13. All The Ghosts （Hattie）
ALL THE GHOSTS (HATTIE)
M argot holds out her arms as she walks along the dock, her smiling face tilted to the sun.
I asked her to meet me, but now that she’s here, I can’t remember what I planned to say.
Hi, Margot.
So, I’m sleeping with your brother.
Yes, the one you thought I couldn’t stand.
Yes, my soon-to-be fake husband.
Yes, it’s still fake. But the sex is real.
No, I don’t have a clue what I’m doing .
Brutal.
Absolutely not the conversation you want to have with your best friend.
But I’m afraid it needs to happen because this thing with Ethan keeps happening. More than once.
I just spent the weekend with him and a whole week later, I can still feel every blistering kiss.
Margot, she’ll understand (I hope).
I can’t lie to save my life, and she should have the truth. It’s only fair she knows, right?
I just dread telling her, but I guess that’s the price of sexy mistakes.
She loops her long blonde hair into a bun as we make small talk about the bookstore, strolling past enormous fishing boats and private yachts with long sleek noses and too many windows.
Leonidas used to take us to this marina when we were kids. It still feels like there’s a part of his ghost on the breeze. He’s one with the lapping sea and the squawking seagulls overhead.
A cute chubby harbor seal floats by, diving back underwater when it sees us.
There’s an old man fishing off the end of the docks, one leg dangling lazily into the water.
I smile, remembering how much Leonidas loved fishing. Ethan was usually the one going out with him, though.
Margot preferred to sunbathe, and I preferred my books. Sun and scenery, that’s just fine, but I was never big into fish guts.
“So, what’s up besides working yourself raw?” she prompts when I don’t launch into what’s bothering me.
She can read me way too well.
I sigh. “Okay, so… first, you have to promise you won’t freak out.”
The corners of her mouth turn down.
“You do know that’s like the one thing you could say to make me freak?”
“Yeah.” I squirm. “But if you could just not , that’d be helpful.”
“Right. Okay, Hattie. Whatever it is, let’s hear it so we can grade it on the freakout scale. Oh no.” She winces.
“What?” My eyes snap to her.
“Don’t tell me you’re turning the bookstore into a hookah bar?” She sighs dramatically, rubbing her face.
“Tempting, but no.”
“Pity.” She bats her blue eyes, and they look way too much like Ethan’s today.
I’m so screwed.
“I can keep guessing if you want,” she says. “But it might be better if you just spit it out.”
The sun suddenly feels blazing on my shoulders.
I’m going to burn out here if I’m not careful.
I’m also not remotely ready to tell her, but I can’t put it off any longer.
With a deep breath, I pull every bit of courage from my depths.
“So, um, Ethan and I… we kinda slept together,” I blurt out.
Silence.
Lovely.
I close my eyes where we’re standing, ships swaying on either side of us, blank windows staring, pointed noses too sharp.
Margot stares at me in stunned silence.
When I risk a quick peek at her, she’s scowling in a way that would make Ethan proud.
“You slept with my brother ,” she says slowly like the words are foreign.
Oof, not a good start.
“Yes,” I say.
“Hattie, why?”
“Things got weird. And we got carried away.”
Several times.
Several brilliant, breathless, sheet-ripping times.
“I don’t get it.” Margot twists her lips like it’s a struggle to digest the news. “I thought you hated him.”
“I did . Back when we were kids for sure. But now, he’s different. He’s not so bad. He’s—” I bite my lip as I try to think of the perfect adjective. “He’s nicer .”
“I knew it!” She snaps her fingers. “Fucking Ethan. I knew my idiot brother would make a mess of this somehow. I predicted it the second you agreed. He’s dead. ”
“Wait!” My protest is weak. “It’s not just his fault.”
“No? Well, whose fault is it, Hattie? Did he trick you into falling on his dick?”
“There’s no one to blame, actually. That isn’t it at all…” I trail off again at the murderous look on her face. “He didn’t force me into anything. I was a willing participant.”
“Of course you were!” She gestures at the sky in clear exasperation. “It’s Ethan . You know he fucks a new girl every week.”
My heart shakes like it’s been kicked.
Is she right?
I think back to the way he looked at me when he said he wasn’t going to be with anyone else. He expected my loyalty too.
“Maybe,” I whisper, “but we’re engaged now. That changes things.”
Her eyes flash with horror before she hisses, “Hattie, it’s not real!”
“I know. I do. I’m not stupid, Gigi.”
She huffs. “Never said you were. But my brother? Really? You’re actually falling for his crap? Holy shit.”
“You can’t tell him you know. I don’t think he’ll forgive me. But I didn’t want to leave you in the dark. We’re friends.”
