Happily Ever Never

26. Lucas

26

LUCAS

Brooke, who has spent the last four days believing the lies of a fictional lunatic over the man she’s known for two years and been extremely intimate with in recent days, has the nerve to look furious at me while we’re trailing after Serena.

As if I’ve done anything wrong.

Serena leads us to a picnic table at the town park, where she sits down across from us.

“Why are you staring at me like that?” she asks me.

Don’t answer it, it’s a trap... “Your makeup looks, ah, different.”

“Yes.” She stares at me with a furious, unblinking gaze. “I couldn’t remember how to do my makeup this morning. Me, who started out working as a Lanc?me girl at Macy’s. And do you know whose fault that is?”

“Mine, I guess? Like everything else that happens in this lunatic asylum? Mayor stubbed his toe last week—must be my fault. Crops failed—must be my fault.”

“Cheated on me with a supermodel and God knows who else? Definitely your fault,” Brooke glares at me.

“I did not cheat on you with anyone! I seriously can’t believe that I thought you and I knew each other at all!” I’m shouting. I never lose control like this, but something about Brooke makes me lose control of my emotions.

Brooke leaps to her feet. I do too. “I don’t have to stand here and listen to—”

“Sit down!” Serena barks at her.

Brooke hesitates, then slowly sinks back into her seat.

“So I guess you’ve decided you don’t give a damn about your parents,” Serena says to Brooke. And she looks at me. “And you don’t care about your father or your business. Is that right?”

“How dare you,” I snarl.

“Well, if you cared about your parents and your business and getting back home, you’d be playing your parts and doing what you’re supposed to do. I see you there, Edna!” Serena shouts suddenly at a nearby bush.

“No, you don’t,” a voice pipes up indignantly.

“If you want to be stealthy, don’t wear orange sneakers.” Serena’s talking to the bush. “Go away. We’re trying to have a private conversation here. This is none of your business.”

Ruby steps out from behind the bush. “Of course it’s our business. It involves our Susie, and our entire downtown.”

Edna steps out too. “And if you wouldn’t mind, could you speak up a little louder?” She taps her hearing aid. “Some of us aren’t as young as we used to be.”

“And tell her to speak up louder!” a voice yells out from behind a tree.

“Shut up, Gerald, you old coot!” Edna yells back.

“Let’s go,” Serena says impatiently, jumping to her feet. We follow her again, walking away from the table.

“Slow down!” Ruby calls out. “I’ve got arthur-itis!”

“Walk faster,” Serena orders us. “Brooke. Let me see the book.”

Brooke pulls it from her purse and hands it to her. Serena flips it open. “The book hasn’t added a new chapter in days.” She shuts it and shoves it back into Brooke’s purse as we walk.

Ruby, Edna, and several other townspeople are trailing behind us, but they’re falling farther behind.

“I can’t control what the book does,” Brooke protests.

“Yes, you can. If you are hiding out and refusing to speak to him, the story will not progress any further.”

“If he’s cheating on me, I’m not speaking to him.”

“I am not cheating!” I yell.

“Shut it,” Serena says to me. “He is not cheating on you,” she says to Brooke.

“Well, then how do you explain—”

“How many of my books have you read?”

“All of them.”

“So, thirty-two. And how many romance novels have you read in general?”

“A few hundred,” Brooke mumbles.

“Be honest.”

“Over a thousand.”

“What!” I splutter. “I thought you said that you had no free time.”

Serena holds her hand up to me in a shushing motion. “And in all of the romance novels that you’ve read—not women’s fiction, but straight-up romance novels, especially including mine—how many times has the hero actually cheated on the heroine?” she demands of Brooke.

Brooke lets out a long, martyred sigh. “None of them,” she mutters reluctantly.

“Hah,” I say triumphantly. Serena gives me a look. “Yeah, yeah. Shut it,” I mutter.

“But that woman showed up, and she had a photograph, and she was wearing his ring,” Brooke protests.

“Brooke, if you were back in New York, and this woman appeared like this, would you have believed her? She’s obviously not telling the truth. She showed you a photograph of Jasper and her together, but you can’t even tell where they were or when it was taken.”

