Lou and Tim aren’t coming up at the end of treatment? Seriously?” The anger in her voice matched her father’s well. She ran a hand stiffly through her hair.
“I don’t want to talk about it here. I want to go outside. I haven’t seen the sunlight in a week,” Mark said, his jaw working in his anger. “And this is on top of the speculation about you being up here. That’s why they’re not coming down they said. Don’t want to raise suspicions.”
Now, call me crazy, but I’d be having feelings like sadness if my adult sons said they wouldn’t be able to see me while I was in the hospital. But Mark Barlow had an alchemical ability to turn all emotions into anger, it seemed. And then use that anger to punch his problems in the face and make more money. Presumably.
“Well, Josh already took care of that. He wrote an article that links you two,” Sofie said placatingly. Her tone went icy as she mentioned Lou and Tim. “Josh can tell you about it while I have a chat with my brothers.”
“We’re doing it outside,” Mark said to me.
“He can technically go outside for a good while today,” Cheryl told me, then bundled Mark up far more than he wanted. She gave him a cigar pat-down as she went just in case. “You can go by the trees down at the do not let him smoke cigars.”
“Understood, ma’am,” I said. I began gingerly pushing Mark Barlow at the door with the article tucked under my arm.
“No cigars, no fun, and no torque,” Mark said to me over his shoulder. “How much do I have to pay you to push me at a decent damn pace?”
I had to stifle a laugh at that, handing him the article so I could get a better grip. To my dismay, Mark ripped through the article by the time we were out the front door.
“This is perfectly fine advertising copy,” Mark said.
He put the piece in a garbage can as we went by.
I stopped his chair, fished out the paper, and folded it up to put in my pocket. I turned to find Mark with his bulldog-like jaw turned up to catch some weak fall sun. He was taking big breaths of the crisp air. My annoyance at his assessment of me faded away. It was probably a good thing he’d read it outside, or else I’d never want to write again when he was done ripping me apart.
“Come on, we’re going to the trees,” Mark told me. He pointed helpfully to a few hundred yards away across a wide, green lawn. “You’re lucky to have an abundance of space out here that we have to trek across.”
“That’s the first time I’ve heard our beautiful countryside called space,” I told him wryly. I got us moving quickly, hoping that Mark would warm when we got to the water he wanted to see. “Most people are blown away by the trees in the fall.”
Mark huffed and only grumbled a few times at my speed, dexterity, and enthusiasm while pushing him. “Now, now, put me behind the trees,” he said, gesturing to where he wanted to go.
I hesitated. “Mark, please don’t tell me you snuck out a cigar.”
“All right, I won’t tell you, just get me over there,” Mark said. He untaped one from under the arm of his wheelchair. He gestured for me to come around the chair. “Now don’t tell me I have to pay you like I do all these orderlies.”
It really wasn’t hard to see that Sofie was Mark’s daughter. The times I’d seen her this stubborn had resulted in her hiring me to fake date her, release a story about it, and likely destroy her brother’s eardrums on the phone as we spoke. It was knowing I’d lose the fight that convinced me. More than the roll of cash that Mark pulled out even.
“You’re far too honorable. You won’t get ahead like that,” Mark said as he tucked the money away and then produced a book of matches. His hands were a little shaky but he determinedly bit off the end of the cigar and then got it lit. “I have to do this like an animal. I think the cigar cutter would get me busted.”
I just chuckled at that. I suddenly knew that Mark Barlow could have smuggled a cigar to the moon, much less a cigar cutter. “You ever think about why the Straubing Medical Center doesn’t have branded cigar cutters? It’d be good for business.”
“Don’t make that the start of some lecture. It’s not lung cancer, you know.” Mark puffed contentedly, releasing puffs of smoke with every exhale. “A man needs to feel like himself to get better.”
We settled our gaze on the pathetic little stream the trees lined. I could hear my dad muttering that it was pissing its way through the little rocks the way he used to when he’d walk us to a fishing hole as kids. I was learning better than to share anecdotes with Mark, which I clung to as a rare win with him. I meditated on how pissed Sofie would be when she realized that I’d let her father smoke.
“You enjoy writing advertising copy?” Mark said to me after a while.
It didn’t sound like a trap. But I’m a smiling fool, so I didn’t exactly trust my judgment when talking to Mark Barlow.
“I’m good at it. I enjoy doing a good job,” I said. I was trying to avoid calling the article on my brother’s business “copy.” Surely there was some medium ground between shameless selling and caring about the Homesburg Lodge.
“I need you to write my obituary.” Mark’s face was serious when I turned to him. He let the cigar smolder in one hand as he spoke. “I need you to sell people on who I was.”
