Page 45 of Just (Fake) Married (Calloways vs. McGraws #1)

THIRTY

ETHAN

Carter: Emergency McGraw camping trip.

Mac: Carter, it’s five am, we need more notice.

Carter: We leave tomorrow morning at dawn.

Mac: Why?

Carter: Because Ethan’s a fool.

Tag: I’ll be there.

Mac: I’ll bring the beer.

Ethan: This is not my fault.

Carter: It’s totally Ethan’s fault.

Mac: How so?

Carter: Because the idiot fell in love and he doesn’t even realize it.

I half wondered if my brothers were taking me camping so they could shoot me and no one would know it. Because the way they were acting towards me, they definitely wanted to shoot me.

It was two miles up to Sugar Creek at the edge of the property line between McGraw and Calloway land and I got the silent treatment the whole time.

“You called this camping trip,” I said to Carter, turning around on the horse Tag had saddled for me. Diablo. I should have known I was getting his horse as a punishment. Slow as molasses, he walked up to every bush trying to rub me right off of him.

When I nudged him to speed up, he bucked. Just a little. Enough to tell me he wouldn’t be having any of that.

“Jesus, Diablo.”

He flung his head around and stopped dead in the middle of the trail to have an enormous pee.

The boys all passed me without a word. Years ago, they would have tossed a dozen jokes on my head. Laughed all the way to the campground about how I couldn’t control my horse. But all they did was glare at me as they went by.

It was a gorgeous day. The sun was a butter ball in a sky so blue it seemed like something I could reach up and touch.

It was the kind of day that would normally send a spike of dopamine through me.

The vitamin D uptake alone would do me good for weeks.

But I was numb to all of it. There was an anxious ticker tape running through the back of my head every second.

What happened? Why did she do this? Was she okay?

Camping was literally the last thing I wanted to do today, but I woke up to three large men standing at the edge of my bed before dawn. I might have been alarmed if they hadn’t been showing me a phone screen with Seth’s goofy smile.

“Get your shit together,” Carter told me, stone faced.

“Cause they are gonna kick the shit out of you!” Seth crowed on a fuzzy FaceTime call. “Damn, I wish I was there to see it.”

Diablo was finally done pissing and was in no hurry to catch up with everyone. Instead, ignoring me, he sidled up to a fallen tree at the side of the trail and rubbed up against it. Squeezing my leg between the tree and his body.

“Knock it off,” I said, pulling the reins in the opposite direction.

“Having trouble with my horse?” Tag asked.

“You did this on purpose.” I hadn’t been on a horse in years and I’d never felt so much like a city slicker. Ever.

“Might have.”

“If this is about Harmony, you should know she left me!”

Tag shook his head and turned the horse he was riding away from me. Diablo, obviously over me, tried to turn around and go back to the barn.

Finally, we got to the bend in Sugar Creek where we always camped. And the sight of it hit me in the chest like a two by four.

This. This place had been the source of all my happiness growing up. Because my mother left the raising of her boys to her husband and her husband didn’t understand I wasn’t exactly like him. But here, it was my brothers who knew me and loved me and I could be myself here.

There was a grove of trees and a sandy spot at the river where we could stand and fish.

By the time Diablo and I showed up, Mac was submerging a bottle of whiskey in a patch of lingering snow drift by the creek bed. Tag was building the fire and Carter was already tying a hook on his fishing line.

“Don’t worry everybody, I made it here just fine,” I said to them.

No response.

“It’s bullshit you brought me out here if you’re not even going to talk to me,” I said.

“We’ll talk when we’re ready,” Carter said. “You can set up the tent.”

Setting up the tent was a bullshit job. The job we always made Mac or Eli, when he was able to join us, as the youngest do.

Mac grinned at me over by the creek. “I think it’s missing some poles,” he said. “Good luck.”

“Come on!” I cried. “If you’re going to yell at me, just do it.”

“Nothing to yell about,” Carter said, dropping his line in the stream. The trout here were always biting and in almost no time he pulled out his first fish.

“She left me,” I said. “Not the other way around.”

“What did you say to her?” Tag asked. And frankly, the fact that Tag thought he might know something about the rich, internal life of women was hilarious to me. As far as I knew, he hadn’t dated anyone seriously since high school.

“Nothing!” I said, and a cold chill went down my spine.

“Yeah?” Carter said, eyeing me. “And what did she say to you?”

That she loved me.

We both know you’ll get the job.

This was about Phoenix.

“I have a job interview in Arizona the day after the festival,” I confessed. Stunned, the boys stared at me before swearing the air blue.

“Did she know?” Carter said, and I nodded. More swearing from the cowboy gallery.

“No wonder she fucking left you, you asshole,” Tag said. “You were already out the door.”

“Yeah, you have no reason to be mad at her. I’m surprised she stuck around as long as she did,” Carter said, looking away from me, disgusted. Which was fine, I was disgusted with myself.

“I asked her if she would consider visiting me,” I said, like that was anything to be proud of. “Maybe we could figure out a situation that would work for both of us.”

“For a guy who is so smart, you sure are stupid,” Carter said.

Mac stood up, wiping his wet hands on his jeans. The sun came streaming through the leaves and as he walked towards me he moved through shadow and light. While I knew my brother was a man, I guess I never really stopped thinking of him as a boy.

“Do you love her?” he asked.