“Obviously, I won’t. Girl code and all,” she says with another harsh eye roll. “But seriously, what were you thinking?”
I wasn’t.
Not at all, really.
When he kissed me, there was zero chance I was ever going to think straight again.
Not about the infinite reasons why we shouldn’t do this.
And all of them are linked to my body and the tantalizing things he does with it.
“We’ve been cool about it. We talked and agreed it’s just while we’re”—gulp—“married.”
With a defeated sigh, she shakes her head.
“But you know this isn’t real, right?” Her eyes narrow. “Or is it?”
“No! It’s just… It just happened, okay? God, why can everybody else do some weird casual hookup thing and I can’t?” And it will almost certainly happen again if I get my way. “I know what I’m doing, Margot.”
“I worry for you,” she mutters. “Shit. I can’t believe he’d do this. It’s just the kind of dumb tomcat crap I hoped he was finally growing out of. I mean, I always knew he was starting to like you, but—”
“Wait, what? What do you mean he was starting to like me?” I feel light-headed.
I thought I was the one delivering the bombshell.
Then again, to Margot, who makes reading people into an art, she probably thought it was obvious.
“The way he looked at you?” she says with a sigh. “I think you know. At dinner. He couldn’t pry his eyes off you.”
“We were pretending.”
“Remember Cooper? Ethan went off like a jealous idiot in front of everyone.” She folds her arms. “Tell me he’d do that if he was just pretending. In case you hadn’t noticed, you’ve had a glow-up since we were young, and I think he’s noticed.”
The idea sends a little thrill through me.
Personally, I wouldn’t go that far, but I’m more confident than I was as a dorky teenager being bullied by her older brother.
Back then, I could barely string a sentence together around him.
And now he wants me.
He noticed how I’ve changed, and he doesn’t want me to diet and slim down into supermodel mode just to feel like I’m good enough.
That’s crazy.
Borderline incomprehensible.
“Oh no,” Margot says, her frown deepening the longer she stares. “You’ve got it bad.”
“I do not .”
“You do.” She sighs again. “I guess that’s why you’ve got that sappy little smile on your face. How serious is it?”
“Not serious!” I’m almost shouting.
She sniffs.
“For your sake, it better not be. You don’t want to get tangled up with Blackthorn drama, babe. Not a second longer than necessary.”
“I mean, I spent whole summers with you and Leo and that was fine?”
Margot raises an eyebrow.
“PopPop basically made Ethan get engaged to you. Does that strike you as a normal thing to do?”
“No,” I say eventually. It’s the one thing I haven’t been able to figure out. “Why do you think he did it?”
Margot takes my arm, leading me back off the docks.
Her face is set like stone, unusually serious.
A sad, strange part of me wants to believe Leonidas did this because he wanted to set us up.
I want to believe he knew—or at least he was hoping—that the legal handcuffs would blossom into something real.
But that’s just the thing. We didn’t choose this.
To have a lasting love, at some point you choose each other.
Although deep down I wish it could be more, I know it’s ridiculous.
I’m so not the one for Ethan Blackthorn.
Not for real.
Not in this life.
Just like Margot says, this sham marriage thing isn’t real and I’d better get that lodged in my brain, front and center.
He’s only going through with it because six months down the line, we’ll go our merry ways.
As for the sex—well, that’s just it.
Sex.
A freakishly good romp to relieve tension and stress while we’re stuck with make-believe.
That doesn’t mean there’s anything more.
Leonidas couldn’t have predicted it would go this way if he forced us together. The old man was eccentric, but he wasn’t a raving lunatic.
When we were teenagers, we sure weren’t magnetic, and it had nothing to do with the age gap.
We hated each other.
I would’ve rather licked the beach for an hour than gotten a crush on Ethan.
But why me? Why did he make his grandson choose me of all people?
There’s no good reason for him to think we would be perfect for each other.
Because Margot’s right, and we’re not.
We move in very different circles. Our lives couldn’t be more different.
And when this is over, he’ll want a woman who matches his brains and money and violent good looks.
I’m totally not her, even if a tiny part of me wishes I could be.
“Maybe he did it because he sees you as part of the family brand. I think he wanted to teach Ethan a lesson. Something about life he couldn’t teach in the office,” she says eventually.
“I mean, our families have been close forever, so it kind of makes sense. A big public marriage forces Ethan to shape up and take things seriously, even if it’s all for show. ”
“Could be,” I say.
“You know he’s wanted Ethan to step up for ages. When he decided to come back and dive into the family business, PopPop was thrilled.” Margot shrugs, bumping her shoulder against mine. “I think this is his way of making Ethan a man. One more test he couldn’t deliver while he was still alive.”
“Hmmm, yeah.”