by Hamel, B. B.
Fake Fiancée Can’t Get Enough
BB Hamel
Contents
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1. Grace
2. Nathan
3. Grace
4. Nathan
5. Grace
6. Nathan
7. Grace
8. Nathan
9. Grace
10. Nathan
11. Grace
12. Nathan
13. Grace
14. Nathan
15. Grace
16. Nathan
17. Grace
18. Nathan
19. Grace
20. Nathan
21. Grace
22. Nathan
23. Nathan
24. Grace
25. Nathan
26. Grace
Also by BB Hamel
Copyright © 2020 by B. B. Hamel
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1
Grace
I’ve never felt so terrified knocking on a door before in my entire life.
I don’t really know the man beyond this door. It’s just a little townhouse in South Philadelphia, in a quiet little neighborhood that I’ve probably biked through a million times over the years but never really noticed.
I think I might throw up, seriously vomit right on the sidewalk, but that probably wouldn’t help things at all.
So I knock. I knock on the stupid door and I stand there, feeling all terrified and vomity, waiting for this total stranger to come talk to me.
Knowing full well that he probably hates my guts.
Actually, he definitely does. Not that I can blame him. That’s actually why I’m here.
I shift nervously from foot to foot. I don’t hear anything inside, and I’m about to turn and run away like a coward, but suddenly there’s movement. The door unlocks. It swings open.
He stands there, staring out at me with a look between surprise and pure, vicious hate on his handsome face.
He’s gorgeous. I can’t help myself. Just looking at him makes my body tremble. He’s tall, easily over six feet, and muscular. He has tattoos on his arms, though I’ve only ever glimpsed them from a distance, and only ever just peeking out from the sleeve of a dress shirt.
His eyes are startling and green, and he has just the perfect amount of stubble. He looks tired though, like he hasn’t slept for a few days, but that somehow only makes him so much hotter.
I stare at him and suddenly don’t know what to say.
“What are you doing here?” he says.
That knocks some sense into me. “Hi,” I say, and instantly feel so stupid. I rush onward before he can object. “My name’s Grace. I know I’m the last person you probably want to see but I just… can I talk to you?”
He stares at me. The hate in his expression is so vicious, so visceral, that I think he might actually hit me. I mean, seriously, for a second I think he might hit me, all five foot five of me, right in the face.
Instead, he jerks his head. “Five minutes,” he says, and disappears back inside.
I hesitate there. I don’t know why he’s letting me in, honestly. I thought he’d just tell me to fuck off, I’d yell my apology at a shut door, and get the hell out of here. I’d try and put this entire fucked-up thing behind me, even if it never would go away, not entirely, not really.
Not for my brother and definitely not for this gorgeous stranger’s mother.
I follow him inside. The townhouse is tastefully decorated, which shouldn’t surprise me. From what I know about his mother, she had amazing taste. Exquisite little paintings line the wall, the floor tiled in this amazing little circular pattern of dark reds and blues, ending in polished hard wood. I walk through a clean and tasteful living room, cramped the way all Philly rowhomes are cramped, but still somehow cozy with throw blankets and pillows and a beautiful tapestry hung on the wall.
He takes me into the kitchen. He marches directly into the little space, heads to a cupboard, and pulls down a bottle of something brown. It has no label and I stare in horror as he grabs two glasses. Silently, he pours, and shoves one of them in my direction.
“You’re here,” he says. “Now you might as well drink with me.”
I don’t take the glass right away. I’m not much of a drinker and I prefer fruity, sweet drinks, but this… I can’t refuse and he knows it.
I take the glass. His gorgeous eyes stare into mine before he throws back the liquid. I follow suit, praying I don’t puke it up on his shoes.
It’s hot and disgusting. I think it’s meant to be whiskey, but it’s only vaguely whiskey. I’m pretty sure it’s paint thinner and I can’t help but cough like a moron.
He gives me a little stare, his expression unreadable.
“Okay,” he says. “Now talk. What are you doing here?”
I cough again, getting myself under control. Finally though, the coughing subsides, and I have to face him again.
Gorgeous Nathan Palmer. I know so much about him at this point, and yet I don’t know the man at all. He’s in his late twenties and worked with his mother for years. They’re originally from Canada, both Canadian citizens, but they came to America when his mother’s little boutique accounting firm started gaining customers. From what I understand, she was the face of the business, always out scouting new and interesting customers, while he was the brains. Apparently, they made a good team.
This was her house, up until a few months ago. I don’t know where he lived before this, I assume in some apartment. I didn’t bother trying to find out. I knew he was staying here though. I overheard him mention it to the lawyer one early morning, before the second day of the trial.
