Best Fake Fiancé: A Single Dad Romance (Loveless Brothers Romance Book 2)

I STARE at the box of Lucky Charms.

The leprechaun stares back.

Lucky Charms or Froot Loops? I think, sliding my gaze over to the brightly colored toucan.

Do I want marshmallows, or do I want loops, or do I want to fuck over my best friend?

There’s the guilt again, deep and heavy in my chest. There it is clawing its way up my back, perching on my shoulder, whispering in my ear: it’s your fault if Rusty has to move to Denver.

I swallow hard. I’m still standing in front of cartoon-covered cereal boxes, but I’m staring at them blindly, one hand resting on my shopping cart.

He’ll be fine, I remind myself. He’s had sole custody for six years. He’s doing a great job. She’s reading at least at a fifth-grade level, she’s learning fractions, she knows what all the parts of an insect are called…

It’s the same litany that I’ve been repeating over and over in my head ever since Daniel left my job this afternoon. There are a thousand reasons that Rusty’s mom won’t be able to suddenly take her away, and none of them are ‘Daniel has a fiancée.’

He doesn’t need the lie to keep her. He’s doing just fine on his own.

But what if the judge doesn’t believe that?

I sigh and grab the Lucky Charms, toss them into my shopping cart. It’s otherwise full of guilt groceries: strawberries and spinach and organic radishes and the fancy, sprouted-grain bread. I even bought kale, because when I feel bad about something, I suddenly have the urge to eat the most guilt-free diet possible.

Except the Lucky Charms. I need this, okay?

There is no way that lying to everyone we know makes everything better. Literally no way. When has lying fixed anything, ever?

I push my cart along the aisle, toward the checkout. I’m pretty sure I’m doing the right thing, but wow, the right thing feels bad.

Just as I reach the end of the aisle, I hear a voice call my name.

“Charlotte! Is that you?” a woman calls, and I tense. Of all the days to run into someone at the grocery store.

I turn. I smile.

“I thought I recognized that hair!” Priscilla Hayes exclaims, fluttering down the aisle toward me.

Automatically, one hand goes to the unruly mess on my head. I discover that it currently contains not one, not two, but three pencils. No wonder I can never find anything to write with.

“Hi, Priscilla,” I say. I don’t even remember how I know Priscilla, I just know that I have for most of my life.

“I heard your news,” she says, coming in closer, putting one hand on my arm. “And I just wanted to say that I am so happy for you two.”

I suck in a sharp breath. The guilt on my shoulder digs its claws in.

“I never wanted to say anything, but I suspected for a long time,” she goes on, keeping her voice low. “I understand why you’d want to keep a relationship quiet, but I can always tell when people are in love.”

I open my mouth. I shut it.

Then I open it again and say something I shouldn’t.

“Thanks,” I tell Priscilla.

It’s the wrong thing, and that knowledge shoots adrenaline through my veins. The hairs rise on the back of my neck, but Priscilla doesn’t notice. She just smiles, comes in a little closer.

“I’m so glad that Rusty’s going to have a stepmother like you,” she says quietly. “That precious angel deserves it, after everything she’s been through. I was her social worker, you know.”

I just nod.

“And you know, normally, making the decision to take a child away from a parent is absolutely gut-wrenching,” she goes on. “But getting that poor little girl out of her mother’s house was one of the easiest decisions I’ve ever made, and of course, Daniel’s done an absolutely fantastic job. She really seems to be thriving.”

“He’s great,” I echo, relieved that I get to say a sentence that isn’t a lie.

“You two will be very happy,” she says, squeezing my arm. “Congratulations, sweetheart.”

Then she drifts away, back down the grocery store aisle, and I’m left standing there, feeling even worse than I did five minutes ago.

I don’t know much about Rusty’s early life. Daniel doesn’t like talking about it, so I don’t press him for details.

I just know that one day, Child Protective Services came to the gas station where he was working and told him he had a one-year-old daughter. They told him his daughter’s name was Rustilina and that she was currently in a foster home, because they’d removed her from her mother’s care.

