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. “Maybe.”

Reagan shook her head before kissing her forehead. “I don’t know what you’re going to do with that big ass dragon, but it’s yours.”

Libby chuckled. “Good,” she decided before wiggling her way beneath Reagan’s arm and resting her head on her bare chest.

“By the way, my friends don’t hate you. I know you were thinking of Imani when you said that. She’s gonna be annoyed that I let an NDA keep me from telling her the real story, but once she’s got all the holes filled in, she’ll stop trying to figure out what we’re hiding and get to know you and love you like I do,” Reagan explained with enviable confidence while running her fingers through Libby’s hair.

“I don’t know… you didn’t see how pissed at me she was,” Libby replied as she traced shapes on Reagan’s belly with her fingertip.

“Trust me, okay?”

Libby nodded. “I wish you could tell me my grandma was going to take it in stride.”

“Me too,” Reagan agreed before giving her a squeeze and kissing the top of her head.

“I had my chance to be honest with her at the start of all this and I blew it. There’s no way she’s going to understand why I did what I did.” Fear crept up from her chest and threatened to crush the air from her lungs.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. All you can do is open up and be honest. You have no control over what she does with that.”

“That’s not exactly encouraging,” she replied, wishing she could skip past the conversation and be done with it.

“Well, it’s the truth. Plus, I think Mrs. Cassanova loves you more than you realize. Under that tough exterior is a woman who just wants what’s best for you.”

Libby shot up in bed. “Are you sure we’re talking about the same person here? What do you know that I don’t? Are you two secret besties or something?”

Reagan laughed as she reached up and dragged her back down to her lips. “You know I try and look beyond the surface, okay? Call it a gut intuition.”

Libby kissed her until her stomach rumbled and demanded to be fed. “Come on, Ms. Gut Intuition. Why don’t you buy me breakfast? I’ll confront my nightmare after some pastelitos.”

C H A P T E R 3 6

IDLING in her grandmother’s driveway, Libby stared at the front door as if they were the fiery gates of hell. Does hell have gates? She’d always imagined it more like an open pit.

Libby forced her focus back to the present and away from the brimstone. “Okay, one foot in front of the other.” She tried to swallow the lump in her throat, but it was unmoving.

“Let’s just get this over with.”

Jumping out of her SUV, Libby’s knees trembled so hard that for a moment she wasn’t sure they’d hold her. Each tentative step was like walking the plank into shark-invested waters. Nothing had worked to calm her, not Reagan’s encouragement or a full hour of meditation. All she could see was her grandmother’s justified rage.

Ringing the doorbell instead of running back to the safety of her car, Libby was surprised when her grandmother answered the door herself.

“I was wondering when you were going to come in rather than sitting out there like some cut-rate private investigator,” she said in greeting rather than a traditional hello.

“Hi, Mima,” Libby said before giving her a peck on the cheek. “Where’s Marta?”

“I sent her to the store when you told me you wanted to come by,” she replied, closing the front door behind them.

Libby wanted to make a joke about how ominous it made her visit sound, but her grandmother wasn’t one for jokes and she was right to sense the need for privacy. She followed her to the informal living room without comment, where the sight of Reagan’s creation still on the mantle gave her strength.

“I didn’t expect you were here to hand-deliver the pieces I purchased last night,” her grandmother said as she sat on one end of the very sti sofa while Libby sat on the other.

“So, don’t keep me in suspense. What do you want to tell me?”

Her grandmother’s forthrightness was usually o -

putting, but in that moment, Libby was grateful to cut to the chase. This was a band-aid that desperately needed to be ripped o , even if it did take half her body hair with it.

Libby started from the very beginning while her grandmother sat motionless and listened to the reality of her relationship with Davis, how he’d dumped her but she’d pretended to still be engaged for nearly a year, and how she ended up hiring Reagan to be her fake girlfriend before actually falling in love with her.