by Holly Renee
I couldn’t wait to see what she would do when the people around her didn’t assume she knew nothing. When someone believed in her.
Shifting her in my arms, my shoulder screamed as I lifted her and headed for the door. I didn’t give a shit how banged up my arm was, there was no way I was waking her up after she had finally opened up to me, even if just the smallest bit, then fell asleep in my arms.
The stairs creaked under my feet as I led us to my bedroom, and I bit back a groan of pain as I leaned forward and laid her on the bed. I expected her to let go of me then, to turn her back to me like she had every other night since we had been here, but she clung to me like I was a lifeline.
I settled down next to her, and I pushed her silky hair out of her face as she buried it in my chest.
I knew we probably shouldn’t have been doing this. I should have moved, not pulled her in closer and took a deep breath of her scent like I may never smell her again. I should have turned my back to her and redrawn the line in the sand before either of us got confused.
But I didn’t do any of those things. I pulled her closer to me, and I fell asleep while everything was still a blur.
Twelve
A Guy with a Secret
Brooke
I could barely pay attention to a thing Liam’s mom said.
Not when the way I woke up plastered to Liam this morning kept playing in my head like a loop. It wasn’t just me either. He was holding me against him like I was meant to be there, and it felt like I was.
But I was tired and confused, and I didn’t have a clue how I even got to his room in the first place. The last thing I remembered was playing twenty-one questions on the back deck while I sat in Liam’s lap.
Liam’s lap, where I must have fallen asleep like he was my personal bed. Oh God. He was probably so ready to get me off him that he carried me up those stairs. With a hurt shoulder that he should have been more concerned about than me.
I slipped out of his bed before he woke up, and somehow I managed to avoid him before his mom and I left the house.
I told his mom that he was probably just tired from the game the night before. I told myself that he was probably just avoiding me as much as I was avoiding him.
“What do you think of this one?” Sarah held up a pretty maroon dress that looked far too frumpy for a woman like her.
“It’s pretty.” I shifted through the dresses in front of me. “But this one would look amazing.” I held up a silver dress that had just the slightest amount of shimmer and the perfect cut for her body.
Her eyes got as big as saucers as she looked at it.
“I don’t think I can pull that off.” She tucked the maroon dress in the curve of her arm, but kept looking at the dress I held up with interest.
“Just try it on.” I loaded it on the pile I had for myself. “If you don’t like it, we can put it back.”
“You’re right.” She nodded and kept going through the racks. “Are you excited about the wedding?”
“Yeah,” I lied. It wasn’t so much that I wasn’t excited about going to the wedding. The wedding would be fine. But it also meant the end of this. This charade between Liam and I would be over, and our life and our relationship would go back to normal.
I wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
I didn’t know how I would handle it.
Because I wouldn’t be the same after this. No matter how hard I tried to keep my head on straight or my heart on lock, I knew I wasn’t strong enough to withstand him.
No matter how easily he would return to normal when we got home, I would be affected.
But I was a pro at hiding my feelings, and this would be no different. I could smile at Liam at work and I could joke when he brought another girl around and pretend like I wasn’t going insane with jealousy.
I knew I could.
“I’m going to be sad when you all leave.” Sarah led us to the dressing room, and I closed the door to my stall as she kept talking. “Of course, I’m going to miss Liam, but I’m going to miss you too.”
I hated her words.
I hated that she was so perfect and caring and made me comfortable without even trying.
I hated that we were hurting her for no good reason.
The urge to tell her the truth was on the tip of my tongue, but I could never do that to Liam. Regardless of where we ended up after this, he trusted me, and I wouldn’t betray that trust even if that meant I was going to hurt his mama when this all ended.
Because she would be hurt.
She had so much false hope and dreams, and it was all our fault.
“I’ll miss you too.” I was being completely honest. I wouldn’t tell Liam this, but I fell in love with Sarah that first moment I met her in her kitchen. She was so vastly different from my own mother, and even though I didn’t actually miss my own mom, I did miss the idea of what she should have been.
Sarah was that.
She had me laughing over flour and biscuit dough, and she made it easy to fall into the role I was brought here to play.
Liam had so much of her in him. Even if he tried to hide it most of the time.
“When Jim and I come to visit Liam, maybe the two of us can plan something with just the two of us. A spa day or another shopping trip.” She was in the stall next to me, and she was so sincere.
I felt like the walls were closing in around me.
“I’d love that.” I sank to my ass and stared at myself in the mirror. My chest was starting to rise and fall in panic. What the fuck was I doing?
I didn’t even look like myself. I hadn’t put a trace of makeup on my face this morning which never happened. I never left my apartment without makeup, but somehow, I looked happier in that moment than my reflection had looked in a long time.
My skin was kissed by the sun, my blond hair piled on top of my head in a messy bun, and I felt happy.
