The Wedding Date Disaster (Harbor City 4)

Guilt ate away at Hadley’s gut, a constant gnawing that she felt all the way to her bones. Adalyn stood on the other side of Gabe’s office, every square inch of which was covered with printouts, random pieces of ranch equipment, and no less than five sweat-stained baseball hats bearing the Nebraska Cornhuskers logo.

This room was the one place where all the kids had come for advice or just to hang out while Gabe did the work most folks didn’t think about—the ordering, the accounting, the figuring out how to get through the lean years. It was the place where she and her siblings had all been given their horse nicknames when they first moved in and where they all informally took on the Martinez surname in a homemade ceremony devised by Adalyn right before Hadley had left for college. One family. One heart. One name, even if it wasn’t court official.

And right now, Hadley realized just how much her inability to admit failure had betrayed that pledge they’d all made to be a family, in it together, always.

“I’ve been lying,” she said.

Arms crossed, mascara smudged, Adalyn sniffed back her tears. “What are you talking about?”

Hadley took a deep breath, pushed back every ingrained instinct to cover up the ugly truth, and looked her sister dead in the eyes. “I’m a fraud.”

Adalyn snorted. “That is so not true.”

“It is.” It was time. Really, it was way past time. The need to make everything seem perfect had been part of her DNA since she and her mom had opened the garage door and found her dad in the front seat, overcome by fumes. Today, she was going to rewrite her code. She was going to take control—disastrous warts and all—of who she was, inside and out.

“My job? Nonexistent since I got fired the week before I flew out here.” She straightened her shoulders and let out a long breath. “My apartment? About the size of your walk-in closet, made to look bigger thanks to knowing the angles when I take pics. Plus, I share it, because there’s no way I could afford it on my own. My boyfriend?” She glanced back at the half-closed door that, knowing her family, would soon be opened to adm

it the others. “Actually, Will isn’t Web at all. He’s Web’s twin brother who pretty much hates my guts.” She crossed over to her sister. “My clothes are secondhand. My credit cards are maxed. My patience is frayed. And my grasp on anything ever working out is tenuous on a good day, and those are getting fewer and farther between.” She took her sister’s hand in hers, amazed at how they were the same size. Just as she wasn’t the girl she’d been at fourteen on that awful day, Adalyn wasn’t eight and in need of shielding anymore. She was a grown-ass woman, and it was beyond time for Hadley to recognize that as well. “I failed at absolutely everything I set out to do when I left here, and I’ve been too scared to admit it to anyone.”

“Too scared or too proud?”

Ow. That hit right in the feels. “Probably both.”

Adalyn sat down on the couch, pulling Hadley with her, and let her head fall back against the afghan blanket draped across the back. “And all this time, I thought I had to put on this big wedding no matter what my gut was telling me because I wanted you to finally see me as someone who’d grown up and was worthy of your Instagram-filtered status and attention.”

“Adalyn, you are so beyond worthy.” She pivoted to face her sister, needing her to understand more than she needed oxygen at that point. “I’m so sorry for keeping my mouth shut.”

“Why did you do it? Why didn’t you trust us enough to tell us—tell me—the truth?”

The hurt in her little sister’s voice grabbed Hadley and wouldn’t let go. And when her mom, Gabe, Knox, and Weston filtered in, she realized that all she’d accomplished by pretending her life in Harbor City was perfect was to push away the very people she most loved—the last thing she wanted to do. They were overbearing, a little too involved, and knew exactly how to push every one of her buttons, but they were her family. She loved them more than anyone else in the world, just like they loved her. It was about time she acted accordingly.

“After Dad died…” No, it was time to use the words. “After he killed himself, well, it was easier to act as if everything was fine rather than to admit how sad and hurt I was.” She’d gotten lost in the strangest things, like rearranging the fridge to accommodate all the casserole dishes people dropped off or playing round after round of Rummy with Knox. “I loved Dad, and it felt like the worst kind of betrayal to be mad at him. I was old enough to know he’d been very sad for a very long time even if he tried to cover it with jokes and pranks and surprise trips for ice cream. Showing how damn angry I was didn’t seem like an option, so I didn’t.” She’d become perpetually peppy and positive. Everything would work out because of the sheer force of her will alone. “After that, it just got to be a habit. I didn’t want Mom to worry when I went to Harbor City, so I spiffed up the truth.” She glanced over at her mom and offered up an apologetic look. “I took on this fake-it-until-you-make-it philosophy about everything—even when it came to my family. I lied to all of you.”

Weston sat down on the corner of Gabe’s desk. “So the nonprofit consulting job?”

“I had that,” she said. “I just happened to be at the very bottom rung of the ladder, and then I got fired.”

“And you don’t have an apartment?” her mom asked.

“I do, but it’s tiny, and I have a roommate.”

“And the guy out there who looks at you like he can’t wait to carry you off and do things I won’t mention in front of Mom, Gabe, and the boys, he’s pretend?” Adalyn asked.

“No.” She glared at her sister, whose expression had changed to one of smug I’m-right-and-you’re-wrong that only a sibling could give. “He’s real. He just hates me.”

Gabe lifted a dark eyebrow. “Huh.”

“Sounds to me like yes, you’ve been lying to us, but the bigger issue is that you’ve been telling a helluva lotta lies to yourself,” Knox said as he looked at her like she was the world’s biggest dumbass.

What in the hell was going on? She’d fucked up, but it wasn’t because she was being willfully obtuse. She’d been protecting them.

Hadley looked from one member of her family to the next. “What are you talking about?”

“We don’t care how fancy you are in the big city or if the guy you are obviously head over heels about is fake,” Adalyn said. “We just want you to be happy. Are you?”

Swallowing the urge to spill even more feelings onto the floor in Gabe’s office—what was it about this room that always seemed to encourage confessions?—she ignored her sister’s question. “I didn’t come back here to deep dive into my brain but to apologize for making you feel like you had to throw this big wedding to impress me.”

“So you’re good with me holding a bouquet of wildflowers out on the prairie with Gabe singing Elvis?”