by Kaye, Nikky
“What?”
“Does she know that?”
“Yes.”
“Does Brett know that?”
“Ye—actually, I’m not sure.” I frowned as I took a bite of my wrap. What had Audrey told him?
My mom moved past me to get the milk from the fridge as her tea boiled, making that frowny sound in her throat again.
“I’m sure she talked to him,” I said.
She raised her eyebrow at me.
“Okay, I’ll talk to him.”
And say what, exactly? Hey buddy, I know I said it was all an act, but I just wanted to make sure you were cool with us lying to everyone in the world but still fucking like crazed weasels. We’re all grown-ups, right?
“She’s a good girl, Dev.”
“I know.” What was she implying? That I was taking advantage of Audrey or something? She was a good girl, yes. Wasn’t I a good man?
My mom’s turkey was never dry, but suddenly I was having a hard time swallowing my lunch. Though she stood with her back to me again, I could sense disapproval in the set of her shoulders. It was like I was in high school all over again and I’d wrecked her car. Something inside me bristled at her attitude—like she didn’t believe me? Didn’t trust me?
“What do you want me to say?” I asked, feeling defensive and irritable.
She poured her tea over a strainer into a mug before turning to face me. Her expression was unreadable, inscrutable. “Don’t hurt her, Dev.”
“I won’t!”
I was a little offended that she thought I would. The warm sympathy in my mother’s dark eyes was for Audrey, not for me, but there was a greater chance of my heart being broken at the end of… whatever this was.
Maybe that’s what she was getting at—what was this? Audrey wanted a casual fling, but now I was pushing for more. I trusted her, yet she and I were complicit in lying to a lot of people.
My stomach turned over. Quietly, I dropped the rest of my sandwich in the garbage under the sink and left the room. It was time my fiancée and I cleared up a few things.
* * *
I’d barely touched the doorbell when Brett threw open the door, like Audrey had done for me. Either they shared some kind of psychic gene or—
“Did my mom call you?” My hands curled into fists in the pockets of my jacket, and not because of the cold.
“What are you talking about?”
“Never mind.” Was I becoming paranoid, imagining conspiracies everywhere just because I was part of one?
In a weird mirror of my visit the day before, my friend stepped back to let me in. “Audrey said you came by yesterday,” Brett said.
I nodded. What exactly had she told him? I wondered, pausing while I draped my coat over the end of the banister. “Is she here?”
“No, she and Shannon went shopping.”
I followed him into the living room where a video game was paused on the TV. Without asking, he picked up a controller and handed it to me. The look on his face told me that refusing wasn’t an option.
“Ready to battle?” Brett asked.
“Always.”
A few minutes later we were sitting on the edge of the couch, our legs spread and our thumbs stabbing away. It was how we’d spent much of our adolescence.
“We haven’t done this in a long time.”
My friend grunted in response and proceeded to kill me.
“Are the girls going to be home soon?” That was casual, right?
He glanced over at me, his lips pressed tightly together, and upped the intensity of his attack.
Maybe I wasn’t casual enough.
“Yes!” he yelled. “Take that, motherfucker! Oh, sorry, sister-fucker.”
Yeah, we had a problem. I let him beat me for the last time and then tossed the controller onto the coffee table.
“Okay, go ahead,” I said.
“What the fuck are you doing, Dev?” Brett dropped the controller and any pretense he was still playing the game. Now he wanted to battle me. “You said this was all an act. She said it wasn’t real. But she came back from India different—”
“Travel changes people.”
He snorted. “Not like that. She was all… fuck, she was happy.”
Pride swelled in my chest.
“Then she got all mopey. There were times she lit up like a rocket, and I figured out she’d just talked to you or got a text or something. It’s been like living with a teenager again.”
This probably wasn’t the right time to point out that Audrey was still only twenty-two.
“Yesterday, though…” he trailed off, shaking his head. “I can’t believe you banged my sister in my own house.”
