Chapter 12 Grae
GRAE
Noel’s chair squeaked as he leaned back. I could feel his eyes on me, probing. I kept my gaze on the printout of my guest list for my next hike. Each roster gave me ages, health risks, experience, and where they were from. I liked to memorize that before heading out.
Today’s afternoon hike wasn’t a long one, just two miles to a beautiful waterfall and then back to the trailhead. None of the people on the list should have any issues unless they’d lied like my last group.
Noel’s gaze kept boring into me.
“Yes?” I asked without looking up.
“How’s the pipe?”
My brows pulled together for the briefest moment before I remembered yesterday’s cover story. “Oh, it’s fine now. Everything was just a mess.”
Eddie flicked a paperclip at me from his desk. “And how’s lover boy?”
I sent him a withering stare. “I don’t know. How’s your right hand?”
Noel choked on a laugh.
Eddie just grinned. “I love it when you talk dirty to me.”
“You’re hopeless.”
“But you love me anyway.”
I laughed, leaning back in my chair. “I do. And what does that say about me?”
“That you have shit taste in men,” Jordan said, striding into the room and handing Eddie a stack of papers. “Your rafting trip for tomorrow.”
“That’s harsh, boss man,” Eddie grumbled.
I grinned as I looked up at Jordan. “But I stick around you so you might have just insulted yourself.”
Noel’s lips twitched.
Jordan rolled his eyes. “I’ve known you longer than all these fools. I’m the original. They’re just the imitations.”
It was true enough. Jordan’s dad and mine had been friends since childhood. Even though he was several years older, he’d been present in my life since the day my parents brought me home from the hospital.
“How could I insult the OG?”
“Damn straight.”
The screen door to the office squeaked, and I looked up to see Wren. I grinned. “What are you doing here?”
There was mischief in her hazel eyes as she lifted an insulated bag. “Can’t a girl bring her bestie lunch?”
“With that look on your face, I’m pretty sure the answer should be no.”
She burst out laughing. “But you’re going to come with me anyway.”
I glanced at Jordan. “It okay if I head out for a bit?”
He jerked his chin in a nod. “Of course. Your group gets here at one-thirty.”
“I’ll be back by one.”
Eddie grinned at Wren. “Don’t you want to invite a poor, hungry boy to join you?”
Wren’s lips twitched. “Sorry, buddy, this is girl-talk time.”
“I can do girl talk for whatever smells amazing in that bag.”
Wren chuckled. “Sorry, just enough for two.”
Eddie pouted.
I ruffled his hair as I stood. “I’ll pick you up a sandwich on my way back.”
He grinned up at me. “Have I told you lately that I love you?”
I snorted. “I guess that comes in handy since our band of misfits is stuck together for life.”
Noel held out his hand for a fist bump. “You know it.”
Touching my knuckles to his, I turned to head for my best friend. The words girl talk had me on edge. If anyone could see through my act with Caden, it would be Roan or Wren. And my bestie had a look in her eyes that said she was ready for an interrogation.
She wrapped an arm around my shoulders and led me out of the office. “Want to go down to the lake?”
“Sure.”
She released me, and we moved in that direction, the breeze wrapping us in the scents of pine and a hint of lake water. I glanced her way. “Aren’t you working today?”
Wren nodded. “Abel’s covering for me while we have lunch.”
“Any crazy calls yet?”
Wren had the best stories from working as a dispatcher at the police station.
Her lips twitched. “You might want to check on Roan later.”
I winced. “What now?”
“Marion Simpson keeps feeding that bear, no matter how many times he tells her it’s dangerous. He had to tranq it again, and she cursed him up and down for ‘hurting her Yogi.’ The neighbors are getting pissed.”
Roan could handle an angry bear way better than he could deal with people. He would definitely need a beer tonight.
Wren guided us toward a spot under a tree away from the more crowded areas. “I picked up sandwiches from the meat market. Hope that works.”
She handed me one, and I grinned at turkey club scrawled on the paper. “My favorite.”
“I’ll get you to try something new sometime.”
“But if you try something new and don’t like it, you’re just pissed you didn’t get the thing you know you love.”
Wren unwrapped her egg salad sandwich. “Or you could find something you love even more.”
“Says the girl who ended up back with her childhood sweetheart.”
Wren’s face went all soft, and I made a gagging noise.
“You and my brother are a little much sometimes.”
She laughed. “I’m not even going to apologize.”
“Can we just try to keep it away from eating times?” I asked as I adjusted my insulin pump.
“Fine. Let’s talk about your love life.”
I froze, my sandwich halfway to my mouth. “What do you want to know?”
Wren just stared at me. “My best friend got together with a guy she’s known practically all her life, she doesn’t even bother to tell me, and now she’s asking what I want to know? How about everything?”
I winced. “Sorry. It really was spur of the moment. I wasn’t expecting it to happen.”
Wren opened her chips. “Me either. The last I heard, you were about ready to fry him over an open flame.”
“I don’t know if it was that bad.”
Wren gaped at me. “I had to stop you from dumping a drink over his head at family dinner.”
“He was being annoying,” I defended.
“But what I want to know is how we got from annoying to banging in a matter of weeks.”
