The Fiance Dilemma (The Long Game #2)

Chapter Thirteen

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I would never dare to call myself witchy, but I had a way of knowing when something was about to go awry.

It usually started with a sign. A freshly done nail that split right before an important event, or a pull on a dress minutes before leaving the house for a date. Silly things that could happen to anyone. Things that are objectively fixable but made you pause to ask: Ugh, why tonight of all nights? Why right now?

Tonight, it had been the zipper of one of my ankle boots. They were lilac, and new, and I was pairing them with jeans and a matching cardigan covered in daisies. I’d been saving these boots for a special occasion and decided they’d be my lucky pair. But one didn’t snap the zipper of their new lucky charm. That’s why I’d shook my head, determined to deny this was one of those signs. And then my tummy dropped.

And I was talking a roller coaster, takes your breath away for a sec kind of drop. Exactly the one that always, always followed these little omens.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Matthew said, offering me a raspberry from the box he’d just bought at one of the midnight farmers’ market stands.

I declined with a sigh. “Do you believe in magic? Juju? Premonitions? Ghosts? Fate? The power of manifestation? The yeti?”

Matthew pondered the question. “Oh, absolutely.”

I watched him, gauging how serious he was about his answer. To be completely frank, I’d only added all those things to make light of the gloomy feeling in my gut. “You do?”

He gave a serious nod.

“That’s all? No remarks? No comments about how out of the blue that was? Not even about the yeti?”

“I asked you for your thoughts,” he said matter-of-factly. One raspberry went flying into his mouth. “Why would I complain about your sharing with me?” Another one. “And if you want the remarks,” he continued, meticulously closing the bag and pinning me with a glance as if he was about to get down to business. “The world would be boring without magic, so I choose to believe it exists. Regarding the juju matter, well, I’m fully convinced I was cursed at least once in my life. Premonitions are tricky, but there have to be people with a direct line to all those things we normies can’t really see. Ghosts are objectively probable. Fate explains things that would go unanswered otherwise. Manifestation is scientifically proven. And the yeti just makes sense.”

I blinked at the man who had just called himself a normie with a serious face. I was many things right now. I was surprised, for one. I was also determined to ignore that fluffiness I felt in the middle of my chest, as if my heart were about to start levitating and float out of my mouth. I was also a little—

“You’re incredibly turned on,” he pointed out with a knowing smile. My cheeks flushed. “Do you want to grab my ass?”

A strange-sounding laugh left me. “What? I—Wh—I’m not grabbing your ass.” I looked around, spotting Willa Wang’s set of cold eyes right on us. She was standing next to Andrew, and although she hadn’t approached tonight, she’d been watching us. I cleared my throat. “Sorry to bring you down from whatever cloud you’re on right now, but talking about the yeti doesn’t exactly do it for me.”

“Oh yeah?” Matthew leaned a little closer, until all I could see was him.

I swallowed at his nearness, then tried to stay in the game with a cold face. “Yup,” I said, going up on my tiptoes to glance over Matthew’s shoulder. Willa was murmuring something to Andrew, and he was nodding his head. God, he looked so out of place. So foreign. As if he was crashing a party instead of attending his own. As if—

“You’re breaking my heart,” Matthew murmured, his nose almost brushing my temple.

My body stilled, my mind quieting. “Why?” I whispered.

“Because I’m trying to flirt and you’re not paying attention to me.”

I tipped my head back so I could look at him. His smile was a contrast to the deep, hushed tone those words had been whispered in. “You’re smiling too much for someone heartbroken,” I told him, feeling that fluffiness return. Expand. “And is that what you want to do? Right in the middle of my father’s slightly awkward welcome party? Flirt? For me to grab your ass?”

“Of course,” he said, lips inching even higher. “I’m your fiancé. Isn’t that my role here?”

I licked my lips. Everybody was watching. Almost the entirety of Green Oak was here. Our midnight farmers’ market was popular, but it had never attracted this kind of crowd. Maybe my assessment of the dinner we were supposed to be having instead of this had been wrong. Even Diane, who had always complained about this event being held on a school night, and Otto, who claimed Coco’s bedtime was more important than some market —had showed up. The only people missing were Gabriel and Isaac, who were down in Charlotte for the night.

