AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Sure,” she said, barely looking at me. “You already know what I like.”
“Yeah,” I said noncommittally. The way she’d barely acknowledged me since Shane’s arrival, while understandable, was starting to get under my skin. However, ever since we got here, she hadn’t even looked at me once, which made me think that there was something more at work here than she was letting on. “Shane? What do you like?” I asked.
He shrugged, wincing and drawing a glare from his sister. “I’ll eat anything.”
“Are you a fried rice guy? Steamed rice? Noodles guy? Beef and broccoli?”
“He likes lo mein with anything—literally will eat any kind of noodle—and Mongolian beef,” Nat said. “Those are his two favorites.”
“Okay,” I said, taking in her impatience as she picked up the washcloth again. “I’ll start putting in the order.”
“And while you do,” Shane said, “explain the wedding rings you both are wearing.”
Nat met my eyes for the first time since her brother arrived, and we both sighed.
“Well,” I said, studying the online menu, “it has to do with my mom.”
“It has to do with a weekend of amazing sex,” Nat said, “and Spence knew he could never find another to match me. Then, an unexpected wedding came up, and he didn’t know how to ask me to go in a way I’d agree to without getting his screwed-up family involved.”
We both looked at her, shocked into silence at her candor. There was a strange aggression at play here, and I wasn’t entirely sure where the defensiveness was coming from.
“Perhaps I have a better version of this whole situation,” I started. “If you’ll allow me, I can tell how I came to ask you to pretend to be married to me and how we wound up falling in love for real?”
We stared each other down, neither of us saying a word before Nat shrugged. “Sure,” she said, turning back to Shane as she wiped a smear of blood off his neck, “but tell it well.”
“Right,” I sighed.
“Okay,” Shane said, looking between us so quickly I was worried he might get vertigo. “I’m confused.”
“I told you it was a complicated story,” I said.
“You guys are faking being married?” he said, pointing between us. “Why the fuck would you do that?”
“Again,” I said, “my mom. When I say she’s terrible, I’m not kidding.”
“Shit, man. Rich folks are fucking weird,” he finished with a laugh.
“That would be an understatement,” I added with a sigh of defeat.
I went on to give him the Cliffs Notes of my family history as much as I could. I spoke of my father’s wealth and my mother’s sociopathic behavior, my dad’s death, and the trust for each of the kids, including the caveat that each of us receives the remainder of our inheritance upon our marriages.
“I still don’t understand the fake marriage shit,” he said while Nat used this time to doctor the kid’s wounds.
“My mom always wanted me to marry someone nice and malleable, someone she could bully into signing over the money from my inheritance. I knew the chances of that happening with your sister would be slim to none because no one gets away with giving her shit or trying to order her around.”
“But why say you’re married at all?” he asked. “If being married means the money is out of the trust and at play?”
“Because if I’m married, that means she can’t try to get me to marry someone she’s chosen,” I said, “which she’s been trying to do for the last fifteen years. I just don’t want to deal with her shit, and this seemed the easiest way to shut her up and help me attend my brother’s wedding without unnecessary bullshit.”
“Jesus,” he said, staring at me. “You seriously don’t seem the type to need to fake anything to shut people up. Regardless, a mom forcing her son to marry so she can steal the inheritance through the wife is a whole different level of wretched.”
Wow, the kid caught on and impressed me somewhat with this response.
“Tell me about it,” I said, giving him a dry smile. “It was a real treat being blessed to have her as a mother.”
“And as a fake mother-in-law,” Nat chimed in, reaching into the first aid kit for the disinfecting cream. “She definitely had some choice opinions of me.”
“Okay,” Shane said. “I can follow the whole fake marriage to save your ass thing,” his eyes met mine, then he glanced at the rings again. “But why are you still wearing the rings?”
