Fake Marriage Box Set (A Single Dad Romance)

by Claire Adams

  I laughed and followed her down onto the beach, wishing I'd had a moment to tell her about my departure when we'd been in the car. I couldn't tell her about it here when we were surrounded by so many people, and the later it got, the drunker everyone was probably going to get.

  I'd need to find some way to pull her aside, at some point.

  “Hey guys,” Mina said, detaching herself from the group and coming up to us, giving Gretchen a big hug.

  Gretchen giggled and nearly fell as Mina went into it with a bit too much force. “Hey, girl,” she said. “How's the luau?”

  “Always a good time,” Mina said, beaming at her. “I'm glad you could come too, Christian.”

  “Me too,” I said, forcing myself to smile, to stop thinking about what I needed to tell Gretchen. I would just have to wait for the right opportunity.

  Of course, setting aside those thoughts was easier said than done.

  “You seem a little bit off,” Gretchen whispered to me a little while later.

  I frowned over at her. “What do you mean?” I asked, even though I knew she was right. “I've been talking to people and everything else, same as you.”

  “Yeah, I know,” she said, sounding hurt at my tone. She shook her head. “Just, if you want to go, we can go.”

  “Why would I want to go?” I asked, rolling my eyes so that she would think I wasn't even considering it. The truth was, leaving was probably the best idea. I wanted to enjoy the luau, but at the same time, I couldn't seem to put aside my thoughts. If I could just get a quiet moment alone with her, it would be great.

  “I'm going to get another drink,” Gretchen told me, still looking doubtful and concerned. “Do you want anything?”

  I held up the beer in my hand, which I had barely touched despite the fact that we must have been there for at least an hour. “I'm still good,” I told her. I was afraid that if I drank too much, I'd do something that I regretted. This night was going to be long enough already without that.

  And getting longer, it seemed.

  As soon as Gretchen walked off to get another drink, Lino came up to me. “You're lucky, you know,” the man said, watching Gretchen move through the crowd, pausing every now and then to laugh with some of her friends.

  “Excuse me?” I asked, even though I knew I shouldn't engage the man, especially not after hearing the whole backstory between him and Gretchen. I wasn't the kind of guy to start fights usually, but if anyone deserved a good kick in the balls, this was the guy.

  “You got to have her, and now you get to leave,” Lino said. “No strings attached. You just got to have all the fun parts of a relationship with Gretchen without all the bullshit that comes with it if you're with her long-term.”

  I gaped at him, wondering if these words were coming out of his mouth. “You're an asshole,” I told him, shaking my head. “Gretchen is an amazing girl. She is one of the kindest, most giving people that I've ever met, and if you weren't able to support her, if you weren't able to work through a rough patch with her, then you never deserved her.”

  “You don't know the whole story,” Lino said, shaking his head.

  “Oh, I'm pretty sure I do,” I said. “And guess what? You were wrong. And I can tell that you're starting to realize how wrong you were, that's why you're coming up to talk to her every time you get the chance. That's why you're always following her with your eyes here at these luaus. You're realizing what you lost, and you're desperate to get that back. But guess what? You are never going to get her back. Move along.”

  Lino laughed. “Oh, really? Because, what, you're going to stay with her forever? We all know you're leaving soon. And when it comes down to it anyway, Gretchen belongs with someone from the island. We share the same background, the same way of living, the same goals in life. You're just some dude from New York that, sure, was probably a decent fuck for a while. But she's not going to miss you. And she definitely would never end up with you, even if you stayed here.”

  “Yeah, whatever, buddy,” I said, already searching the crowd for Gretchen's return. As if she sensed my need for her presence, she suddenly materialized at my side, looking between Lino and me.

  “Is everything okay?” she asked slowly.

  “Yeah, yeah, just chatting a little with your beau,” Lino said, giving her a charming smile. “But I have to go bother Madge for her pineapple cake recipe; you know, she still hasn't given it to me, after all these years!”

  Gretchen laughed, but the second Lino walked off, she turned concerned eyes on me. “Is everything okay?” she asked. “Things seemed a little tense.”

  “It's fine,” I snapped, wishing she would quit asking me that. Something about being around Gretchen and her ex had me on edge. I was working on being less volatile, but I still had a tiger inside of me. It was insecurity. The need to be front and center, and Lino being there left me feeling a little less than. It was fucking with me. Badly. “He just wanted to chat. It wasn't anything important.” As much as I wanted to play it off, it was important.

  Maybe I’d made a mistake by being with her, starting to fall for her. My fight or flight kicked into gear and I knew I was in trouble. Fuck me.

  “Maybe we should go,” Gretchen said slowly, putting a hand on my arm. “Seriously, Christian, I don't care about the luau; it's just any other luau. At the end of the night, I'm just happy to have you.”

  I shook her hand off my arm. “You don't have me,” I snarled. “We were never doing anything more than just having fun, Gretchen, you know that. It could never be anything more. You wouldn't survive a day in New York, and me? I could never do this.” I gave a sharp gesture around to the people at the luau. “You all spend your days not doing anything; I could never do that. You don't have me, Gretchen. I'm going back to New York.”