“Did she tell you that?”
“She didn’t need to! So, I ask you again, man—what the fuck are you doing?”
“Dating?”
Brett growled and popped to his feet. “You’re fucking my little sister!”
I winced as I stood to face him. And here I thought my mother had been painfully direct. “I like her,” I told him.
“I like nachos, but I’m not sticking my dick in them!”
“What did you say?”
Brett and I turned to see Shannon and Audrey standing in the foyer. His wife had her hands on her hips, and my girlfriend’s mouth was hanging open. Bags from the grocery store littered the floor around their feet.
“Brett!”
He huffed out a quick “sorry,” probably just to Shannon. My best friend slash the biggest prick on the earth didn’t seem to be in a hurry to apologize to his sister, or to me. Audrey’s pale face disappeared as she bolted up the stairs.
Brett called my name as I stomped out of the room, but I ignored him. Shannon gave me a pointed look as I passed her, but she could deal with her asshole husband.
I needed Audrey.
Her door upstairs slammed closed as I took the stairs two at a time. I didn’t even bother knocking, just burst in to see her slumped on the open sofa bed. The day before, I’d made love to her there. I’d taken her in my arms and opened my heart to her. Now, she sat there with tears rolling down her cheeks.
“Audrey…” I reached out to her. “He’s just trying to protect you.”
She sniffed. “From you?”
“I guess.” In the back of my mind, I theorized that maybe Brett’s overprotective stance came from watching Audrey go through the pain of her broken engagement. He didn’t want to see her like that again; I understood that. That I could cause that kind of pain was horrifying. I never wanted to make her feel like that, never wanted her to cry over me.
But now she was.
I sat down at her side, taking her into my arms as though my embrace could fend off anything that might hurt her. “Ignore him.”
“Easy for you to say. He’s not your brother.” She wouldn’t look me in the eye. “He’s always been there for me.”
And I hadn’t been. It wasn’t spoken or even implied, but that’s what my heart heard in her words. I knew that Brett was still sore over my not staying in touch more over the past five years, but I hadn’t realized that she…
“Don’t you deserve to have a life of your own?” I asked her.
“I had that, and I fucked it up.”
I shook my head, holding her tighter. “Baby, whatever happened with the dickhead wasn’t your fault.”
“Wasn’t it?” She wiped her nose with her sleeve.
I didn’t know. I couldn’t imagine Audrey trying to hurt someone—it wasn’t part of her personality. I’d never known her to be manipulative or malicious. Then again, I had to remind myself that maybe I didn’t know her that well… yet. Hell, the last time I saw her she was still in high school.
“I’m the one that lost the baby, I’m the broken one.”
My heart hurt for her. “You’re not broken. You’re bruised, and that’s not even your fault.”
Couldn’t Brett see I wanted to make her happy? That I didn’t want to use her and abandon her? She slum
ped in my arms and I froze as I realized that maybe she didn’t know that.
Gently I lay her back on the mattress, propped myself up on one elbow and hovered over her. I bent down to kiss the tracks of moisture at her temples. Her sadness was salty, her guilt guileless.
“Audrey, you deserve to be happy.”
“I-I-I aaaaam,” she wailed, her blue eyes shimmering under a veil of tears.
I caught my laugh before it came out of my lips. “Sorry, my mistake.”
Without stopping to think about it, I dropped my mouth to hers, ignoring the shine on her upper lip from her red, runny nose. If I could swallow her pain and fear, I would. I’d settle for trying to take it away.
I kissed her and kissed her until I felt her breathing slow and her body pliant beneath mine. She was precious, but not made of glass either. She was more like Aladdin’s lamp—just needed polishing.
“What do you want to do?” I asked her.
“I don’t want to lie.”
I nodded. “So don’t.”
“I don’t want you to have to lie.”
“Oka—” Shit. Sharma’s face and the deal with Hessa floated through my mind. I was in a delicate position, here.