A week later, he moved back in with his mom. A week after that, he brought Rusty home for the first time, and within three months, he had sole physical and legal custody.

And now the mother she was taken away from is angling to get her back, and I’m refusing to help him.

Fuck. Fuck.

Fuck.

WHAT PRISCILLA SAID rattles around my brain as I drive home from the market, even though I try to think about it rationally. I tell myself that there’s no way a judge is going to send Rusty back to a home that CPS took her from in the first place; I tell myself again that they almost always side with the custodial parent; I remind myself about her report cards and the fifth grade reading level and the fractions and all the proof that Daniel’s the best thing for her.

And I remind myself ten thousand times that trying to fix this with a bald-faced lie is stupid and wrong and will never, ever work.

But I still feel bad, a little black storm gathering in my gut.

Would it be such a lie? I think.

Would two months of pretending be so hard, or so bad?

My apartment’s right in town, above Blushing Bonnie’s Bridal Boutique, which is a lot of name. There’s a small lot right behind it, and as I park there, I realize someone’s sitting on the steps leading up to my place.

Before I get out of the car, I look at my phone. There are so many missed calls and texts that I can’t even scroll through them all. I shut my phone off again, guiltily, without answering a single one of them.

That’s probably why someone’s lurking at my apartment. I glance up at them.

In the fading light, I can just make out a head full of curls.

“There you are,” Elizabeth says as I tromp up the wooden steps, carrying a grocery bag in each hand.

“Were you sent?” I ask.

“I’m here of my own free will,” she says, neatly putting her phone in her purse. “Though Mom and Dad were very relieved when I said I’d come over. You don’t have the reusable bags?”

I look down at the plastic grocery bags in each hand and feel guilty. That seems to be today’s big mood.

“I forgot them,” I admit.

“Keep them in your trunk,” Elizabeth says, like it’s just that easy.

“Then I use them and have to remember to put them back in my trunk.”

“Keep them by the front door.”

“Are we going to play this game all night or are you going to move so I can go inside?” I ask.

Elizabeth rolls her eyes but stands and lets me pass, then follows me into my apartment. I put the groceries down in my small kitchen, put the yogurt and milk into the fridge, decide everything else can wait until I feel like dealing with it, and grab a beer.

“You want one?” I ask, holding it up so Elizabeth can see it.

“Sure,” she says, leaning against my kitchen table.

I grab another, get the tops off, and hand her one. She looks at the label before taking a swig.

They’re both Loveless Brewing Sprucevale Ale. Daniel brought some over last week and these two were still in the fridge.

“Mhm,” Elizabeth says to the beer label, like it’s confirming all her suspicions.

We both drink.

And then she gives me that older sister look, eyebrows raised, lips slightly pursed, that says I know everything you’ve ever done and everything you’ll ever consider doing, so don’t even bother fucking with me.

I hate that look.

“I hear congratulations are in order,” she says.

I clear my throat, because I still haven’t exactly figured out what to do about that yet. Am I telling people we’re engaged? Am I lying to everyone? Am I leaving Daniel to fend for himself and maybe leaving Rusty for the wolves?

I could kill him. I really could.

“Thank you,” I finally say.

“I didn’t actually congratulate you,” she points out.

“Then un-thank you.”

“Because it did seem strange that you’d go from being completely platonic friends with someone to being engaged to them without so much as a hint to your family and in particular, your sister,” she says, pointedly.

I sigh, head into my living room, and drink some more. Elizabeth follows me.

“The same sister,” she goes on, following me, “Who has never told anyone one of your secrets in her entire life. Your sister who knows that you borrowed Mom’s tennis bracelet once and then lost it, and never ever told on you. Your sister who covered for you constantly when you were sixteen and dating Steve Fisher, even though Mom and Dad explicitly forbade you from seeing him. Your sister who bought you booze when you were underage, who taught you which concealer was the best for covering hickeys, who—”

“Okay!” I say, flopping onto my couch. “I get it, Betsy.”