  Gretchen looked shocked, with one of her hands up over her mouth, and there were tears in her eyes as well. I knew we had to be making a bit of a scene, but I couldn't find it in me to care. Better that this whole thing ended in flames, that there was nothing to come back to, because if I left myself something to come back to, who knew what I might do once I reached New York.

  I needed to get my head back into things, to be the cool and uncaring real estate exec. My vacation was over.

  “You're leaving already?” Gretchen asked, her voice barely a whisper.

  “Yeah,” I snapped. “I've got my tickets booked and everything.” I glanced around, definitely not in the mood for more drinking and socializing and fireworks. There was no magic left in this luau, not for me. “I should go.”

  “I drove you,” Gretchen said, even though it must have pained her to even offer to take me back.

  “I'll call a cab,” I said shortly. “Has to be someone working tonight, despite the fact that most of you seem to lack any sort of work ethic.”

  I was being needlessly cruel to her, and I knew that. Maybe she didn't work in a white-collar profession, but I knew how hard she worked. And Mina as well, and so many other people who I had met around the island.

  But if I was going to burn bridges, I needed to do it spectacularly. Gretchen was too nice, and I knew that if I only did things halfway, she'd still find it in herself to take me back.

  Even now, she reached for my arm, trying to plead with me, but I brushed her away and stalked off, refusing to look back. I was all the way on the road before I was able to draw in a deep breath, and I realized that I was shaking all over. It felt like I'd just run a marathon or something, and I couldn't remember the last time I had had this depth of feeling for anything. Even George had never been able to incite this much passion in me.

  It took everything I had not to look back, even though I knew that by now, Gretchen would have melted into the crowd to be comforted by Mina, her friends.

  Lino. Fuck.

  I swallowed hard against a flash of jealousy. But there was nothing I could do about that. If Lino won her back, then he won her back. It wasn't like I'd ever know, one way or the other. I was never g
oing to be able to come back here, and I definitely wasn't going to be able to keep in contact with any of them. Even Mark would hate me if he knew what I had just done.

  I sat down on the curb to wait for my taxi, putting my head down in my hands. I had done exactly what I had to do. But God did it hurt.

  Chapter Thirty

  Gretchen

  I woke up early on January 1st, after a night of fitful sleep interspersed with bouts of tears. Fortunately, I didn't have any appointments for that day, although maybe it would have been better to have appointments and to keep myself busy.

  I made a pot of strong coffee and just stood there while it brewed, staring pensively into the liquid, hardly able to believe what had happened the night before. I'd been so excited to bring him to another luau. I'd been so excited to kiss him at midnight. I'd been so excited to start my year with him, surrounded by all of my friends.

  I hadn't expected him to act like the Christian who everyone else seemed to know. The guy who just fucked girls and then broke their hearts. God, I was so stupid. All the signs had been there all along. I should have listened to Mina and quit the whole thing before I'd gotten my feelings tied up in it.

  I brought my coffee out to the porch, and for a moment, I stared down at the romance novel that I'd been reading lately. I carefully set my coffee down on the table and picked up the book, thumbing through it for a moment. Then, I brought it out to the trashcan and dumped it inside.

  Mina was right all along. There's no such thing as true love.

  I'd thought I'd had it, that was the thing. I hadn't even labeled it as love inside my head, but I still had been in love. It didn't matter now.

  Mina was almost hesitant as she walked up onto my porch that morning. “Hey, girl,” she said. “How are you doing?”

  I shook my head. “I'm fine,” I told her, lazily swinging back and forth and trying to pretend that it was normal for me to be lying out here without a book in hand.

  Mina sighed. “I brought breakfast. Come on. It's parfaits from that great place over on the other side of the island. I got up early to get them.”

  I grimaced. “I'm not hungry,” I told her. “I appreciate the effort, but-”

  “I'm not taking no for an answer,” Mina said, shaking her head. “Come on, get up.”

  I sighed and allowed myself to be directed out toward the back porch, stopping on the way for more coffee for myself, as well as a mug for Mina.

  “So, what happened last night?” she asked as we sat down at the table.

  I shrugged. “You probably saw all of it.”

  “Yeah, we saw you guys fighting, but we moved away from you guys, so nobody heard what you were fighting about.”

  “He's going back to New York,” I said. That was all that mattered about it anyway.

  “You've known for weeks that he was going to eventually go bak to New York,” Mina said, sounding confused. “What was there to argue about? Unless he was trying to get you to go to New York with him? Or you were trying to get him to stay here?”

  “Oh no,” I said with a bitter laugh. “No, that is definitely not what happened.”

  “What happened, then?” Mina asked gently.

  I sighed. “He was just being a jerk, okay? He said that there was never anything between us, that we were just fucking. Which, of course, we were; he's Christian Wall. He's done this all over the world. If you want to say, 'I told you so,' go right ahead.”

  Mina blinked over at me. “Oh, honey,” she said sympathetically. “But the thing is, he hasn't done this all over the world. There are probably a few other girls who he has taken home more than once. As far as anyone knows, though, he's never been monogamous with someone, and not for a whole month. He doesn't even really date people the way that he dated you. Besides, I've seen the two of you together. If you're trying to tell me that he didn't have any feelings for you, you're either blind or seriously deluded.”