Three years. Five million dollars.
Were we supposed to be engaged for the length of my contract? Or would Sharma expect us to get married at some point? What if we didn’t? Would I lose the job? What would happen to Audrey? My pulse sped up as questions swirled through my mind.
One thing at a time.
“Audrey, I told you I was falling for you.”
She bit her lower lip and nodded, focusing on my chin.
“I lied.”
Now she met my gaze, her eyes widening.
I took a deep breath. “I’ve fallen. Like one of those dreams where you think you’ll die if you hit the bottom. Only I’m still here. Stick a fork in me. I’m done.”
She stared at me, speechless.
Fine. I wriggled off the squeaky makeshift bed and went to throw open the door. “Brett!” I yelled.
“What?”
“I love your sister!” My words echoed, like they were falling down the stairs one by one to him.
There was a brief pause. Then: “What?”
My gaze caught Audrey’s, and I said it again like I was explaining it to a preschooler—just in case there was any misunderstanding. “I. Love. Your. Sister!”
Silence.
“Audrey!” I yelled like an idiot, in case clarification was needed. When I looked over, the woman in question had a stupid smile on her face.
“Dev…” she murmured.
More silence from downstairs. Good enough, I decided.
“That is all!” I called out, then I slammed the door shut on him, Shannon, and the rest of the world.
My heart was pounding in my chest as our eyes met. Holy shit. Did I just say that?
“Yeah,” she said.
I swallowed around the lump in my throat as I realized I’d thought all that out loud. Before I could take another breath, she reached out to me.
“I love you, too.” She pouted. “But you could have told me before announcing it to my brother, dumbass.”
When I went to her, all I could think was “Mine.”
Also: what happens next?
22
Audrey
All too soon Dev went back to LA, and I was left pining for him in my old bedroom like a teenager again. After a few days of moping, Shannon came to kick my butt.
“What’re you doing?”
I looked up from the computer. “Nothing.” I went to minimize the screen but wasn’t fast enough.
“Are you stalking yourself?”
“No!”
She rolled her eyes. “Hashtag pathetic.” But she flopped onto my bed and laughed in a way that took away the sting of embarrassment. “How many Instagram followers do you have now?”
“Me or Dev?”
“You. Your pictures.”
I turned around to gape at her. “You’ve seen them?”
“Yeah, I follow you. Not Dev.” She waved a hand. “Okay, I follow him too, but I’m only human. And a woman. With a pulse.”
Heat spread across my face. I was fully aware of what Dev did to a woman’s pulse. I looked at my profile. Wait—that had to be wrong. I refreshed the page.
“Wow,” Shannon breathed over my shoulder. She’d snuck up behind me, kneeling on the mattress of the sofa bed. “You have a thousand followers already?”
Just about. When the hell did that happen? How did that happen? I only had about a hundred posts.
I scanned through them and found that Dierks had been doing a whole lot of liking and probably sharing. I wanted to kiss him and hit him at the same time. It was one thing to enjoy taking pictures. It took courage for me to post them in the first place, but I didn’t think anybody would actually see them.
Hashtag naïve, I guess.
“When’s your next trip?” my sister-in-law asked me.
“I don’t know.”
“How about where?”
“I don’t know,” I repeated.
“Well, what’s your short list?”
“Everywhere?”
“That’s not a short list, Audrey.”
“Okay, fine,” I sighed, turning back to the computer. My search of “most beautiful places in the world” netted a lot of pictures of beaches. When Shannon spotted the screen, she sat back down on the bed.
“We’re going to Hawaii for Christmas,” she announced.
I crawled onto the bed and sat cross-legged beside her. “We are?”
“Brett and I, for our honeymoon. Sorry, hon, you’re not invited.”
Thank god. It was bad enough to think about my brother having sex, much less honeymoon sex. Not that I knew what honeymoon sex was like…
“Aren’t you spending Christmas with Dev?” she asked.