That was the sound of a good opportunity falling into my lap. But there weren’t bylines on obituaries.
Oof, where to start with that. “I don’t know that I know you well enough, Mark. I mean, I know the broad strokes. Mark Barlow was a renowned entrepreneur — ”
“No, none of that. This needs to be about my kids. You have a pen, right?” he asked impatiently.
I pulled out the pen I carried and the article I’d brought he’d hated. “I need to sit on a bench for this.”
Mark sighed but let me push him close to a bench was in plain view of the hospital. He
refused to stop smoking. “Let them try to kick me out. They’re naming a whole floor after me when I die, anyway.”
I settled in to write on my thigh. “Mark Barlow died today. He flouted all hospital rules to continue to smoke when he was in treatment for cancer.”
Mark’s glare made me smile, which made his frown deeper. “No, but close. Mark Barlow died today a failure.”
Oh god, he was having a real crisis. I didn’t know how to handle shit like this. “Mark, I can’t help you self flagellate like that. You’re a great businessman. You’re a titan of finance.”
Mark waved off my kind words and finished another puff of the cigar. “You can put all that shit in there. And sure, it’s numeric. It’s technically true. But I’m failing my kids. My sons aren’t coming to visit me at the end of this treatment. I went wrong somewhere.” Mark puffed on the cigar for a long, angry minute. “And it’s not just because I left them all out of the will. We need to write the obituary and we figure out where I went wrong.”
For a long moment, the only sound was the creek trickling by behind Mark’s chair as he took large puffs off the cigar. Did he leave the kids out of the will? Did the brothers know? Did Sofie? How could they? I couldn’t imagine us writing an obituary that would let them forgive him. After spending time with Sofie I knew she wouldn’t be mad about the money. She’d be worse than angry — sad. Abandoned.
And we were on shaky ground already. I didn’t know how I could tell her about this without pushing further away from her than the article had already taken me.
“This is above my pay grade, Mark. I don’t think starting out as a failure is how you make this work.” I didn’t know how to comfort Mark in this, or how to approach it so he didn’t continue saying unkind things. “Is that what you want to advertise? Failure?”
Mark huffed at that, continuing to smoke contemplatively. “Fine, we write it after I survive this treatment. After a crisis of faith and mortality blah blah. Then how do you spin it so Mark Barlow doesn’t miss meeting his grandkids?” His gaze was sharp on me at that.
“You could probably just ask nicely about the grandkids,” I said uncomfortably. That was the danger of being a fake boyfriend. I had to field these questions. Maybe Sofie had told him we were thinking about it?
“You’re not proving to be super useful, Joshua Chase,” Mark told me.
“You’re difficult to work with. Or talk to. Or be around, Mark Barlow.”
Mark’s face creased in a grin. “Exactly, stuff like that. Put that in there.”
I felt like a jerk but jotted down some notes, anyway. I read it out to him as I wrote it down. “Mark Barlow died today a failure. He was hard to talk to and be around until a crisis of faith prompted by a cancer diagnosis. But that spurred him to —” I let the sentence marinate, waiting for Mark to finish it.
He was looking at me steadily. “In business, when I didn’t know how to do something, I hired an expert.” He continued stiffly. “So what do I do here?”
“His health urged him to hold his loved ones closer,” I said. I wrote it down when he nodded imperiously.
The going was slow, but we’d made some progress on this weird writing exercise. I was almost proud of it, even if it was weird and gloomy work.
“What are you two doing?” Sofie’s voice cracked when she tried to continue.
I turned to see Sofie glare at me with more venom than her father had ever managed. And I knew, without a doubt, that I’d done more to lose Sofie than Mark Barlow ever had. Even with her being left out of the will.
SOFIE
“ARE YOU WRITING an obituary down here?” I barely recognized my voice shaking with anger.
I had just spent most of an hour threatening Lou and Tom within an inch of their lives to come to the hospital. I offered to buy a helicopter for them if I had to. I could always sell my mother’s old flat. Anything to make sure my father had company.
“And you’re smoking? They can kick you out for this!” I said, my tone angry to my father. “I’m out in the middle of nowhere for you and you’re risking your life like this.”
My security team moved back up a bit in the peripheral of my vision.
Josh tried to interject, but I was furious. “No! You don’t get to talk about this at all. I asked you to show my father an article you wrote, not turn around and murder him. He needs to keep his positivity right now.”
“Cleo, really,” my father said, trying to placate me.
I rounded on him and he shrank a bit in his chair. When my gaze locked on the cigar, he made as though to hide it behind the wheelchair. I grabbed it and threw it toward the creek.
