Best Fake Fiance (Loveless Brothers 2)

I pull into someone’s driveway so I’m not in the road anymore, and I stay there for at least ten minutes, crying. I wonder if Elizabeth is right and I wonder if she’s always right, if maybe I should listen to my sister who can remember her reusable bags and who responds promptly to emails.

Finally, I reach for my phone, but it’s not there. I cry a little more, but then I turn around and head back to Sprucevale, where I have to find a pay phone — a pay phone — before I can call my boss and tell him that I have horrible food poisoning and won’t be coming to work today.Chapter Thirty-EightDaniel“She knows it’s today, doesn’t she?” Lucinda asks, glancing down the long hallway of the Burnley County courthouse.

“I reminded her,” I say.

That’s a slight understatement. Besides the reminders I put in her phone a few weeks ago, I called her yesterday after waking up on Levi’s couch feeling less-than-stellar.

He was right. I’m never going to like anyone else half as much as I like her, fuckups and all.

Charlie didn’t answer. She didn’t answer two hours later, or around lunch, or any of the other three times that I called her and apologized and rambled into her voicemail, telling her that I was sorry, that I needed her, that I fucked up just as much as she did and we were both imperfect and that’s what made us beautiful together.

She didn’t pick up once. She hasn’t called. She hasn’t texted. Not even a smoke signal, and I’m starting to panic. I’m wondering how badly I fucked up on Saturday.

Lucinda checks her watch just as the doors to the courtroom open, and she looks at me.

“She knows where to go, doesn’t she?” she asks.

I just nod. I told her in the voicemails.

We go in. We sit. We’re five minutes early, and I pull out the same things as always: report cards and teacher statements, testimony from her ballet teacher and her piano teacher, the schedule of every visit over the past five years, and finally, her drawing.

Shit.

I packed all this last week. The drawing has Charlie in it, next to me, her hair a cacophony of squiggles. We’re both smiling and standing next to a castle surrounded by palm trees.

Looking at it feels like a trap door just opened under my heart, and I nearly put it back, but I don’t. I keep it out because if Charlie doesn’t come, I’m prepared to lie my damn face off and say that she had a work emergency or her dog died or her grandma is sick or whatever bullshit used to work when I was a kid in school.

“Cute,” Lucinda says. “No wombat?”

“Not in this one,” I say. “She’s still on that kick, though.”

The door opens again. I turn towards it too fast, but it’s not Charlie. It’s Crystal, coming belly-first, her lawyer and husband behind her, and she doesn’t so much as look in my direction as they sit, talking amongst themselves, her husband helping her into her chair like she’s got two broken legs or something.

“Do you want to try texting her?” Lucinda murmurs.

I think she’s getting antsy, and that knowledge makes the hairs on the back of my neck prickle, my palms start sweating because Lucinda is rarely antsy. She’s cool and calm and collected and a legal badass, but she’s not antsy.

“I’ll try,” I say, pull out my phone, text Charlie: Where are you?

I wait thirty seconds, a minute. There’s no answer.

I want to throw up.

The bailiff — Pete Bresley, officially Sprucevale’s biggest gossip — pulls the huge wooden doors closed, folds his hands in front of himself, stands by them.

“All rise,” he intones, and we do. Lucinda throws me a look. The judge walks in from chambers, casts a glance around the assembled parties, sits. I’m sweating, anxious, and I feel like someone’s put chains around my heart and thrown it into the ocean.

She didn’t come. She ignored all my voicemails and texts and apologies and pleas and even if she doesn’t want to forgive me, she couldn’t get over it and come for Rusty’s sake.

“Be seated,” the judge calls. “I hereby call into session the matter of Thornhill vs. Love—”

The giant wooden door creaks open again, and everyone turns, but we can’t see anything. It’s open about three inches and there’s nothing on the other side but the sunlight in the hallway.

I don’t hope. I don’t let myself. It’s probably someone looking for another courtroom, someone who got lost on their way to a bail hearing or something.

“Bailiff,” the judge calls, and Pete steps over, pushes the door open, and even though I’m not hoping, my heart is beating on my ribcage like it’s trying to break down a door.

“Thanks Pete,” says Charlie. “That thing’s heavier than it looks, huh?”