I didn’t know what to say. I’d never been in love. I’d never actually seen love in action, except for Carter and Lilly, and that love had just been a fact. A thing we grew up with. A known entity. What I felt for Harmony was surprising and wild and all-consuming.

Distracting.

Being a surgeon took all of my focus, almost all my energy. How could I be a surgeon and be in love with Harmony? How would that work? Could it? I didn’t want to give her a fraction of my life – she deserved more.

“I don’t know.”

“That’s a chicken shit answer,” Mac said, speaking to me like he had all the wisdom in the world when it came to love.

“Then tell me what’s a good answer,” I yelled, frustrated by him, and Tag and Carter acting all holier than thou when they had their own heads up their asses. “I’m a surgeon. That’s my life. That’s what I do and it’s who I am. So how does a woman like Harmony fit? Tell me?”

“A woman like Harmony doesn’t fit anywhere. A woman like Harmony is your life,” Carter said. He pulled up another fish and took it off the hook like we weren’t having a conversation about my life right now. “The rest of that shit fits around her.”

Being a surgeon didn’t fit around anything.

I wiped my face. All these years, I never talked about my job with my brothers and maybe I should have.

Because they were all looking at me like they just didn’t get it.

College, med school, internships, residencies and specializations.

The shit sandwich I had to eat almost daily from my boss because that’s how departmental hierarchies worked.

“I thought you liked working at the clinic?” Tag asked.

“Sure. Of course. But it’s like…a vacation, you know?”

“No,” Tag said. “I don’t know. Explain to me how helping people and saving a woman’s life is a vacation.”

“It’s simple. It’s easy. It’s…borderline fun.”

“And that’s bad?” Carter asked.

“It’s not what I do.”

“It’s what you’re doing now,” Tag said. “A job like that and getting into bed every night with Harmony Calloway? Sounds like a sweet deal to me,” he whistled, and I felt a jealous rage like I’d never felt before. If I left would Tag date her?

“What the fuck, Tag?” I shouted. “That’s my wife.”

“Your wife in name only,” Mac said. “The second she becomes ex-Mrs. McGraw she’ll be back out there on the market.”

I didn’t like that. Of course I didn’t like that.

“You know,” Carter said. “Dad is dead. There’s nothing left to prove to him anymore.”

I blinked. Shifted my feet. Kicked the tent bag.

“This isn’t about Dad,” I said, even though I knew, judging by the way I wanted to punch Carter, that wasn’t entirely true.

“This has always been about Dad,” Carter said with a laugh, and everyone nodded with him. “You can relax and enjoy your life instead of trying to impress a dead man. The only person you’re hurting is yourself.”

“And Harmony.” Tags words hit me square in the chest. What would it be like to enjoy my job? To not play games and kiss asses and climb ladders? What would it be like to talk to my patients every day instead of operating on them as they slept?

Would I miss the adrenaline? The money? The fame?

Would I miss it more than I would miss Harmony if I left?

The answer made it all clear. Crystal clear. Like the sunlight in this old familiar place. I sucked in a big lungful of air and let all the bullshit float away.

Nothing was worth more than Harmony.

“Breaking a woman’s heart changes a man,” Mac said, quietly. “Ruins a piece of you. I’d say you better fix this before she decides you’re not worth it.”

“How?” I said, and they all turned to look at me.

“You’re thinking about staying?” Tag asked. I nodded. “For real?”

“For real,” I said.

“Do you love her?” Carter asked. “Because she doesn’t deserve to be fucked around by you anymore. She’s good people.”

“I love her,” I said, and laughed. The joy of finally letting myself feel what I wanted to feel was exhilarating.

“I really love being back home. I love you three idiots. I love the work at the clinic and I am fake married to the woman of my dreams. I love that she saves oddball animals, and can’t remember the days of the week and wears her sweaters backwards half the time.

I love that she’s gonna be mayor of this place one day.

And I’m going to give her babies and watch her be an amazing mom.

I love her with all my heart. But she broke up with me, so tell me how I fix this. ”

“Have you tried sex?” Carter said, and all of us laughed. “I’m serious, when Lilly was pissed, I’d get her naked and that usually fixed things right up. Or margaritas. Have you tried those?”

“I don’t know if margaritas are enough,” I said. “We’ve made a mess of things with this fake relationship and she says she doesn’t know what’s real and what’s fake anymore.”

“You need to do something big,” Mac said, and Tag nodded.

“Grand gesture,” he said.

“I am not taking love advice from a bachelor like you,” I said to my old friend.

“Suit yourself, but it’s what they do in the movies,” he said.

“This is easy, you’re overthinking it,” Mac said. “What does she want more than anything else? Figure that out and give it to her. Problem solved.”

Mac looked around like he’d cured cancer and Carter reached into the river and splashed him.

“Fuck, that’s cold!” Mac cried, and splashed his brother back.

“Watch it!” Tag shouted, jumping away from the spray zone.

What did Harmony want more than anything else? The answer was so easy. So obvious. I clapped my hands together, pulling the soaking wet men away from their childish water fight.

“I got it,” I said. “But I’m going to need your help.”

“Of course,” Carter said. Tag and Mac nodded. “Whatever you need.”

“But we’re fishing now, right?” Tag said. “You know, because we just got here?”

“Yeah,” I said. I had my phone and cell reception was pretty good out here. I could get the ball rolling on my big plan. “We can fish today, but tomorrow we’re going to make some Last Hope Gulch history. Tomorrow, we ride.”