Page 68 of Fake It For Him

35

CALAN

I woke up to my phone ringing at seven a.m. After cracking open one eye and seeing the time, I groaned and considered letting the call go to voicemail. I wasn’t used to getting calls this early, but when it kept ringing, I pushed myself up on my elbow and grabbed the damn phone.

“Hello?” I said groggily, immediately wincing at pulling the phone away from my ear at the loud music in the background. “Who is this?”

“Cal? It’s Freya,” my sister slurred.

I frowned, realizing that she was drunk half a second before I realized she was crying. As soon as the first sob came over the line, I was wide awake. I sat bolt upright in bed, fear and confusion creeping over me like fire ants on my skin. What. The. Fuck?

“Freya? What’s going on? What happened?”

“Ella got into a huge fight with one of my bridesmaids,” she explained, sobbing, hiccupping, and slurring.

I gripped the phone tighter. “What?”

“It’s such a mess, Cal,” she cried. “She fucked everything up. I just lost two of my bridesmaids and my maid of honor.”

My heart thudded against my ribs and I rolled out of bed, gripping my phone so tight it was probably going to crack. “Fuck. Okay. Where is Ella? What was the fight about?”

“Ella is throwing up in an alley somewhere with Polly. How can you care about her right now? She wrecked my wedding, Cal.”

I dragged in a deep breath, heart still pounding. I walked to the window and stared out at the sun starting to rise, the city coming to life. “Listen to me, Freya. Get the other girls, find Ella and Polly, and get back to your hotel. It’s not safe for you to be wandering around when you’re all hammered.”

Freya was too drunk to listen to reason, though. Still sobbing, yelling, and not moving away from the loud music, she kept ranting, clearly too emotional to care about her own safety. “You’re such a jerk to be dating someone like that, Cal. She’s a bitch. Why didn’t you warn me that your girlfriend was a total shit show? I never would’ve invited her if I’d known.”

Confusion clouded my mind. I had no idea what could’ve happened, but knowing Ella, I was absolutely confident there was a lot more to this story than Freya was telling me. Maybe even more than she knew.

Ella would never have done anything to derail Freya’s wedding. Not when she was with me only to make sure I could be there so my sister would have everything she wanted on her big day. Not after feeling so bad about Freya welcoming her to the family and how she’d talked about my sister after they spent that afternoon together.

Something had obviously happened to have Freya think that Ella had tanked the wedding, but that couldn’t be what was going on. I refused to believe it. Not even for a second.

“Freya? Look, I’m sorry this happened. We’ll work it out, but just for now, do you think you can get everyone together and go back to your hotel?”

“No,” she spat at me. “This is a complete disaster, Calan! The wedding is less than a month away and I lost two of my bridesmaids and my maid of honor. We haven’t even had the bridal shower yet, and now what? Three of my best friends are gone because your girlfriend is a psychopath.”

I inhaled and exhaled deeply, knowing that my next call would be to Ella, but I needed to make sure that my sister was safe first. I knew some people in Maui, but no one I could call up in the middle of the night to go drag my sister and her friends out of a club, but I had to do something.

“Okay, listen to me, Freya. This is not a disaster. I’m going to fix it, okay? For now, just tell me what club you’re at.”

She started giving me the name, but then I heard her being kicked out of the club for being too drunk. My stomach tightened into knots and before I could reiterate that she needed to get her friends and get back to the safety of the hotel, the call dropped.

Desperation clawed through me like a living being. My sister was way too drunk to be stumbling around the island in the dark by herself, and if she was in that state, then so were her friends. Whoever remained of them anyway.

Still staring out at the city as I gripped my phone, I tried calling Ella but she didn’t pick up. When she still didn’t pick up after I tried again, I started pacing. Freya’s friends bailing on the wedding wasn’t a disaster, but this was.

Or at least, it had the potential to become one.

Unfortunately, my sister wasn’t the only person I was worried about. Ella was out there too, apparently throwing up in an alley with Polly. I’d only met the girl once or twice and I didn’t know her at all, so I didn’t have her number, but Ella could hold her liquor, which meant that if she was that drunk and Freya was too, I probably wouldn’t have had much more luck with Polly anyway.

A groan rumbled out of me as exasperation tightened my muscles. I fucking knew they shouldn’t have gone alone.

I’d thought I was just being an overprotective dick for even having the thought, though. They were all grown-ass women who could take care of themselves, after all, so I hadn’t said anything. Now, however, they were drunk off their asses, out on the streets, and with no one nearby to even check on them.

My mind conjured up completely unhelpful images of Ella in a dark alley, too sick to be aware of her surroundings as two shadowy figures stole closer to her. I growled out loud, tossing my phone clear across the room. My hands flew to my hips and I squeezed hard, trying to remind myself that wasn’t what was happening.

It could’ve been, but it probably wasn’t.