It was easy to find, really. Just a few searches online and I had an address for Aimee Palmer, along with her obituary.
Dead at sixty-two, killed in an accident.
“I came to apologize,” I say.
He lets out this strange, almost primal grunt from his chest. “Why?” he asks. “You didn’t kill her.”
“I know. But, I was there, at the trial, and I just—”
“You, what? Feel bad for me?” He just keeps staring at me. “I’m not interested in your pity.”
“No, that’s not it. I just, I feel responsible somehow, I just—”
“You are responsible,” he says.
I think I might cry, but I force the tears back. I heard him say those words in my mind a million times, over and over again, but actually hearing them on his lips rips me to the core in a way I never pictured before.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Your whole fucking family is responsible. If any of you could’ve done something, gotten your piece of shit garbage brother under control, my mother wouldn’t be dead.”
“I know,” I say, my voice a whisper, my guilt so overwhelming I think I might smash through the floor and break into a million little bitter broken pieces.
“So why the fuck would I care about your apology?” he asks. “I’m serious. Tell me why you thought this was a good idea.”
“I don’t know. I just… what Patrick did was fucked up. He deserves what he got. But you didn’t deserve any of this.”
“You’re right,” he says. “And neither d
id my mother.”
“No,” I say. “And I’m so sorry. I really am. I wish… I wish I could’ve stopped him. But Patrick, he—”
“I don’t want to hear the excuses,” he says, cutting me off.
“Okay. Right. I won’t make them then. You’re right.”
He shakes his head and pours two more drinks. He grabs his and nods at mine. He holds it up, waiting, and I hesitate.
But I grab it. I toss it back before he goes, down the hatch, down into the bottomless pit of guilt that has become my life.
It burns, but not quite as bad. I don’t cough this time. I gag a little bit though.
And I feel a little woozy. Not drunk, but just the beginnings of it.
“How long did you know about him?” he asks.
I sigh and stare at the counter. It’s a beautiful counter, made of some exotic-looking granite, sparkling slightly in the dim light.
“A long time,” I say. “Since he was in middle school. He used to skip class and smoke weed with his friends but it only got worse in high school.”
“Of course,” he says. “Fell in with the wrong crowd, right?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “No, Patrick was the wrong crowd. Always was, just couldn’t ever get it together. Really got bad when he left home though. He dropped out of college, moved around a lot, couldn’t hold down a job. We all knew… we all knew it was bad. Then he just disappeared for a whole year and when he turned up again…” I trail off, trying not to think of that night, of the look on my parents’ faces when they saw what he’d become.
“Sad story,” Nathan says. “But people like your brother just bring ruin around with them. He belongs in prison for the rest of his life, as far as I’m concerned.”
I nod miserably. “You might be right.”
Although I don’t totally believe that. I can still remember Patrick before he lost himself to drugs and drinking, before he became an addict. I see him laughing as I try to ride a bike for the first time. I see him running through a field during man hunt, long hair flying behind him, nobody able to catch him, he was so fast and strong.
Before he became a strung-out walking corpse.
“I’m definitely right. You know my mother was a good person? She took care of me on her own for a very long time.” His fingers curl around his glass, knuckles turning white. “We were close.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Yeah.” He takes my glass, pours two more drinks. “I’m sure you are.”
He slides it over. I don’t even hesitate this time. I just drunk the stuff, choke it down, and slam my glass on the counter.
He does the same, staring at me the whole time.
“So you’ve said it then,” he says. “You’re sorry. Can I ask you something now?”
“Go ahead.” I feel sick and miserable. This was a mistake.
“What good does that do me?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m going to be deported,” he says suddenly.
I frown at him. “What?”
“Deported. Sent back to Canada.” He laughs and it sounds almost manic. “Can you believe that? Now my mother’s gone and her business is basically gone with her and they want to send me back.”
“That’s… that’s cruel,” I manage.
“It’s sick,” he says. “This whole thing is sick. And the fucked-up thing is, I still want to stay, even though this is the country that murdered my mother and wants to throw me out.”
I don’t point out that America didn’t kill his mother, that was just my brother.
“What’ll you do?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I really can’t go back to Canada, I can’t…” He trails off and shakes his head. “I can’t go back. I’ll have to go somewhere else and start over.”
“I don’t understand. Can’t you take over your mother’s business?”
He clenches his jaw. “Her will didn’t leave any provisions for that, so it goes to the next primary stakeholder.” He pauses for a moment. “Which isn’t me.”
“That person can hire you then?” I ask.