But it was all a facade.
“Are you in your first dress?” Her voice carried over the stall, and I heard her unlocking hers.
“Almost.” I could barely mask the anxiety that was clouding my every thought.
“What’s wrong?” She sounded like she was just outside my door.
Shit.
“Nothing’s wrong.” I quickly stood and grabbed the first dress I could reach.
“Brooke, open the door.” It was a demand, but it was filled with worry and zero command.
I took a deep breath and pulled the door open still dressed in jeans and my t-shirt, one dress crumpled in my hands, the others still hanging on the wall.
“Hey.” Sarah stepped into my dressing room, and I didn’t even get a chance to tell her how beautiful she looked in her dress. She wrapped her arms around me, crushing the dress in my arms between us, and she ran a hand over the back of my head.
I didn’t know what was happening, but I couldn’t stop the emotion that was rushing through me or the way my eyes burned with tears I never shed. This wasn’t me. I wasn’t this girl.
But here I was in the middle of a dressing room clinging to my fake boyfriend’s mom while tears ran down my nose.
“Everything is going to be okay,” she whispered the words against my hair, but she didn’t know that. Nothing felt like it was going to be okay.
I didn’t even know what I was crying for. Everything was going just as we had planned it, and when I got home, Liam was going to help me make my dreams come true.
Nothing else mattered.
I told myself that over and over.
“I know.” I nodded into her, but my words didn’t even sound believable to me.
She pulled me away from her, just far enough for her to look at me, and she wiped the tears from my face. “You really love him, huh?”
The urge to tell her that wasn’t it was overwhelming. But I couldn’t do that. It wasn’t because of this stupid fake relationship or the things that were relying on my lies.
It was because I didn’t think it was a lie at all.
<
br /> I was an idiot and I was falling for her son.
I nodded my head, and she pulled me tighter against her for a hug. “Everything is going to be okay,” she repeated her words. “He loves you too.”
Her words hit me like a ton of bricks because she actually believed them. But her son didn’t love me. I was a means to an end and I needed to remember that.
Liam wasn’t my knight in shining armor. He was just a guy with a secret, and I somehow got lost in it.
Thirteen
The Fair
Liam
I had no idea what we were doing.
Last night was the most intimate the two of us had ever been, and it should have had me running away from her as fast as I could go. But I didn’t want to.
But she did.
She flew out of my bed this morning as if she had been on fire, and I let her have her space. It was the least that I could do.
Last night felt like too much. It felt like we were breaching a line we were never meant to cross. I should have known better than to ask her to come here, but if I was being honest, I wanted it to be her.
Brooke had been an anomaly to me since the moment I laid eyes on her. She was gorgeous and free and fun, but she was so much more than she let people see. She was more than I knew what to do with.
I could tell by the way she looked at me that things were changing for her. And I wasn’t an idiot. I knew they were changing for me too. But that change had to be temporary.
Anything beyond temporary we couldn’t handle.
Anything beyond temporary would fuck everything up.
It didn’t matter if either of us wanted more. More wasn’t what we agreed upon. More was what got you hurt. More was when you gave someone else the power to destroy you, and neither of us wanted to give away that power.
I wasn’t sure if I ever would.
But if I did, if she would have been the one, we would have had fun.
Fun was all that I could give her right now.
We only had a couple days left in Tennessee, and I wanted her to enjoy it.
From the moment she walked in the door with my mom, I knew something was wrong. No matter how hard she tried to hide her feelings, her face showed them. But of course as soon as I asked her what was wrong, a smile slipped into place and she assured me that everything was fine.
I didn’t believe her for a second.
But she didn’t have to tell me her secrets. She didn’t owe me anything.
I managed to get her in the car even though alone with me seemed like the last place she wanted to be.
“Just tell me where we’re going.” She was staring out the window and things felt more tense between us than they ever had before. Even after we almost fucked each other. She avoided me, but it didn’t feel like this.
This felt permanent. This felt like she wanted to get as far away from me as she could.
Like there was nothing I could do to change her mind.
“Relax. I promise we’re going to have fun.” At least I hoped we were.
Today was just going to be me, her, Sophie, and Jase. No pretending. No fake relationship. Just us. She didn’t even have to act like she liked me if she didn’t want to.
“I don’t trust you.” She smiled for the first time since she had been home. The first real smile. “You’re probably going to take me back to those swamp waters again.”
I rolled my eyes at how ridiculous she was being. “I’m not taking you back to the lake. I learned my lesson the first time.”
She turned in her seat to look at me with her brows pinned together. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.” I held up one hand in defense while driving. “I just don’t want to have to balance you on a float all day again so you don’t touch the water.”
“I touched the water, you jerk. I just don’t like swimming where I can’t touch. And for your information—” Whatever she was going to say next was cut off as soon as the Ferris wheel came into view.
