Besides, this fake engagement doesn’t have to change anything.
Walking inside the room, I feel like if I even glimpsed my reflection right now, I’d punch it. I can’t look at Sierra as I say the words: “There’s something we have to tell you.”
It feels like I’m reading off a script someone else prepared.
I don’t even wait for everyone to quiet down before I say: “Sierra and I, we’re engaged.”
Chapter 18
Sierra
“Well, that didn’t go quite so bad,” Nolan says cheerfully as he drives me home.
I don’t even try to answer.
If his version of ‘not quite so bad’ involves everyone going speechless with shock and Nolan hustling me out of there like I have contagious leprosy, then sure, I guess it didn’t.
Sitting in his car, all I want is a blanket to wrap myself in. And bury my head in, maybe even cry into.
I’m being melodramatic, probably, but the way Nolan just blurted it out—we’re engaged—seemed so out of left field.
Yes, Nolan as much as said that he’d bring it up.
And yes, even arriving at the dinner, I partially expected him to announce it.
Only, practically as soon as I set foot into the plant-filled, activity-bustling house, I clean forgot about it. Everyone seemed so easy to talk to and happy, hell, Nolan seemed so happy, that I guess I really bought it. That Nolan brought me there because I was his girlfriend, who he liked.
Just for that reason.
Now, I just don’t know.
“How did Emerson look to you?” Nolan asks lightly.
“A little sad at the beginning, but overall fine. Why?”
“No reason,” he says, just as lightly.
“OK.”
If Nolan wants to play this game of feelings tag, where it seems I’m chasing him until he decides to stand still, then he’s free to. I’m done getting myself hurt.
“Earlier this week, he just…” Nolan frowns, tendons showing on his hands as he clenches the steering wheel hard. “He got hospitalized for drinking too much. He’s going through stuff with this latest breakup of his.”
“Oh, I had no idea,” I say. “I’m so sorry.”
“I am too.” The tense tan of his skin looks like a mask, his eyes hollow stones. “I’m supposed to be his big brother, to look out for him, and instead I’m just…”
He gives his head a swift shake, as if to physically throw off the thought.
“Anyway.” He glances at me. “You had a good time?”
“Yeah,” I say.
If he’s not going to bring up the elephant in the room—how his announcement of our engagement was the buzzkill of the night—then I’m not going to.
“Good,” he says.
“Good,” I say.
And though he looks like he wants to say more, he doesn’t.
Once I get home, there’s no more doubt in my mind about this Nolan Storm article job.
After all, he seems fine enough with using me to suit his fake engagement. Why should I have qualms over writing some stupid article about him?
So, I sit down to my laptop and start typing: The first thing you need to know about Nolan Storm is that he isn’t what he seems.
**
The next few weeks go by in a blur. I get more done on the article and even send a rough draft Maurice’s way. In return, he sends some of the money my way.
I get more articles done for Nolan, who’s over the moon about them.
We don’t visit his family again. I don’t let him visit mine.
He takes me out every few nights, but it’s not the same.
We go through the motions: make conversation, laugh and have fun on the dates, even sleep together. And yet, the next morning, all I’m left with is an unmistakable feeling of emptiness.
Like I just ate a bunch of cotton candy for a meal. Like I still need some nourishment.
It’s probably because the fake engagement is still hanging over our heads.
Nolan hasn’t mentioned it, almost seems afraid to. But the less he says about it, the more it seems to grow. Even the twins have stopped teasing me about it.
I realize as time goes on that I feel guilty too.
No matter what a jerk Nolan has been to me, that still doesn’t make me writing a secret article about him right.
In the end, it’s a conversation over the phone with Maurice that decides it for me.
“Hate to be a downer,” he grumbles, in a tone that sounds like it doesn’t hate anything except maybe life itself, “but you got anything else to put in that article of yours that isn’t going to make me yawn?”
“What did you have in mind?” I say, careful to keep the annoyance out of my voice.
After all, this man is my boss.
“Something spicy, controversial.” For the first time in our conversations, Maurice actually sounds excited. “Something to make everyone infuriated or shocked.”
“Come on,” he insists when I try suggesting something else that is apparently yawn-worthy. “You working so closely with Nolan like this—you must have some good private juice on him. Something that will shock people out of their socks.”