“And yet you get engaged to someone and never once hint about it to your own flesh and blood.”

“Would you also like to invoke the pinkie promise I made to you when I was eight?” I ask, gesturing with my beer bottle. “Or maybe the time I got you high when I was twenty and we made a blood pact by pricking our fingers with safety pins and dabbing it on the back of a gas station receipt? Or perhaps the time you told me that—”

Elizabeth bursts out laughing. She laughs so hard she snorts. Satisfied, I take another long pull from my beer.

“I forgot about that,” she says, sighing. “What was our blood pact about?”

“Sisterhood, I think.”

“That’s it?”

“We were really high.”

“That remains the first and last time I’ve done drugs, you know,” she says, leaning her head back against my couch, her curls squashing against the fabric. We’ve got exactly the same hair, but somehow hers is always neat and orderly and mine is…

…not.

“You mean you’re not up all night doing eight balls?” I ask.

“I can tell you’re kidding but I don’t even know what that is,” Elizabeth says. “Other than it’s some kind of drug thing.”

“Cocaine.”

“Yikes.”

“Yup.”

I tried cocaine exactly once, when I was nineteen, dumb, and hanging out with a rough crowd. When I woke up the next morning, I couldn’t walk because the bottoms of my feet were bruised and cut to shit. Apparently, I’d insisted on running several miles home, barefoot. I never tried it again.

There’s a long pause.

“You were about to tell me what’s going on with Daniel,” she prompts.

“Was I?” I ask.

“You were,” she says.

For a second, I wonder if all big sisters are this bossy, or if it’s just mine.

“I know something’s up,” she finally says, tucking one foot under her. “And if the next words out of your mouth are ‘Daniel and I are engaged’ you can just get right the fuck out of here because I’m not going to believe you.”

“It’s my apartment,” I point out.

“Then don’t lie to me,” she says.

I hold my breath and stare at her for a long moment. I have no idea what to do. I was all set to make up some other version of the truth, one where the rumor was wrong and something that Daniel said in court got twisted.

But I’m having a hard time getting that version out of my mouth, mostly because I know she won’t believe me for a second.

“Charles,” she says, her eyes still holding mine.

I let the breath out in a rush.

“Daniel had a hearing today, and it was supposed to be about visitation but then Crystal made it about custody, and also she’s married and pregnant and respectable now and the judge they got always sides with mothers, and so apparently Daniel panicked and told them we’re engaged so he’d seem more respectable,” I say.

“Oh, shit,” she murmurs.

“And at first, he thought that if I just put on a ring and came to the next hearing and we, like, held hands or something it would be fine, because he only told the people in the courtroom, right?” I go on, rubbing my knuckles against my forehead. “Which would have been fine, honestly, I don’t want him to lose custody either. Except of course nothing in this stupid town stays secret for even two seconds, and the next thing I knew Mom called me, shouting about Mavis Bresley.”

Elizabeth considers this seriously, looking into her beer bottle.

“Did that make sense?” I ask.

“So now, if you tell people you’re not engaged, it’ll come out that Daniel lied to a judge in a custody hearing,” she says.

“A judge who apparently has a long history of siding with mothers over fathers,” I say. “The fuck do I do, Betsy? Besides kill Daniel for putting me in this position, though that would also mean that Crystal gets custody of Rusty so that would render the whole point moot.”

She stares at the blank space of my TV for a long moment. Too long, absentmindedly clinking her wedding ring against the glass beer bottle.

“I mean, he’s had full custody for years, and Rusty was taken away from Crystal by CPS, and she’s doing so well with Daniel that even if it did come out that he lied, it wouldn’t matter, right?” I say.

She’s still frowning, clinking, staring.

“Earth to Betsy.”