As if manifested into reality by my own mind, Diane’s high-pitched voice grew closer. Anxiety started bubbling inside me.

“Eyes on me,” Matthew instructed. That silky sensation in my chest thickened when my gaze obeyed, meeting his. And I quivered when he grasped my hand. He tugged at my arm, bringing it around him. I arched my brows in question, wondering what he was doing, and why. He arched his own suggestively in return, in that goofy way that always managed to make me smile. Then he slipped my hand into the back pocket of his jeans. “Mmh,” he hummed. “So much better now.”

I huffed out a laugh, and his eyes sparked with amusement and… something a little huskier than that. “For you or me?”

“Hopefully both.”

Definitely both. “If Grandpa Moe catches us, he’ll get us that huge box of hand warmers he threatened me with. It’s already in his cart. He showed me. You’re reckless doing this.”

A chuckle rumbled out of Matthew’s chest. “I’m not breaking any rules.”

Our rules. Not Grandpa’s.

We don’t get married but stay friends. We kiss if we must. We can touch.

I swallowed. “I guess you’re not. This can’t be uncalled-for-ass-groping if it’s you moving my hand to your butt.”

“I have a great butt too,” he told me, eyes glinting with something I really liked. “Some might say it’s a magical one. I think you should touch it more often. As often as you can, in fact. It’s something we can do.”

It was so hard not to smile. So hard not to notice what he was doing and how much I loved that he was doing it. “You’re distracting me.”

He nodded his head and took one step closer, keeping my hand in his back pocket. To anyone looking, we were an engaged couple having a moment. He was joking. She was smiling. There were hushed words. The memory of the last time they danced and stood like this, so close together, noses almost touching.

To me, it was a story someone had fabricated. Me. It was a girl, standing in a barn, a bad feeling in her gut, and a man who was trying his best to keep ahold of the mess she always made of things.

“I’m so sorry, Matthew,” I said.

His gaze filled with concern. Shock too. “For what?” he asked, and there was frustration in his voice. Well, I was frustrated too. And I did silly things when I was under stress. Perhaps this was one of them. Saying more than I should. “Josie—” He stopped himself, his eyes shifting behind me. “We’ll talk about this later.”

I turned, finding what he was looking at just as the clinking of something metallic against glass sliced right through the chatter in the barn. The groups that had gathered around the stands quieted, the chairs of those who had taken a seat to eat or drink something scraped as they turned, and every head in Green Oak’s midnight farmers’ market twisted in the direction of the noise.

“What is Bobbi doing?” I whispered.

“Does it even matter?” Matthew answered. “She’s standing on a stool and everyone’s looking at her now.”

Bobbi cleared her throat. Then waited a moment. A beam of light flickered to life, illuminating her from bob to combat boots. “A little off with the timing, but we’ll talk about that later, Roberto,” she muttered before a smile parted her face. Her voice rose. “Hello, people of Green Oak.”

There was a pause, as if she expected the crowd to respond. No one did.

“I guess I can’t blame you,” she deadpanned. “It’s one in the morning and we’re here, in a barn, surrounded by… vegetables and goat cheese. It doesn’t exactly scream party.” There was another pause, smaller, judging by the way her lips parted to continue. A goat bleated. Brandy, if I had to guess. She sighed. “Okay, whatever. Thank you for giving Andrew Underwood your warmest welcome in his return to Green Oak. The town that saw him grow up as a young boy, and the place he’s been looking after, and advocating for, even if from the shadows over the decades. Gasp, gasp. Applause, applause. Now I’ll give the stage to a very special person to Andrew, and the town, who I know would love to say a few words—Josephine Underwood-Moore. Or future Mrs. Flanagan, as I’m sure many are already calling her.”

Every head in the barn turned to look at me.

My whole body had gone slack. I felt like my name had just been picked out of a jar and I’d somehow been selected as tribute in some strange version of the Hunger Games. Only it wasn’t my name. My name was Josephine Penelope Moore. No hyphen. No Underwood. And I wasn’t the future Mrs. Flanagan. I was… in shock. Like proper, paralyzing, petrifying shock.

A gentle tug at my hand, followed by a weight at the small of my back, was the only warning I got before I started moving. Matthew’s scent wrapped around my senses, the warmth of his shoulder against mine as we apparently navigated the sea of staring eyes.

