The Pact (Winslow Brothers 2)

“Lied about what, darling?”

I stare at them, the words not coming as easily as I’d like.

“Daisy?” Gwen questions gently. “You know you can tell me anything and I won’t be mad.”

Her kind words are my undoing.

“I didn’t marry Flynn because we were in love!” I burst out in a rush. “I married him because my US work visa expired, and he offered to help me get a green card! And now everything is fucked, and I left him because the lies became too much and I was feeling too much and I shouldn’t have been feeling too much because it’s all fake, and now I’m going to have to move back to Canada without a job and I don’t know what I’m doing with my life anymore! It’s like I’m purposely trying to destroy it!”

Gwen’s eyes nearly bug out of her head.

“You did what?” Damien’s chiseled jaw turns to jelly. “You married Flynn for a green card?”

I nod and swipe my hand across my face to clear my blurred vision. “It’s why I’m in New York. We had to show proof of living together for Immigration.”

“Well, this is certainly some news,” Gwen mutters.

“You should’ve told me, Daisy,” Damien states, and his lips turn down at the corners. “I could’ve helped you. I mean, I’m sure there was another work-around for an expired visa that didn’t include marrying a stranger.”

I grimace through more tears.

But even if you could go back in time, you still wouldn’t change any of it.

The realization hits me straight in the chest, and I have to swallow back another onslaught of tears. Though, it only half works. I’m still crying, just not sobbing like my hiccuping lungs and shaky throat would prefer.

“Damn, doll, when you go, you go all the way, don’t you?” Damien questions rhetorically. “So…you married Flynn, but now, you’re not with Flynn? Did I get that right?”

I nod and rub an irritated hand down my face. “Tonight, at Flynn’s brother Jude’s rehearsal dinner, I lost it. I stormed out and we had a big fight in the street, and I told him I couldn’t do it anymore.”

And then you booked a hotel room, found out you’re pregnant, and took twenty tests just to verify.

Internally, I cringe. And I decide right then and there that even though I’m done with the lies, I can’t tell them the full truth. I can’t tell them I’m pregnant before Flynn knows I’m pregnant.

That would feel completely wrong.

“Why did you do that?” Gwen asks in her always-comforting tone.

I shrug. Sniffle. “I don’t know what came over me. But I guess the guilt of what we were doing, and the lies we’ve been telling everyone, reached a breaking point I couldn’t handle. I just couldn’t keep living the lie. I couldn’t keep acting like we were this happy couple in front of his family when, deep down, I knew it would all come to a crashing end soon.”

Are you sure that’s the only reason?

I’m sure.

“I’m sure that’s why I left,” I say out loud, but it doesn’t make me believe it more. If anything, saying the words only makes it painfully clear that there are two sides to this story of mine.

And it doesn’t do anything to convince Damien and Gwen.

“Doll, no offense, but even though I’m still trying to catch up with the fact that you went through with a shotgun wedding because your work visa expired instead of just telling me, you don’t seem all that sure right now. You seem like a fucking mess, and I have a feeling that’s why you called Gwen and me. Because you’re the opposite of sure.”

He’s right. I know he’s right. The guilt and shame in our lies only make up half of the truth. Probably way less than half, if I’m being honest with myself.

“I love him,” I blurt out, and finally, the words match what’s inside my heart. “I’m in love with Flynn. We may’ve gotten married on a green-card whim, but I’ve fallen in love with him and I…wish our marriage was real. I wish it wasn’t going to come to an end. And his family? Well, I love them too. They’re the family I always wished I’d had when I was a little girl in foster care. I feel like I belong with them. Like I can be myself with them.”

Gwen’s eyes turn soft, and she lifts one hand to wipe below her eyes. “Aw, darling. I’m so sorry.”

“Damn, doll.” Damien sniffles. “Why in the hell did you walk away from him, then?”

“I don’t know,” I cry and swipe at my face. “Because Flynn isn’t a relationship or marriage kind of guy. Because we made it clear from the beginning that this was a no-strings-attached kind of thing.”

“But he married you.”

“Yeah, but it was a fake marriage.”

“A fake marriage that involved you moving in with him, spending time with his family, and being all up in his personal space.”