“I had this student a couple of years ago,” she says. “The sweetest little boy you could imagine. He was kind of quiet, but he was really smart, got along well with all his classmates, very polite. Just a great kid. At the first back-to-school night I find out that he’s being raised by his grandparents, this absolutely lovely older couple, and as I get to know him a little better, I learn that his parents were meth heads who’d neglected him until he wound up in the hospital.”

I swallow hard.

“Well, his mom got clean,” she says. “And, long story short, she sued the grandparents for custody and won. We all left for winter break and I never saw him again.”

The story feels like a punch in the gut.

“That was grandparents, not an actual parent, so I’m sure it’s different,” she says quickly. “But…”

I lean forward, elbows on knees.

“…Daniel probably needs everything he can get,” she says quietly.

“Betsy, I can’t act engaged,” I say. “I can’t just tell everyone I know that we’re, you know, in love and getting married. I’m a terrible liar. I’m a terrible actress. This farce is going to last exactly one point one seconds, and then we’re going to get found out and it’s going to be even worse than if I just said no.”

“Chuck,” she says slowly. “Everyone already thinks it’s true.”

“Only because they heard the rumor,” I say. “Once we have to actually—”

“They think it’s true because it’s believable,” she says. “Admittedly, it’s been like six hours, but everyone who’s called me has been like oh my God, finally, not I think this is a farce.”

I look away from the floor and over at her, and I can feel the heat creeping into my face.

“You’re the only one who thinks this is some crazy, unbelievable lie,” she says. “Well, and me. I didn’t think you guys were a thing, for the record. But I think that telling people you are will raise exactly zero eyebrows.”

“What about Mom and Dad?”

Elizabeth looks at me steadily.

“I’ve fielded some inquiries,” she says.

“I don’t know how to act engaged,” I protest. “What do I do? Do I have to kiss him in front of people? Hold hands? Do… engaged stuff?”

I can tell that my face has gone flaming red as the images float through my mind: holding hands. His arms around me.

Kissing.

I pretty much break out in a sweat at that one. A memory tries to surface, and I frantically push it back down.

Elizabeth just shrugs.

“Hold hands once in a while, give him a peck on the cheek, act like you normally do, and you’re fine,” she says. “It’s not like you’re a medieval queen and everyone needs to watch you get deflowered.”

I just stare at her, and she waves a hand.

“Sorry. It used to be a thing. And yes, I know that your v-card got swiped long ago,” she says.

“My vag is not a credit card reader,” I mutter, then finish off my beer.

When it’s gone, I look down at the label: Loveless Brewing Co., Sprucevale, Virginia. My mind feels fractured, like I’m trying to have a thousand thoughts at once, but none of them can form more than halfway before being shoved aside by the next one.

“What happened to the kid whose mom got him back?” I finally ask, voice quiet.

“I don’t know,” Elizabeth says. “I never followed up.”

She leaves I couldn’t bear to unspoken.

I stand. I take her empty beer bottle and walk to the kitchen.

“I’m getting some water,” I call. “You want anything?”

TWO HOURS LATER, after we have a mishmash of leftovers for dinner, Elizabeth leaves and I finally gather the courage to look at my phone. I’ve had it on Do Not Disturb mode this whole time, but even so, the battery is at 5%.

I have more texts than I can read. Texts from people I haven’t talked to in years. Texts from numbers I don’t recognize. There are two texts from international numbers, because apparently my fake news has even made it overseas.

It would be sweet if it weren’t so nerve-wracking.

Congratulations!

The two of you are soooo good together!

Can’t wait for the wedding – I knew something was up!

So happy you’re engaged! You guys are perfect.

Haha, I always thought you guys were up to something! Congrats.

They’re endless. They’re unfailingly positive. They’re emoji-filled. At least fifty percent of the people who’ve texted me claim that they just knew that Daniel and I were secretly dating.

Reading the texts has the weight of certainty. Elizabeth was right. She usually is, a fact which has been annoying me my entire life.

I bite my lip. I shut my eyes for a moment, because what I’m about to do seems completely, utterly, and totally insane.

Then I text Daniel.