She sat up straighter in her seat and stared out the windshield like a little kid. She pointed in the direction of the fair with the biggest smile on her face. “Is that where we’re going?”
“Yes.” I chuckled. “I’m taking it you like the fair?”
She shook her head but didn’t take her eyes off the window. “I’ve never been.”
“You’ve never been to the fair?” I sounded as shocked as I felt. What twenty-something-year-old woman had never been to the fair?
“Nope.” She was practically bouncing in her seat as I pulled in. “But I’ve always wanted to.”
She was out of the car before I could cut the engine. She grabbed my hand as I rounded the front without hesitation, almost as if it had become a habit. But I didn’t stop her.
I let her pull me toward the entrance, and I couldn’t stop smiling at how excited she was. Sophie and Jase were waiting for us at the ticket booth, and that was the icing on the cake. Brooke dropped my hand and practically ran toward Sophie.
I purchased our wristbands while they talked, and Jase leaned against the booth as I handed over my cash.
“So, what’s the deal there?” He nodded his head in Brooke’s direction.
“You know the deal.” I let the ticket lady wrap one of the wristbands around my wrist before I took the other one from her.
“Yeah. I know the agreement the two of you made, but what’s really going on there?”
“Nothing.” My answer was quick and honest and a complete and total lie.
But I didn’t know how to explain something I didn’t understand myself. What was I supposed to tell him? I had no damn clue what she was doing to me? I didn’t have a clue how I’m supposed to walk away from her when this is all over?
He nodded his head with a grin on his face that told me he didn’t believe a word I said. “Whatever you say.” He patted my back just as we got to the girls.
I ignored him and held Brooke’s wristband out to her. She stuck her arm out, and I held her small wrist in my hand as I wrapped it around.
“You ready?”
She looked up from her wrist and smiled. “I’m so ready.”
The place was packed. People were roaming around everywhere, and Brooke was taking it all in like it was the most fascinating place she had ever been.
“What do you want to do first?”
She pointed to some ride that looked like it was made for the sole purpose of making its victims puke, but I followed her anyway.
We climbed inside, and I pulled the metal bar against our laps while Sophie and Jase climbed into the seat in front of us. She was sitting right next to me even though another person could have fit on the other side of her, but I didn’t mind.
Actually, I more than didn’t mind. I liked it too much.
“I’m a little too excited, huh?” She tucked a piece of stray hair behind her ear and looked away from me.
I put my arm over the back of the seat, around her shoulders, and ran my thumb over the skin there. “No. I think it’s cute.”
She rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t quit smiling. “Cute?”
“What would you prefer I call you? Hot? Gorgeous?”
“Those would be better than cute.”
“You already know those things. I don’t need to tell you you’re gorgeous.”
She looked up at me then, really looked at me, and I could tell she hesitated on what she said next. “I don’t already know that you think those things.”
The ride creaked beneath us, and we started to move as I thought of what to say to her. “You have to know that I think you’re beautiful.”
She didn’t look at me then. She was watching the crowd as we started picking up speed before looking back over her shoulder at me. “You’ve never told me that. Not when we weren’t pretending.”
“Any time I tell you you’re beautiful, I’m not pretending.”
The ride was moving faster and faster and she was all I could see. Everything else
was whizzing by us in a blur, but none of it mattered in that moment. I wasn’t sure that it ever did.
“You get me?”
She nodded and relaxed a bit into my side. “I get you.”
We didn’t speak for the rest of the ride. Not that we could even if we wanted to. The ride picked up even more speed, knocking us around in our seat as we spun around. Brooke started laughing beside me.
It started out as a small burst of laughter but soon became uncontrollable as her body slammed into mine from the speed.
I only thought I knew what beautiful was until that moment.
I couldn’t help laughing with her. It was contagious and once I started, I couldn’t stop. Jace and Sophie were looking back at me like they had never seen me before as we came to a stop, and I couldn’t blame them.
There was something about Brooke that made me feel different. Made me act different. There was something about being here with her that was changing everything.
But I didn’t care.
I would go back to being the same workaholic asshole I was before all this started, but I would soak up the time we had left as much as I could. If that meant laughing on a ride that was making me nauseous with the girl who was making me question everything, then I would take it.
I wasn’t ready to give her up, and I still had the rest of the night before we had to put on another show with the wedding tomorrow.
Then I would tell her that the building was ours, that the owner accepted the offer while she was gone with my mom this morning, but not tonight. I didn’t want tonight to be about the agreement or business or what either of us had at stake. I just wanted it to be about us tonight with nothing at risk.
But I was beginning to see how big of a fool I was.
I was at risk any moment I was with her. I just didn’t know it until that moment that she was becoming a risk I was willing to take.
Fourteen