Page 8 of Miss Belief

Teagan

After leaving Reid’s office, I sat at my desk stunned. He’d asked me to be his fake girlfriend, and I’d turned him down. God, just imagining the excuse to hold his hand and kiss him was giving me heart palpitations. How could I become a fake girlfriend with a man I’d dreamed about for a whole year? There’s no way I could pull it off. And even if I could, it would most likely turn into a heartbreak train wreck.

Or would it?

Could I fake it while keeping my true feelings to myself? Here I’d been waiting for an opportunity where he could see me as more than a coworker. What if this was it? What if this was the chance to take our relationship from friendly coworkers to more? But wasn’t it too soon after his breakup?

Yes. Undoubtedly he wasn’t ready for another relationship given how down he was about the end of his last one.

By the time I’d left the office for the night, I was still obsessing over it. Evaluating the pros and cons of becoming his fake girlfriend when I had real feelings.

An hour later, I had changed into my comfy clothes and was sitting in the lonely living room of my two-bedroom apartment with the walls painted an awful shade of corporate-housing beige. But my smile came easily when a familiar FaceTime number flashed up on my cell phone.

My sister’s beautiful face came into focus when I hit the accept button. Whereas the sun was enemy number one on my fair skin, it turned Tory into a beach goddess with her golden glow.

“Hi, Tory,” I greeted.

“Hi. Sorry, I meant to call you this weekend, but time got away from me. You free to say hello to Penelope?”

With the eleven-hour time difference between here and Los Angeles, and both of us working weekend nights, it was difficult to connect with home. But I always had time to say hello to my adorable niece. “Of course. I’m just home from work. Put her on.”

“Hi, Aunty T.”

My grin went big at Penelope’s adorable face. Blue eyes, rosy cheeks, and a smile for days. I might be biased, but I thought my niece was the prettiest little girl on the planet. “Hi, Penny. How are you?”

“Good, but my hair isn’t growing back yet.”

My breath stuck in my throat. What did you say to a four-year-old who’d gone through a round of treatment for leukemia, and who’d lost all her hair as a result? “It’ll take some time, but once it does grow back, it’ll be beautiful.”

“Mama says the same thing. When it gets longer, will you braid it? Like a princess?”

“Anything for you.” Tears formed at the thought. I didn’t grow up with religion, but since her diagnosis, I’d prayed for her recovery, and sincerely hoped this was the end of her treatments. As of last week, she was officially in remission, but the next few months were critical in testing to confirm the chemo had worked, and the cancer didn’t return. I could only hope a God who’d never paid much attention to my family would finally take notice and grant this one prayer to keep her in remission.

“It’ll be long and blond like your mama’s hair.”

“I hope it grows back red like yours.”

Funny how some kids could be so sweet while others could be so mean. My fiery red hair had meant torture through most of my adolescence. I could only assume that since both my mother and Tory had blond hair, my hair color had come from my father. Now that we were adults and thanks to a DNA test, my sister and I knew we didn’t share that side of the gene pool.

“Any color of hair would be pretty on you.”

“What funny shirt are you wearing today?” she asked in her sweet little, childlike voice.

Among my few prized possessions was a collection of funny, sarcastic, and sometimes inappropriate T-shirts. Thankfully, the one I currently wore was suitable for my niece. It was one of my favorites. I moved it into the picture. “It says, ‘Cute But Psycho.’”

She shrugged, either not getting it or not thinking it was funny. Tough crowd. “Okay. I’m gonna go watch Frozen 2. Here’s Mama. Love you. Bye.”

I adored the way she switched tasks on a whim, but was left viewing the ceiling as she must’ve set the phone down on something. “Love you too. Hello?”

Tory’s face came into view as she picked up the phone. Sometimes it was hard to remember she was the older sister considering how youthful she looked, despite her tired eyes. “I’m here. Work going okay? Your mopey boss still mopey? Or wait— You said he morphed into dick territory last time we talked, yeah?”

Victoria knew all about my crush on Reid, but I wasn’t about to share the details of today’s intervention, not when I needed her advice on something entirely different. “It may be turning around. He has a wedding in a couple weeks where he’ll see the ex, and when I told him he should consider taking a date, he asked if maybe I’d go.”

Her brows went sky high. “What did you say?”

I exhaled my frustration, still upset about how I’d reacted. “I was in shock, so I sort of made excuses, and he apologized and told me to never mind.”

“What do you want to do? Be honest.”