Page 16 of Mine

“You have a problem with me, that much is clear.”

“And you decided marriage was the answer?”

He ran a hand through his hair, making it seem like I was the difficult one here. Ruining his perfectly sane, totally logical fake marriage plan.

“We just pretend to be married?” I blurted out, hating myself for considering it.

“No, there will be paperwork. In case of a background check, or some other crazy insight the guy wants. I need it to be real. Plus, it makes it ‘not a lie’ when we have to tell people. But we don’t have to swap ‘I do’s.’”

“We have to tell people?”

“If we’re asked.”

“We’ll be asked. So do we tell our families the truth?”

He hesitated. “Truthfully, we will be married. So yes, and no. No one needs to know it's a plan.”

“Not the staff? Not your brothers?”

“No one.”

“Not even your grandparents?” I asked.

He went still. “Especially not them.”

That hit me right in the feels. Because if there was one universal truth in this town, it was that the Brooks family meant something. They were solid. Respected. Loved.

And he was willing to lie to all of them.

“For a bar?” I whispered, half to myself.

He checked his watch. “I have dinner with the family. Then I’m headed back to the city. Use the number.” He pointed to the card still in my hand. “Text me your answer.”

And just like that, he left me standing there with my heart pounding, brain melting, and future unraveling. I sat down hard on the old couch, half convinced it might swallow me whole and kind of wishing that was exactly what it would.

What the actual hell just happened?

Chapter Eight

WEST

SUNDAY DINNER

The usual chaosof Sunday dinner buzzed around me with forks clinking, stories flying, Gramps half-yelling over someone else’s joke while Grams tried to wrangle everyone back on topic.

In the middle of it all, they asked about Fiddlers and I kept my answers short and clean.

“It was available. Needed someone who gave a damn to keep it alive.”

That was good enough for them because it wasn’t unlike me to buy something that needed to be tended to. They moved on to family updates. Easton and Jesse were making plans to go to Loxley’s show in Virginia Beach next weekend. Miles and Lox weren’t here, but Grams told us they were already planning to lay low once they got back to town, the same way they had when they first met.

I nodded and pretended to listen, but my head was somewhere else. Specifically, back in that dingy office with Blue.

I’d made my fourth, and easily the most reckless, impulse decision of my life:

I asked her to marry me. Well, I didn’t exactly ask, it was more of a suggestion.

I didn’t even know her last name. Had no idea where she lived. She could’ve been anyone, and yet something told me she was the only person who might actually understand the mess I was in.