Page 6 of Just My Fake Husband

First of all, all of this? Having a really terrible twenty-four hours in Prague—during which I gambled away seventy thousand dollars, every last penny from a fund of my own money I’d been saving to start my own charity, and subsequently got fired from my dad’s company—is all on me.

I’m responsible for my actions. No question.

And yes, I said seventy thousand. Like seven zero, zero, zero, zero.

I’m not blaming anyone else, not even my friend Todd, and his craptastic idea to “get lost” in Prague to help him get over being dumped by his girlfriend. I was the one who imbibed. I was the one who played poker. I was the one who sucks at poker. And I’m the one who was fired by their own dad, via video chat, at three in the morning before I’d even sobered up.

Just thinking about Prague sobers me up and I haven’t even had a drop to drink since then. Before this, with the exception of my twenty-first birthday a few years ago, I hadn’t had anything to drink. Ever. I didn’t like how it made me feel on my birthday and so I just didn’t. Until Todd convinced me that it would be so easy to forget our troubles by living it up in Europe for a bit.

Oh so easy.

Until it completely ruined my life.

I wish I had the luxury of simply not thinking about it, but I have to fix this as quickly as possible.

Thanks to some random dude, a chatty employee at the hotel I was about to be forcefully removed from, I joined a pilgrimage. Picture this: a hungover American, sans cellphone, with one of those cheap cinch bags on his back containing a few toiletries, leaving the Prague casino and just simply walking—for a month, mind you—to a castle in Germany. A literal castle in Germany. I camped with a Silicon Valley investor, a former model with a botched plastic surgery from Denmark, three retirees from South Africa, and a couple of Chilean teens doing a gap year before starting university.

I was already sort of punishing myself. I’m a long-distance runner, have been since I was a kid in elementary school. I thought I was in shape, but the blisters on every toe, the achingarches of my feet, and my sore knees combined to make my own version of hell.

I deserved that version of hell.

The whole experience wasn’t religious, but it was spiritual. I felt a little better when it was over. But my dad was still livid—heartbroken, really—and I was still unemployed.

And now the person I thought could help me refuses to do so.

I manage to make my way back to my car parked in the corner of the small parking lot, and I don’t run into any of my four brothers who now work here. Sebastian, the oldest and owner of Tate International. Oliver, second in command but opposite in personality from the serious Sebastian. Alec, a former football player now in charge of the amenities that a Colorado resort needs to provide. And, most recently, Henry, former Army-turned-elite security officer, now head of security for all of Sebastian’s resorts.

And then there’s me, the sole Tate son to work for our father and heir to Foundations Financial.

Well. Former heir.

The only son who hasn’t made up his mind about which side of the coin he’s on, our father’s or our oldest brother’s, is Milo, who just graduated from the university most of us went to: Columbia. He’s still in New York, finishing an internship in, what else? Business. Out of us six boys, only Henry and Alec didn’t major in something related to business, and somehow they’ve managed to make it back to the family business anyway.

Oh, and Dad recently discovered we have yet another brother, named Benson, older than all of us, born from a short-lived, college summer fling when my dad was in Florida before he met my mom.

So, yeah. That’s been interesting.

Thankfully, Benson is a nice guy.

I make my way out of the small parking lot and turn right onto Lakeside Road. No, I’m not driving the hour back to my home in Denver or into Longdale, a sleepy resort town teeming with people since it’s still tourist season for a couple more weeks.

I’m driving to my friend Steve’s place, high on the mountain above Longdale Lake. He and his wife, Meagan, are letting me stay there for a couple of days while I sort everything out. They’ve been spending some time in Italy, so yeah, I’m hiding out alone, away from it all. Being back in Denver was suffocating me—a constant reminder of all I’ve lost.

But also, I needed to be close to River Judkins. I thought she’d accept my offer of freelance work and that I could spend a couple of days hashing things out with her.

With pastures, pines, and quaking aspens on either side, I pass the house that Sebastian and Elianna built on the right. No one in the family even knew they were building it until they moved in. I cringe as I pass, hoping no one sees me driving by. I hadn’t realized my friend’s place was less than half a mile from his house, but there’s not much I can do about that now. I turn left and slowly pull into the long driveway. I’m relieved to see the house is set off from the road and hidden by a dense bundle of trees.

Steve called it “cozy.” Itissmall, barely bigger than a tiny home. I whistle as I lift my luggage from the car and survey the house. The exterior, cream-colored stone and black, arched, double French front doors are something else. Steve’s brief description did not do it justice.

I enter through the garage around back and am hit by the sounds of the fountain built into the wall in the small mudroom with a stackable washer and dryer.

Oh yeah. Steve said he’d send some cleaners over to freshen up and turn on the fountain.

There’s a wall fountain in the mudroom. If that doesn’t give you an idea of how incredible this place is, I don’t know what would.

It’s just as well. If I’m here in Longdale to salvage my career, might as well do it in style, right? That’s got to help my mindset.

And yes, I know the latest trends in self-help because I listened to self-help audiobooks traveling back to the States after my pilgrimage, trying to cram a crash course of “How in the heck do I fix myself and my life?” into my brain before returning to my dad.

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