“That person is my father, and I’d rather follow my mother into an early grave than work for that cunt.”
The malice in his voice is actually surprising.
“Oh,” I say.
He sighs and seems to relax a bit. He pours another drink, but this one just for him. He throws it back and I’m so incredibly grateful that he doesn’t offer me another, I nearly ask him for one to celebrate.
“Look, you came, you apologized. If you want absolution, I’m not going to give it to you.”
“Fine,” I say. “I just wish there was something I could do.”
“If you feel so bad, you could fucking marry me.”
He says it so absently, so casually, it takes me a second for my brain to parse it. He says the words and they just hang there, right there in the middle of the air. We stare at each other and I think he’s waiting for me to laugh, or I’m waiting for him to say that he’s kidding, but neither of us do it. We just watch each other.
And then I do something stupid.
Well, another stupid thing. Coming up to his door and knocking and coming inside were already monumentally, insanely, incredibly stupid. Drinking this whiskey-paint-thinner was stupid. Apologizing was stupid. Looking at his handsome face was really, really stupid.
Maybe it’s the alcohol. Maybe it’s the way he’s looking at me, that strange mixture of hatred, desire, self-pity, and anger. Maybe it’s the guilt or maybe it’s how gorgeous he is.
Either way, I open my dumb, stupid mouth.
“Would that help?”
Neither of us laugh. I can feel the moment hanging heavy in the air.
“It’d get me a green card,” he says. “It wouldn’t be easy. They’ll scrutinize the shit out of us.”
I nod slowly. “But it would work.”
“Probably. It’s plausible we met at the trial. It’s plausible we—” He makes a face, “—fell in love.”
“So, you could stay here.”
“It doesn’t solve all my problems. But it would be a start.”
I stare at him and feel my resolve shake. Just for a moment, I wonder if I might be making a huge, huge, huge mistake.
This man hates me. He despises me so much. But he’s clearly willing to do absolutely anything to stay in the country.
There’s something else about him that I can’t quite figure out. It’s his anger, but also the way he spoke about his father. There’s something else happening, simmering beneath the surface.
But I don’t know what. All I see is the insanely handsome man looking back at me, his green eyes hard, almost angry.
“I’ll do it,” I say. “But only if you forgive me when it’s all finished.”
“Why would you care about that?” he asks. “I really don’t understand. You didn’t kill my mother. Why do you give a damn if I hate you?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I just… I feel responsible. Like you said. I need to do something that maybe makes up for all the shitty things my brother did in this world. If this helps you, it’ll be worth it.”
He shakes his head slowly. “It’s a risk. We could go to jail.”
I just shrug a little. “Life’s a risk.”
He doesn’t say anything. He just pours two more drinks and pushes my glass over to me.
“I’ll do it,” he says and holds his glass up.
“Okay.” I take a deep breath. “Okay. We’re going to do this.”
“Here’s to marrying the woman I hate,” he says.
“And here’s to forgiveness.”
His eyes are hard as he throws back his drink.
I follow him, feeling the burn again.
When I’m done, I put down my glass. He looks at me for a long moment, and I feel his eyes roam down my body. I shiver a little bit, maybe from his gaze, maybe from the alcohol.
“You should go,” he says. “We can talk
more later.”
“Okay.” I bite my lip. “When?”
“Meet me in Rittenhouse Park,” he says. “Tomorrow afternoon, right at noon. We’ll talk.”
“Okay. Yeah. Sounds good.”
He nods and doesn’t move to walk me to the door.
I turn and practically run. I head back through the tastefully decorated house, through the house of a dead woman, and outside into the fresh air. I feel like I’m leaving a tomb.
I don’t know what I just did back there. I just agreed to something… something so serious, I’m not sure I even understand it yet.
I don’t know why I did it. I feel absolutely insane.
But I know one thing. I have to follow through. I have to help him. I have to try and make this right.
I find my bike leaning up against a post nearby. I unlock it and think about getting on, but decide against it. I walk my bike back through the city, a little drunk, feeling sick to my stomach, and absolutely sure I’m making a huge mistake, but unable to stop it anyway.
2
Nathan
The sun shines on my face and I take a deep breath as an older couple walks down the path in front of me. I cross my legs and try to let my anger slip away.
But it’s still there, bubbling under the surface.
Sometimes, I want to fucking break things. I want to smash the world that took my mother away. It’s fucked up that a piece of trash like Grace’s brother could walk away from that accident, but my mother would die, bleeding out on the side of the road.
It still makes me wild with rage. I know, deep down, that my anger toward Grace probably isn’t fair.