“Okay,” my best friend says, peeling back the gauze. “We should work on the story of your meet-cute while I dress this.”
“What the hell is a meet-cute?” I ask.
“You’d know if you ever came to book club.” She glances up at Peyton. “We meet every Wednesday. You have to join.”
“What do you read?” Peyton asks.
“Anything from literary fiction to alien romance.”
And she wonders why I didn’t join.
“Alien romance?” Peyton repeats with a chuckle. “I’ve never tried it, but I’d love to join.”
“Yay,” Lila squeals. “We’re finally going to have a Rockwood. All five founding families. It’ll be amazing.”
I love my hometown, but sometimes they’re so hung up on traditions. Peyton nods, looking a bit overwhelmed by Lila’s Lilaness but also pleased to be included.
Lila turns back to my leg. The wound looks better than last night—less raw, the angry red fading to pink at the edges.
“So.” She grabs a tube of ointment and smirks up at me, the matchmaking glint in her eyes turning feral. “Was it love at first sight?”
The question startles me. I scrape a hand along my jaw.
I really haven’t thought this through. We need a story. A narrative with details. A plausible explanation for how we met and fell so madly in love that we got married in secret. Was she already engaged? Were we having an affair? I have nothing. No timeline. No romantic beats. Not a single convincing lie.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
But it’s too late to back out now. Peyton is sitting in my house. My mother is landing in a few hours. And we need to come up with an airtight cover story before dinner.
I glance at my fake wife.
She’s perched on the arm of the leather sofa, watching me with wide eyes. Waiting to see what I’ll say. The afternoon sun streams through the windows behind her, making her curls glow in a dark halo around her face.
For a moment, I forget Lila is even in the room poking at my injured leg.
Fuck, indeed.
13
PEYTON
I stand next to Liam on the threshold of his parents’ house, a colonial mansion with pillars that could’ve been airlifted straight from the Parthenon, feeling like an intruder. I stare at the heavy front door, and its lion’s head brass knocker stares back at me judgmentally. My mind is reeling, looping through the scripted lies we came up with in the last few hours.
The story we concocted is an elaborate web of invented missed connections and secret, long-distance yearning. We cross-referenced trips going back five years—thank you, Instagram, for the timeline—and mapped out a series of wrong timing, wrong circumstances, different cities, excuses for why we never got together. We don’t plan to share that I was supposed to marry someone else yesterday. But should they find out and ask, our version is that when I got engaged to Matt, Liam stepped back. He respected my choice even though it broke his heart. But yesterday, my future narrowed down to one unbearable truth: that if I married someone else, I’d lose Liam forever. I ran out of the church just as he was about to run in and not hold his peace. Romantic much? And what a pile of bullshit.
The evening air is crisp, biting at the exposed skin of my neck, but I’m sweating. A cold, clammy sheen made of doubts. Matt will use this fake relationship as ammunition. He’ll claim I was cheating the entire time we were together.
Liam assured me we’re fine. The VanCamps’ lawyers can’t prove anything ever happened between us. There are no phone records, photos, or any kind of digital footprint. And if they bring us to court, we’ll explain our marriage with a partial truth: a chance encounter on Main Street and love at first sight. It’ll make them look like fools. The rest is just for his parents.
But will they buy it?
Will anyone?
I stare down at my left hand. The diamond sitting on my finger is as real as the wedding certificate on my phone.
I can’t believe I’m married.
Liam produced the ring from a safe in his study—no big deal, only a priceless family heirloom passed down through generations—along with two plain gold bands he procured at the resort jewelry shop. The ceremony, if it can even be called that, was very anticlimactic. Since Missouri requires in-person filing for marriage licenses and the county offices are closed on Sundays, Liam pulled strings to get us married in another state—Utah, where marriage law has embraced the digital age with open arms and loose regulations. It’s the Wild West of matrimony. Online applications. Virtual ceremonies. No waiting period. The go-to state for people who need to tie the knot fast and don’t care for a trip to Vegas.