Page 25 of Fake it ’Til Fall

He looks genuinely offended. “Threatening a man in public now?”

“You walked into that one.”

Forrest opens the novel with the grim focus of a man defusing a bomb. Puck collapses at my feet with a huff, pinning me there like he has decided I belong to this table now.

Across the café, Bea watches us with a knowing expression I choose to ignore for everyone’s safety.

My phone buzzes again.

I don’t look.

Forrest notices.

His eyes lift from the page. “You can answer it.”

“I know.”

“You’re not.”

“Look at you. Detective skills already improving.”

“Daisy.”

My name in his mouth is different when he isn’t bickering with me.

Too quiet.

Too careful.

It makes the back of my eyes sting, which is unacceptable. I am a professional woman with administrative skills and a complicated toner situation. I cannot fall apart because a grumpy former hockey player said my name like he noticed the bruise beneath the joke.

“It’s Carla,” I say, staring at the sandwich instead of him. “Or my mother. Or Liam’s mother. Someone’s mother, probably. There are so many mothers involved in this wedding, Forrest. It’s like a maternal crime syndicate with napkin samples.”

His fingers tighten around the book by a fraction.

That’s all.

A fraction.

His jaw works once. “I can’t believe you have to deal with the woman your ex cheated on you with.”

The words do not shout. They do not need to.

They sit there between us, plain and ugly and honest.

I glance toward the window. Rain beads against the glass and turns the passing headlights blurry.

“Technically, yes.”

“There’s no technically.”

I look back at him.

His face is hard to read until it isn’t. Until I see the anger there, controlled and quiet, not for himself. For me. That is worse than pity. Pity makes me want to perform. This makes me want to rest my forehead on the table, and tell him I am tired in places sleep can’t reach.

So naturally, I make a joke.

“I appreciate your legal clarity.”