Bargaining with the Bride (Honeybrook Love, Inc. 1)

There was no running from herself, and especially no running from Garret. He'd been in every good part of her life. Her work, her home, her everything.

That was part of the reason why she loved him so much.

And that was, undoubtedly, part of the reason she had to leave.

14

Rachael heard the door open, but didn't bother to look up. Vacantly, she wondered if it was Garret, back to pick up something he'd left, but even in her addled state, she knew that couldn't be the case.

As with everything Garret did, his sweep of the house had been thorough to the point of painfulness. The television was gone, the dog bowl, the dog food, Tesla...

She sniffled again and swirled the wine in her glass, remembering the way the pudgy pug always used to have his tongue lolling out of his mouth. She missed that. Missed...well, everything.

A creak in the floorboard let her know that the person at the door stepped inside, and she finally willed herself to pick up her head as her sister rounded the corner to join her in the living room.

"I just dropped off mom and dad at the airport. They wanted to see you...I thought you could probably do with some alone time, though." Eliza spoke to her like she was a mental patient. Though, when Rachael opened her mouth to thank her and hiccupped instead, she wondered if she could blame her little sister for her concern.

Nobody spoke to Rachael for a week since the almost-faked-wedding, and half of her wondered if her sister only dropped by in order to make sure that raccoons hadn't snuck into the house in order to feast on her corpse.

"I haven't been able to reach you." Eliza said.

"No." Rachael hiccupped again, then set her wine glass onto the coffee table and pulled her knees up to her chest. "My phone is dead."

"Okay." Eliza said slowly, and then stared around the house before taking a deep breath and starting over. "Listen, I'm not sure if I'm overstepping my bounds here, but I have to know if you’ve been wearing this thing all week." Eliza grasped the tulle skirt of Rachael's wedding gown and rustled it.

"No. Just today. I felt...compelled. It's stupid." Rachael knew she should have felt embarrassed, but she could hardly bring herself to feel anything anymore. She, like the house, was just so...empty. Her lungs were bruised from racking themselves with tears and all the water had long since dried from her eyes. Now, she just sat around the house and stared, wondering how she'd ever thought a fake marriage was a good idea.

Or how Garret had been a good idea.

"Probably not very comfortable." Eliza offered, then set her hand on Rachael's knee and added. "Though you do look beautiful in it."

She'd thought she'd been out of tears, but the second her sister offered her that pitying smile, she was instantly proven wrong. Streams ran down her face, and breathed deep, trying to staved off the fresh sting of her depression.

Through her sobs, she thought she heard her sister mumble something about having said the wrong thing, but then her warm, toned arms were around her, and Rachael sank into the embrace, thanking god that her sister was there to fill some of the emptiness that surrounded her.

When the tears finally dried again, she made an excuse to go change and pulled her wild curls back into a sloppy bun. In sweats and a T-shirt, she still looked like a walking disaster, but at least she didn't look like she'd walked straight out of Dickens anymore.

She descended the stairs to find her sister perched in the corner of the couch where Garret always used to sit, but Rachael pushed past the stab of memory and sat beside her sister.

"So, how were mom and dad? Did they want to drop by and offer their I-told-you-so's?" Rachael raised her eyebrows, but Eliza shook her head.

"Maybe, but I wouldn't have let it come to that. I think dad was worried. Mom...was mom." Eliza said the words with ill-disguised disgust.

"Angry that their money went to waste?"

Eliza shrugged. "The way I see it, you can't have cost them more money than I have in the long run. Trips to come help me escape from Turkish prisons, wondering if I'd been abducted by sheiks... I'd say they got off easy with you." Her sister offered her a genuine smile and Rachael returned it.

"Maybe so, but at least you got an adventure out of it. And a story."

"I think somewhere along the way, you got a pretty good story, too. It'll just take some time to tell it, that's all." Eliza patted her hand, and then held it for a long moment while silence rested over them.

She'd known what Eliza had said was meant to comfort her, but the idea of Garret just being a

n anecdote? Some story to tell? The knife of a thought stuck between her ribs and twisted, making it hard for her to breathe.

When she'd finally shoved the idea aside, Rachael leaned back into the cushions and closed her eyes. She had to force herself to ask the questions she still couldn't figure out answers to. "So what do I do now? He was my boss. It's not like I can go back to work and be around him when I still lo—" She caught herself and breathed deep before starting again. "I can't be around him. And now I have no reason to stay here and no place to go. It's not like I can pick up and go back home and be around our parents. Frankly, I have no idea how you live with those people."

"Necessity. Let's not speak of it." Eliza answered.