I worried my thumbnail with my forefinger. God, I was such an asshole. Wren and I didn’t lie to each other. We shared practically everything. The only thing I’d ever held back was the depth of my feelings for Caden. It had felt like that magic feeling between us might vanish if I spoke about it.
“G?” she pressed.
I stared down at my sandwich. “It’s fake.”
Wren was silent for a moment. “What’s fake?”
“Caden and me.”
Her eyes flared wide. “I knew I was missing a part of the story. I thought maybe you guys had been hooking up for a while, and the fighting was just some weird kind of foreplay.”
I choked on a sip of soda and started coughing. “Definitely not foreplay.”
Wren studied me, looking for answers I probably didn’t have. “Why play lovebirds?”
I toyed with the tab on my soda can. “Rance wouldn’t leave me alone, and it was starting to freak me out. Caden’s dad is on his case about growing up and appearing settled down.”
“What do you mean freaking you out?” Wren’s voice filled with anxiety that immediately made me feel guilty. A guy who had been obsessed with her growing up had fixated on her so badly that he and two friends had attacked her, one shooting her in the chest and almost killing her.
I reached out and squeezed her hand. “Nothing like that. He just isn’t getting that a relationship isn’t in our cards. I thought if he saw me moving on, he would let it go.”
Wren relaxed a little. “How’s that working?”
“I think it is. He didn’t text yesterday. I’m calling that a win.”
She huffed out a breath. “Men. Such fragile egos.”
I choked on a laugh. “So true.”
Wren picked at her bread. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
I took a bite of my turkey club to buy time, but I couldn’t taste my favorite sandwich. “It’s the simplest option. He’ll be gone after the gala, and we’ll come up with some amicable breakup story.”
“But you care about him.”
I stilled. “Of course, I do. He’s Nash’s best friend. I’ve known him forever.”
Wren pinned me with a stare. “Grae, I may have missed it growing up, but I see it now. You’re good at covering, but I know you. There are times I see you looking at him like your heart is breaking.”
I swallowed against the lump in my throat. “It’s probably just me trying not to murder him.”
“G…”
I bit the inside of my cheek.
“It’s me. How many times did you hold me while I bawled after Holt left? You and Gran forced me out of bed, made me eat, and made sure I survived. You saw me at my very worst. You know you can trust me.”
My eyes burned. “I loved him.”
Wren took my hand, squeezing it in silent encouragement.
“I don’t know when it happened. It just always felt like he got me. That we understood each other in a way no one else could.”
“Looking back, you two disappeared at the same time a lot.”
A sad smile played on my lips. “We had this spot. If either of us was working something out in our heads, we went there. A lot of times, we’d find each other. Just talk it out—whatever was going on. After he lost Clara, we went a lot more. He was just going through so much…”
“And you were there for him.”
I nodded. “I tried to be. He was shutting down, and it killed me. But he still let me in. Things changed after I got sick. He pulled away. Started putting up walls.”
Tears filled my eyes, one slipping out and tracking down my cheek.
“He never came to our spot again. Every time I went there, it killed something inside me that he wasn’t there.
I had no idea what’d happened. If I’d done something.
If it was stuff with his family. Caden was physically present, but my Caden? He was just gone.”
Wren pulled me into a hard hug. “I’m so sorry. I wish you would’ve told me.”
“I didn’t want anyone to know. I was so embarrassed. I thought we’d be together one day. That he was just waiting until we were older. I had all these childish dreams, and they just went up in smoke.”
She pulled back but kept hold of my hands. “But now you’re fake-dating the guy you were in love with for years…”
I gave her a smile that I knew looked like a grimace. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Wren barked out a laugh. “G…”
“I know. But I hoped having him in my life again would make me realize that we weren’t right for each other after all. That the childhood image I had in my head would be shattered, and I could finally move on.”
“How’s that going for you?”
I sighed, leaning back against the tree. “Sometimes, I want to kill him. Other times, I want to jump him.” But he clearly didn’t feel the second half of that equation. Last night was more proof of that.
“Sounds super healthy.”
I groaned. “It was such a dumb idea, but now we’re in it, and I’m not going to bail on him because of a stupid childhood crush.”
Wren worried her bottom lip. “I don’t want you to end up crushed at the end of this.”
“Trust me. That’s not high on my list either.”
“You could just have a fake breakup now. Maybe it’s been enough already to get Rance off your case. Or I could have Holt talk to him—”
“No! I don’t want my brothers involved. You know how they are. They’ll probably pummel Rance and insist on coming on any date I ever have from now on.”
Wren frowned. “They’re not that bad.”
I arched a brow. “Do you remember when Bobby stood me up for Homecoming?”
Wren winced. “We found him duct taped to the flagpole in his underwear on Monday.”
“And someone would just happen to let the air out of his tires every month or so for the rest of the year. Not to mention the fact that they tried to make me take Lawson to prom.” I sighed. “I know they love me, but sometimes that love is stifling. Living life means getting hurt now and then.”
“I won’t tell Holt. I promise. But are you sure you can handle the hurt that could come with dating Caden, fake or not?”
A lead weight settled in my stomach. I wasn’t sure at all. I just had to hope that all this time with Caden would burn him out of my system for good.