Brooke chews her lower lip. “She does come off as a little...”

“Completely off her rocker?” I interject.

“Well, yes,” Brooke admits.

“The only reason you got so emotional is because you’re letting Susie McGillicuddy take over your thoughts and emotions,” Serena continues. “Deep down, Brooke Langley knows better. You had a massive overreaction to this woman’s false claims because the story needed you two to have some conflict.”

I shake my head. “Dear God, do I hate your books, Serena.”

“Right now, I hate them too. You think I want to lose myself completely and be trapped here forever?”

She pauses. Ruby and Edna and their little crowd have given up and are wandering off in disgust.

“Here’s the thing, folks. Without you two staying together, and reminding each other every day of life back home, I think you’re going to get sucked into your characters’ lives and forget your own even faster. All three of us should be meeting up daily so we can talk about our lives and our plans and remember who we are. Susie—I mean Brooke—you need to move back in with Jasper immediately.” She smacks her forehead. “Lucas! Move back in with Lucas!”

“He’s still keeping secrets from me,” Brooke protests. “I don’t want to live with him if he’s keeping secrets from me.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Serena informs her. “And you don’t get to care about that. You know why? Because this isn’t a real relationship. It’s fictional. You’re going through the motions until we can all get back home.”

Brooke sucks in a sharp, angry breath.

"She’s right,” I say to Brooke. “I do care about you, but we never started a romantic relationship back in the real world, because I’m an effed-up workaholic and you were my employee. It wouldn’t have been appropriate, for that and a million other reasons. We entered into this pretend relationship so we could go back home, didn’t we? When we first started talking about it, you acted horrified by the mere idea of pretending to be my girlfriend.”

A slow smile spreads across Brooke’s face. “I did,” she admits.

I have let my emotions get all tangled up in this too, to the point where I’ve been acting angry and prideful about being rejected by Brooke. If I weren’t being so emotional, if I’d treated this like a business transaction, I’d have acted rationally and had a calm discussion with her instead of shouting at her.

“Can you just come back to the McGillicuddy house and resume this fictional charade, so we can finish what we started?” I ask her. “It’s not like you to leave a project unfinished. Most of the time.”

“Most of the time? How dare you. I finish two hundred percent of my projects two hundred percent of the time. I’m the best damned assistant you’ve ever had.” Challenge flares in her eyes, and arousal burns through my body.

“Although mathematics apparently aren’t your strong suit.” I give her a sardonic grin. “Or baking.”

That earns me a punch in the bicep.

“There you go,” Serena says. “Fun banter, sexual tension. Fake it till you make it. Make it back home, that is.” She lets out a sigh. We’ve been basically walking in circles through the park pathways. “I’m feeling more myself already. Dear God, what am I wearing? Why didn’t you say something?” she asks Brooke.

“If it helps any, I stared at you in horror,” I remind her.

“Ugh.” She grabs her purse. “I am going to sit here and fix my makeup before I go back to my—back to the hotel. No, I’ll go hang out at the library for a while first. Every time I go to the hotel, I feel like I need to start checking guests in or berating the housekeeping staff.”

“So what, specifically, should we be doing now, other than me moving back in with what’s-his-butt?” Brooke says.

“Wrapping up the story threads. Keep working on Brenda and Officer Hernandez, and you’ve been helping out at the theater, Brooke, so keep doing that. I think the play’s coming up within the week, isn’t it? I think, just based on how I plot my books, that something big will happen there.”

“All right, let’s go back to Casa de McGillicuddy, where I will heat up leftovers and not bake anything,” Brooke says.

We head off, leaving Serena frantically scrubbing at her face with a makeup wipe from her purse.

“Aww, why not? It went so well the last time,” I smirk at her.

Brooke elbows me in the ribs. “Keep it up, buddy, and I will turn this romance novel into a murder mystery.”

I grin to myself as we stride down Main Street. I reach out and grab Brooke’s hand, folding my hand around it.

She hesitates for a moment, then twines her fingers in mine.

“Don’t get any ideas,” she says. “It’s just for the plot.”

“Just for the plot,” I agree with her, but I feel more at peace than I have in a long time.