I blinked. “Um…” We hadn’t talked about it.
The few days he was here were a whirlwind, and I still hadn’t recovered from the whole “I love you” thing. At first I wondered if I’d just fantasized the whole thing, until I got a lecture from Brett on safe sex.
Ewww. I could have lived my whole life without that talk, let me tell you. Apparently he’d forgotten that I’d been engaged before. I glanced down at my ring. I didn’t need to wear it at home but didn’t feel like taking it off.
“You really love him, Aud?” Shannon asked gently, as though she could read my mind.
My thumb rubbed against the band on the underside of my finger. “Yeah, I think I do.”
“You think?”
“It’s just—I was wrong before.”
She nodded. “You don’t trust yourself.”
I didn’t know what to think. I was the one who’d wanted a fling, and I’d gone along with the fake engagement because it helped Dev’s image. It got him the contract with Hessa after all. In some ways, I was responsible for him getting millions of dollars. It was a little overwhelming.
“Are you still fake engaged?” Shannon asked. She and Brett were the only ones who knew the truth.
“As far as I know.” At least that’s what the Internet believed.
“When did he give you that ring? It wasn’t in Vegas, was it? I know I was out of it with all the wedding stuff—”
“No, in India. There are tons of jewelers there, like costume ones. His boss made a big deal out of me not having an engagement ring, so he ran out and grabbed one. Like a prop.”
My sister-in-law hummed thoughtfully. “Can I see it for a minute?”
Slowly, reluctantly, I pulled the ring off and handed it to her. My thumb reflexively worried the base of my finger.
Shannon turned the ring sideways and looked at the profile. “Huh,” she said. Her own diamond band—the one that Dev had dropped in Vegas—flashed at me as she flipped my ring around and examined the inside. “Hmmm.”
“What?”
She gave me a sharp look. “Audrey, have y
ou looked at this? Like, really looked?”
I flushed, not wanting to admit that I hadn’t taken it off since Dev put it on my hand. As it was, my foolish fingers were curling into my palms, protesting the foreign sensation of not wearing it. I hadn’t realized how used I’d gotten to wearing it, until I took it off.
“It’s real,” she told me.
Holding out my hand for it, I rolled my eyes. “Well, it’s not imaginary.” Though there were times I wondered if I was dreaming all of it.
She handed the ring back, and something inside me calmed as I shoved it back on my finger. “No, Audrey. I mean it’s a diamond.”
“What?” I whipped my hand up so quickly I was lucky I didn’t take my eye out.
“I spent six months researching rings online before we got engaged,” she explained. She’d always been a little obsessive, so this didn’t surprise me. “I even got a setting with a Moissanite to make sure I liked it. It’s amazing how good they are now. I have a friend who got one to make sure she had a ‘conflict-free’ ring.”
Ah. “You mean like a lab diamond,” I said. “That’s smart. I guess the insurance would be less, too, right?”
“Well,” she said slowly, her eyes narrowing at me, “It depends on the setting.” She moved past me to the computer. Within seconds she’d pulled up a webpage featuring what looked exactly like my ring. “Look familiar?” she said.
“Oh.” My voice was a hell of a lot duller than the manufactured diamond on my hand.
My heart shriveled just a little at the evidence that my ring wasn’t unique. Of course, I wasn’t stupid enough to think it was one of a kind, but I didn’t think it was a knock-off either.
“What the hell, Audrey? Are you disappointed?”
“No, it’s fine.” I stared at my hand again. It was still a gorgeous ring. “I just thought he had more…”
“Money?”
“Imagination.”
“Oh my god,” she breathed incredulously. “Are you actually complaining about a—what, fifty thousand-dollar ring?”
“What?”
“That’s a ballpark guess.”
My mouth dried up. Ballparks had been surprising the hell out of me lately.
“Maybe less, probably more,” she added. “We could try to price it.” She went back to the computer, a woman on a mission, while I sat there in a stupor.
