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I smile at her like a man who’s utterly in love—for the benefit of everyone in the living room. “Are you ready to tell our friends that we’re engaged, or do you want to back out while you still can?”
“You think they’ll buy it?”
“I have no idea. They might be skeptical at first. Troy knew back in college that you and I were sneaking around. He won’t require much convincing. But you were joking about renting a husband. And my brothers know that one of us being married would sweeten the deal with the Wakefields. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
“You do realize Tuuli and Robert are the most romantic people I know? It won’t be easy to fool them into believing we’re in love. They’ll be able to sniff out our lie faster than a bloodhound sniffing out a dead bird.”
I grin. “You really know how to talk dirty, don’t you? Speak like that around them, and we’ll have them convinced in no time.”
She laughs. Christ, how I’ve missed her laugh. It always made me feel better when I was having a crappy day. Even when I was being the grumpiest of grouches.
“We’ll wait until I’ve given you a ring before we announce our engagement to everyone else,” I tell her. “But our friends and my brothers won’t care if you don’t have a ring yet.”
“Okay.”
“You ready to do this?”
She nods, the movement uncertainly determined. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
10
Simone
Lucas and I step inside Zara’s apartment.
The spicy scent of chilies, ground beef, and coriander greets me, and my stomach does a loop-the-loop at the memory of her samosas.
God, I’d missed them while I was living in Portland. Sure, they have samosas there. Great tasting samosas. But Zara’s the queen of them all.
They’re the perfect comfort food. Which is what I’m going to need after Lucas and I tell his brothers and our friends our big announcement. After we convince them that we know what we’re doing.
After we convince them we’re in love and want to get married.
I have no idea how long our friends have been watching us, but it’s clear they all know about the kiss. They’re staring at us, a kaleidoscope of emotions on their shocked faces.
They’re waiting for an explanation. An explanation Lucas and I don’t exactly have.
Oh, crap.
“Sooooo,” he begins, and I have to hiccup back a laugh at how smoothly this is going. “I guess it’s time for Simone and me to come clean about something that happened years ago.”
The awkwardness of his words spreads through the room.
“We never mentioned it before ’cause Aiden was my best friend…” His voice catches on the name. The pain in his voice and my brother’s name are the fishhooks that tug on my heart. I grab Lucas’s hand, a move not missed by his brothers and my friends, and give it a light squeeze.
Despite everything that has happened over the past ten years, holding Lucas’s hand feels right. Natural. Like the piece of a puzzle slipping into place.
Because of Aiden.
And how the three of us will always be intricately linked together.
“Simone was his little sister,” Lucas says, his voice recovered and more determined than before. “So we hid our feelings for each other from everyone. But we’ve decided to make things official.”
“So you’re dating now?” Zara purses her lips, but I can’t tell what she’s thinking.
“We’re—we’re engaged,” I blurt, the words stumbling over each other.
The room goes clock-ticking quiet. Zara, Kim, and Emily stare at us as if we’ve turned into prancing unicorns. Troy, Garrett, and Kellan have their lips pressed together, silencing what could be laughter. Or not.
