CHAPTER 2 #2
Neither of us moved.
The hallway was narrow. I was standing between her and the bathroom, which meant she'd have to pass me to get to it, and I was suddenly very aware of exactly how little space that would involve.
She was aware of it too. I could tell because she hadn't moved and her breathing had changed — shallow, a little faster — and she was looking at me with an expression that was not roommate.
"Goodnight, Nora."
"Goodnight." She paused. "Beckett?"
"Yeah."
"For the record — thanks for going along with it. At the restaurant. You didn't have to."
I looked at her — her hair falling loose, her bare feet on my hallway floor, one strap of her dress slipping slightly off her shoulder — and what I wanted to say was that going along with it hadn't been the hard part.
That the hard part was going to be the rest of this week, standing next to her in public, pretending I was only pretending, sleeping twenty feet from her every night in a house that was suddenly too small and too quiet and full of the smell of her perfume.
What I said was: "Get some sleep. Wedding week starts early."
She slipped past me. Her shoulder brushed my chest. Barely. Enough.
The bathroom door closed. I heard the water run.
I went downstairs, put my hands on the kitchen counter, and stood there until my breathing was normal.
The whole town thought we were together. She was sleeping in my guest room. The week hadn't even started yet.
I was in a lot of trouble.CHAPTER 3
Nora
I woke up in Beckett Lane's spare room at 6:47 a.m. with a dead phone, a pillowcase that smelled like someone else's laundry detergent, and the full, undeniable weight of what I'd done settling over me like a second comforter.
The ceiling was unfamiliar. Clean white plaster with a hairline crack running from the light fixture toward the window.
The bed was firm — firmer than the cottage mattress — and the sheets were plain cotton, soft from washing, not from a thread count.
Everything in this room felt like him. Practical.
Unadorned. Chosen once and not reconsidered.
I stared at the ceiling crack and let the inventory arrive.
I had kissed Beckett Lane at the welcome dinner in front of roughly half of Laurel Creek. I had then moved into his house. I was now the maid of honor, sleeping twelve feet from the best man, in a fake relationship the entire town believed was real.
Cool. Great. No notes.
From somewhere past the door — the kitchen, probably — I heard a cabinet close. Not loud. Just the decisive click of someone who was already up and functioning like a person who had not blown up their own life over bruschetta.
I plugged my phone into the charger I'd thrown on the nightstand last night.
The screen lit up: fourteen texts. Willa.
Theo. Mom. Willa again. Theo with a photo attachment I was not emotionally prepared to open.
Mom with a single Call me when you're up, sweetheart, which in my mother's language meant I have already constructed an entire theory about your love life and I am ready to present it.
I left them all unread.
The bathroom was across the hall. I listened — no footsteps, no water running — and made a fast, barefoot break for it, face unwashed, hair a wreck, wearing the oversized T-shirt and sleep shorts I'd pulled from my suitcase at midnight.
The bathroom was clean. A single towel hung on the rack. One bar of soap on the shower ledge, no bottle clutter. A toothbrush in a plain ceramic cup. The man had one toothbrush in a cup and somehow that felt more intimate than the kiss.
I washed my face, pulled my hair into something survivable, and stared at my own reflection. Eyes: slightly puffy. Mouth: normal. Expression: that of a woman who was about to walk into a kitchen and make small talk with a man whose chest she could still feel under her palm.
Beckett was at the counter when I came down the hall.
Coffee was already made — a pour-over setup, not a machine, with a kettle on the stove and a ceramic dripper over a mug.
He was leaning against the counter in a gray T-shirt and jeans, drinking from a mug that said nothing on it, because of course it didn't.
He looked up.
I became very aware of my bare legs.
"Morning," he said.
"Morning." I tugged the hem of my shirt. Not obviously. But not not obviously either. "Is that coffee?"
"Help yourself." He nodded toward the counter. "Filters are in the drawer. Kettle's still hot."
He didn't hover. Didn't walk me through it.
Just went back to his coffee and whatever he'd been reading on his phone, and somehow that was worse than if he'd tried to be helpful, because it left me standing in his kitchen assembling a pour-over in an oversized T-shirt and trying not to think about my bare legs.
