Fakers (Licking Thicket 1)

Three minutes later, she broke the silence. “You know… I wasn’t going to tell you this, but…” She stopped talking until I looked down at her again. I wondered if she had news of Brooks. Hell would freeze over before I asked her.

“But what?” I finally blurted.

“Paul decided to stay in New York. He said things were too unsettled between us. It wasn’t worth the risk.”

I blinked at her, completely unable to comprehend what she was saying. “What? What the fuck? What? Why? Brooks said Paul was moving to the Thicket. What?” I sounded like an idiot, but what could have possibly happened to turn a lovesick Paul Siegel into someone who’d walk away from Ava Ivey?

She shrugged and kept her eyes down on the hand she held protectively over her stomach. “I guess I don’t deserve him.”

“Bullshit,” I snapped, climbing back down off the ladder and rushing over to crouch by her feet. “Maybe he’s the one who doesn’t deserve you.” I thought about what a kind and sweet man he was and knew this couldn’t be right. “He’s just scared, honey. You need to talk to him. Tell him to get his head out of his ass. That man adores you. He worships the ground you walk on.”

“But he lives in New York, and I’m going to be in Tennessee. How can I ask him to move to Licking Thicket and give up his career?”

“You won’t be asking him to give up his career! He can have a career in Licking Thicket. Brooks said Paul would do local ad jobs or milk cows for you. There’s no shame in that. If he loved you enough, he’d figure it the fuck out.” I took her hands in mine. “Hell, Ava. You asked me to move there for you. Why can’t you ask the man you care about to do the same?”

She finally looked up at me, and I saw the truth in her eyes. She’d been playing me.

“Paul’s moving to the Thicket, isn’t he?”

She nodded.

“Good. I didn’t think he was dumb enough to walk away from the woman he loves.”

“Then why did you walk away from Brooks?” she asked softly. “You care about him. You might even love him. Why didn’t you tell him?”

I opened my mouth, then shut it again. “It’s different with us,” I finally said, getting back to my feet.

“Don’t you dare tell lies like that in front of my baby, Malachi Forrester.” Ava put her drink down so she could lay both palms against her perfectly flat stomach, like she was blocking the fetus’s ears.

“Can babies that young even hear?” I demanded, sorting through the variety of smaller parts I’d laid out on the table earlier.

“Irrelevant. He can sense your lies.”

I looked up at her. “Oh my God! Your baby has Jedi truth sense? Holy shit, who was that guy at Beyond Wonderland?”

“Mal.”

I turned back to the sculpture. “And it’s a boy? You’re calling it right now?”

“Malachi.”

“Because I’m picking girl, and I’ve never been wrong about this. Probably because I’ve never actually tried to guess before, but still…”

“Mal, turn around and look at me. All that shit you said to me applies to you too! How in the world do you think you don’t deserve love? How can you possibly think what you have with Brooks isn’t worth at least taking a risk to see if it could be more? He cares about you, you know.”

“Of course I know.” After that night in his brother’s cabin, how could I not? “But he cared about you too, back in the day. And he cares about his family. He… he cares about a lot of things, Ava. Including his career in New York. And when it came time to pick between the things he cared about ten years ago, you know what he picked.”

“But—”

I spun to face her. “Ava, babe. I’ve made up my mind. I won’t do that to him or to myself. Reality is reality, and what happens in the Thicket stays in the Thicket.”

She pushed her lips together unhappily but said nothing.

I knew she meant well. She loved me so much she couldn’t imagine anyone not loving me. But I knew better.

Brooks and I had spent the last week in a Licking Thicket bubble—a human snow globe where everything was idyllic and sparkly bright and perfect. I’d fallen hard and fast, and I couldn’t have stopped it if I’d tried. I couldn’t even bring myself to regret it.

But no matter how tempting it was to listen to Ava, Brooks had been really clear about how important his career was and how happy it made him. I had no doubt that once he got back to his real life, he’d see how crazy the thought of moving to Tennessee permanently really was, if he hadn’t already. He might miss me temporarily, but ultimately he’d be glad he hadn’t tied himself down. God knew my own family seemed to get along without me just fine.