“And you! I just called your ungrateful sons and had to threaten them into coming to see you. I live in the middle of nowhere for you. And you smoke cigars with the boyfriend and plan to die.”
Instead of the anger I expected, my father just looked tired. I was yelling at an old man in a wheelchair. But I wasn’t wrong on this, not entirely.
“And you have nothing to say for yourself,” I continued, not waiting for him to say anything. “You remarried after my mother died. You ran off and gallivanted around the world when I was in college. It terrified me when you were in the Alps. You did that during my junior year finals week. I got perfect grades.” I was pacing in front of the two of them, in full lecture mode now. “But I continue to do everything for you. I live half an hour away so you don’t get lonely during the weeks during treatment. I throw my relationship to the wolves to keep your health a secret. And you decide now is the right time to lie down and die.”
My father had waited til I ran out of breath to speak. “Well, that’s not quite what we’re doing here. I’m sure you have even more you’re angry about —”
“Yes, I do,” I said, pulling myself to a stop. “And I’ve kept quiet about it for years. But today, I don’t want to hear anything you have to say. Lou called me everything but my name.”
My father looked at Josh, and I followed his gaze.
“And you! I trusted you. I brought you to meet my father and you go behind my back and help him pick out a casket. The treatment could work!”
“You think I don’t know that?” Josh asked, incredulous.
“And you let him smoke a cigar? What the hell, Josh?”
“I think we both know that no one lets your father do anything. I can see where you get it from,” Josh said, trying to control his temper. “This wasn’t my idea.”
“But you went along with it. You know my father doesn’t act in his own interests, and here you are anyway,” I said, quickly found my footing in this fight.
“I’m here for you, Sofie. And I came down here because you asked me to.” Josh left the paper he was writing on the bench as he stood to defend himself. “Everything I’ve done for the last month has been for you.”
“Kids, I don’t want to be the reason for a fight between you two,” my father said.
“Oh, now you want to be the peacekeeper? Now you’re taking the higher ground? You don’t even like Josh.”
My father straightened the blanket on his lap. “I didn’t give him a chance in the beginning, no. But he’s a perfectly adequate copywriter.”
“What damning praise,” I said, as I turned back to Josh. I punched a finger into his chest. “I trusted you to take care of my father while I had to deal with my brothers.”
Josh spread his arms and looked around. “I’m here, Sofie. I’m spending time with your father. Don’t tell me damning praise isn’t the best you’ve ever had for one of your boyfriends. And I’m not—“
He stopped himself from saying something even stupider, but I knew where the train of thought was going. And I’m not even a real boyfriend.
For the first time in a while, I was grateful that it was true.
And that knowledge let me regain my cool. Barlows weren’t supposed to get angry and yell outside of a hospital. They didn’t yell at their father who could write them out of the will at any moment. I tried to
regain my cool, but my voice was angry when I told Josh, “I’m calling it. This is over.”
I had expected relief to burst over me at that. I didn’t have to worry about faking anything anymore. I could walk around and date whoever I wanted. Apparently, I could introduce any old bartender to my father and he’d be invited to plan my father’s funeral.
But instead of relief, I saw the sadness on Josh’s face. I heard my father try to argue with me about it. I burst into tears and walked away from my father and Josh, breaking into a run to get back to the hospital. I could hear the sounds of the muscled bodyguards following me back, and people were giving me concerned looks in the lobby as we waited for the elevator to take us to the parking garage.
When I got to the car, the two guys got upfront, and I put the sunglasses on my face. It didn’t stop the steady stream of tears as I kept replaying the whole day. The painful stab of joy at seeing a picture of Josh and me together, at the two of us debuting a fake relationship that was hiding my real feelings. The exchanges with my brothers. And worst of all, the betrayal from my father and Josh. Not because they were planning. But they could somehow sit with my biggest fears for my father and talk about it. The way my father could never talk to me.
And I’d wanted better from Josh. I’d expected better.
I wanted to be done crying by the time Patty got downstairs. But she took one look at me and said, “What the hell happened?” Her hug and tentative patting of my hair served only made me cry harder.
JOSH
CORY DID AN admirable job of not saying I told you so when I told him about Sofie.
He dragged me into helping him paint a suite across the lodge from Sofie’s. He listened patiently as I ranted about Sofie, her father, and his will. We got most of a wall painted.
Finally, after everything, he said, “Are you going back to New York?”
“That’s seriously your question?” I turned to face him, painting a broad stroke outside of cutting in along the windows I was working on with a smaller brush. It was supremely annoying, but not a big deal. Josh would probably end up painting over it himself. That was after we got done painting around the walls, ceiling, and outlets in approximately four weeks at the rate we were going. “Am I leaving? What, you need free labor that badly?”