The coffee was good. Better than good — dark and clean and slightly bitter in a way that actually tasted intentional rather than neglected. I took the first sip standing across the kitchen from him, the island between us like a demilitarized zone.
"So," I said.
"So," he said.
"I have fourteen unread texts."
"I have nine." He took a sip. "Mae wants to know if you eat eggs."
I blinked. "Your sister is asking you what I eat for breakfast?"
"She's asking if we want to come to brunch. Mom's place, ten-thirty." His expression didn't change. "She included three exclamation points, which for Mae is practically restraint."
Brunch. At his mother's house. Where I would need to sit at a table with his family and be Beckett's new girlfriend — the one the whole town had apparently been briefed on overnight — while eating eggs and pretending this was a real thing I had chosen on purpose with my functioning adult brain.
"That's... soon."
"Yep."
I took another sip of coffee. Tried to think of it like a work problem. I used to pitch rooms full of skeptical executives — this was just a smaller room with higher personal stakes and significantly more breakfast food.
"We should go," I said.
He looked at me over his mug. Steady. Reading me the way he'd read me last night at the bar — not the words, but whatever was running underneath them.
"You sure?"
"If we hide here all morning, it looks weird.
If we show up together, it matches the story.
" I was already doing the calculus. "Your mom's already happy.
Willa's already told our side. The longer we wait, the more questions pile up.
We go, we eat, we're relaxed and normal and new, and then we get out before anyone asks how long we've been seeing each other. "
Something shifted at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. "You've been awake for ten minutes."
"I'm a fast thinker when I'm panicking."
He set his mug down. "Brunch it is. But we should check on the cottage first. I want to see if the floor's drying."
Right. The cottage. The actual, practical reason I was standing in his kitchen and not across the yard in my own temporary space. I'd almost let it become background noise, which was exactly the kind of drift I couldn't afford.
"How bad do you think it actually is?"
"Depends on the subfloor. If the water didn't sit too long on the boards, a couple of fans and two days might do it. If it got under the baseboard trim and into the wall cavity —" He shrugged. "Longer."
He said it the way he probably said it to clients. Straight. No softening. I appreciated that more than I expected.
We walked across the yard at eight-fifteen.
The morning was already warm, the kind of damp June heat that made everything smell green and close.
Beckett's house sat forty feet from Aunt June's cottage with just a gravel path and a low hedge between them.
In daylight, the distance felt absurd — close enough to see into each other's kitchen windows, close enough that anyone driving by would see us walking between the two properties and draw exactly the conclusion we needed them to draw.
Or exactly the conclusion that was going to make this week impossible to survive.
Beckett unlocked the cottage with the key I'd left on his counter last night.
Inside, it smelled like damp wood and the particular mustiness of standing water that had been sitting too long.
The kitchen floor was still wet in patches.
The baseboard near the cabinet had swelled visibly, warping away from the wall.
Near the electrical panel, a dark stain was still spreading up the drywall.
Beckett crouched near the panel, touched the wall with two fingers, and made a sound in his throat that was not encouraging.
"That's not a two-day fix," I said.
"The water reached the panel housing. It needs to be inspected before anyone turns the breakers back on.
" He straightened, wiping his hand on his jeans.
"I can get someone out here tomorrow, but even if the wiring's fine, the baseboards need to come off and the wall needs to dry with ventilation.
You're looking at three days minimum, probably four. "
Four days. Which was essentially the rest of wedding week.
"I'll call Aunt June and let her know," I said. "She'll want to hear it from someone who actually understands what happened to her wall."
"I'll talk to her." He said it simply. Not offering, not performing helpfulness. Just the practical next step from the person who could explain the damage in the right language.
I looked around the cottage — the damp air, the buckled trim, the dark stain climbing the drywall — and felt the lock click tighter.
This wasn't a one-night inconvenience. I was staying with Beckett for the rest of the week, and everyone was going to know it, and the cover story that was supposed to be simple and temporary was about to develop its own root system.
"Okay," I said. "Brunch."