  I swallowed hard, stirring my parfait but unable to even take a bite of it. “He said, though, that-”

  “Oh, fuck what he said,” Mina said, rolling her eyes. “Honestly, he's a guy. Probably he's massively commitment shy, and he's already thinking ahead to the fact that he's going to have to go back to New York. He doesn't know what that means for the two of you, so instead of trying to work through his feelings and talk things out and come up with a solution like a normal person would, he panicked and tried to get rid of the whole thing.”

  I cracked a slight smile at that. “That is possible,” I admitted. I shook my head. “I thought you didn't believe in the idea of true love, though. You think we were probably just fucking, right?”

  Mina paused, considering her words carefully. “Maybe if you believe in true love, then true love exists,” she said. “I'm still not saying that I believe in it, but I can tell that you care a lot about the guy, Gretchen. And like I said, I'm pretty sure he cares for you as well. I'd imagine he probably has woken up regretting all of that, but he doesn't know how to apologize to you.” She grinned crookedly. “The great Christian Wall doesn't normally have to apologize to anyone.”

  “What should I do then?” I asked, biting my lower lip.

  “I'd go over there,” Mina said confidently. “I'd confront him and ask him about last night. See if he meant everything that he said. And if he did, let that give you closure. You don't want to spend the rest of your life wondering about how if you'd maybe tried a little harder or given him one more chance, he might have stayed with you.”

  “But even if we have that conversation and it turns out that we do have feelings for one another, what then?” I asked. “It's not like there's any future in it. We're from two different worlds. I'm not going to move to New York with him, and he's never going to move to Hawaii to be with me. Maybe it's best to leave things as they are.”

  “Are you trying to tell me that if Christian was actually the love of your life, you wouldn't hop on a plane to New York in an instant?” Mina asked, raising an eyebrow at me. “I know the kind of stories you read and the movies that you watch.”

  I sighed. “None of that stuff is real, though.”

  “Maybe not,” Mina agreed. “But if you talked it out, maybe you'd be able to figure out a solution. Like California! He could do his real estate work from California just as easily as New York, and I'm sure you could find some bit of SoCal that was so much like Hawaii that you'd forget all about this stuff. Your parents are perfectly happy there, remember.”

  “Yeah,” I said slowly, wondering why I hadn't even considered that before. I'd been stuck in such a black and white view of our relationship that I'd forgotten there could be options.

  “So, go over there,” Mina urged. “Talk to him.”

  I shook my head and then stood up abruptly. “I'm so sorry.” I shook my head. “And seriously, thanks for bringing the parfaits.”

  “I'll put yours in the fridge for you; you can have it later,” Mina assured me.

  I drove a little too fast getting over to Christian's hotel, but fortunately, no one stopped me. When I got there, I spent a moment composing myself outside Christian's door. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to say, but I was sure something would come to me. I took a deep breath, tossed my hair back over my shoulders, and knocked.

  And waited. And waited. And waited.

  Finally, I knocked again. There was still no reply, and I sighed. After all of this, of course, he would be out somewhere, probably having a leisurely brunch or something, trying to forget about the night before.

  I went down to the hotel desk, figuring I could leave a message for him. “Hi, sorry, I was hoping I could leave a message for Christian Wall, for when he comes back to his room?”

  The woman behind the counter giggled a little. “You can do that, but I'm not sure when he'll be back,” she said.

  I shook my head. “Yeah, that's fine,” I said. “I don't know where he is right now; I don't know how long he'll be. But I'm sure you'll all recognize him when he comes in, rig
ht? And if you could just give him a message.”

  She looked down at her watch. “Well, at this minute, I'd say he's probably flying over the Pacific Ocean,” she told me. “He checked out this morning; he's headed back to New York.”

  I stared at her for a moment, not comprehending her words. “He checked out?” I asked slowly.

  “Yeah,” the woman said, chipper as ever. “Said it was time for him to get back to work, that his vacation had been long enough.” She shrugged. “Anyway, if you were hoping to ask him out or whatever, you missed your chance. He didn't sleep with anyone the whole time he was here, anyway. Very strange behavior from him.”

  I spun away from her, not needing to hear more of her opinions on Christian's behavior, or more speculations about what I could want to talk to him about. I walked slowly out to my car and sat there for a moment in the driver's seat, just staring off into space.

  He had left, then. He was gone.

  Maybe he had meant everything that he had said the night before. Maybe we had never really been doing anything more than fucking.

  I bit my lower lip, trying my best not to cry. Because after all, I'd known this was coming, hadn't I? I'd known it since before we'd even started dating.

  I let out a shaky breath and turned the key in the ignition. There was nothing else to do.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Christian

  I drummed my fingers against my armrest, staring out the window as the plane took off. I had never felt compelled to look back before, and God only knew how many business trips I'd been on over the years. But I had specifically chosen a window seat instead of my usual aisle seat, and as the plane rose to cruising altitude, I found my eyes scanning the land below, charting the beaches, the towns, the places I was leaving behind.

  Remembering the people who I was leaving behind.