Bobbi smiled tensely before leaning her head down. “Why does she look like that?” she whispered. “She doesn’t have a speech? The planner—”

She was somehow shoved aside.

Matthew occupied my field of vision. “You want to do this? Yes or no?”

This. The speech. It took me a beat, but I nodded my head. What was the alternative? Looking like a fool? As suddenly terrified and intimidated as I was, this was my town. My community. They loved me, cared for me, looked up to me. I had a responsibility.

Matthew gave me a wink, and it wasn’t a playful one. It was a reassuring one. You got this, it told me. You can do anything. My body moved toward the stool. My boot slipped. Hands seized me by the waist. Matthew picked me up and planted me on top of it.

“I…” I trailed off. Matthew stood below, head at the height of my hip, as if guarding me. But from what? This was Green Oak. I was their mayor. I could do this. I’ve faced much worse. “Phew,” I said with a strange-sounding laugh. “I wasn’t expecting that.” Bobbi’s scoff from the back was obvious. “I mean, I certainly wasn’t expecting that wonderful speech from Bobbi; that’ll be super hard to follow up.”

I studied the crowd before me, looking for what, I didn’t know. Not until I stumbled upon a set of blue eyes that looked exactly like mine. Andrew arched his brows, as if in question.

I squared my shoulders. “When I was tasked with organizing a welcome dinner for my father, a part of me rebelled at the thought.” Some murmur picked up, but I pushed past it. “A dinner somehow didn’t feel like the best fit for something like this. If you’ll allow me to be blunt, I was a little scared that not many people would show up.” Andrew’s brows arched. “Let’s be honest, the man is a stranger.” My father’s lips thinned. “But strangers can be turned into friends with a smile and the right amount of effort. And Andrew’s efforts to preserve and improve the town he once called home can’t be ignored. The farm we stand on tonight is an example of that. Although his support was always from the shadows, like Bobbi said, I believe it wasn’t from a place of shame, but from deep in his heart. And that is why I thought there couldn’t be a better way to welcome him than to show him what Green Oak has become in his absence. With his help. A piece of our soul. And potentially, a new beginning.”

The hardness that always accompanied Andrew’s features seemed to momentarily crumble. And for the first time in the short time I’d known him, I was pretty sure I was seeing who I suspected was the man behind the mask. A man capable of showing tenderness. Nostalgia. A man whose eyes glinted with emotion, and perhaps even hope, for just a few moments.

I tried to stop the satisfaction from swelling inside me. From advancing and eating away at everything—anything—else that had been there a second before. But I failed. I was never good at managing big feelings, no matter how good or bad they were.

Someone clapped. Quickly, more people followed, the resounding applause breaking through whatever I’d momentarily fallen into.

In the same breath, Matthew’s hands were at my waist again, lifting me off the stool, and Andrew was stepping forward, effortlessly parting the crowd around him.

Matthew’s hand clasped mine, just as Andrew reached us.

“Thank you, Josephine,” my father said, voice booming across the barn ease. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bobbi approaching, doing something with her hands. But my father continued. “I don’t think there’s a better chance than this to share the good news: I’m happy to cordially invite everyone present to my daughter’s and Matthew’s union on December first, in a ceremony that will take place here, at the Vasquez Farm.”

The blood in my whole body froze.

Andrew chuckled, as if happy with himself. “And to the joyful four weeks of celebration that will precede the wedding.”

The barn blinked out of existence for a second. Every face, every moving hand as they clapped excitedly, every stand, every detail I’d personally decorated, even the WELCOME HOME banner I’d painted and hung outside, I was sure had disappeared. It all went poof, black, for a second or two.

Good, I thought. Great. I wanted everything to disappear.

The warmth at my hand squeezed. Tugged. Matthew.

But I didn’t want to face him, I didn’t want to have to explain or comfort. I couldn’t. I was barely managing to do that myself. I wished… I wished there was a way everyone would just forget what my father had said.

And as if summoned, the whole place quieted. There were phones pinging, chirping, then Grandpa Moe was in front of me, granting me my wish.

“Josie,” he said.

My stomach dropped. Just like when the zipper had snapped.

“There’s a video,” Grandpa explained. “Of your wedding.” I noticed the smartphone in his hand. “To Greg.”

He didn’t need to say more.

I knew exactly what he meant.