Page 67 of How To Fake A Fiancé

“Looks like everyone else had the same idea.”

“No kidding.” I walk beside Sofia in the dairy section as she pushes the cart and I look at the items on the list. “Why didn’t Mom get this stuff ahead of time?”

“She told me she went shopping the week prior but didn’t realize until now she needed more.”

I sigh. At least I’m out of the house. For the first time since I got here, I feel like I can finally take a breath. I don’t feel crammed in.

Sleeping next to a man I struggle to resist on a regular basis is challenging enough. All night I tossed and turned, too aware that the man was lying beside me. To think he’d be out of sight and out of mind with a pillow wedged between us. For hours, I fought the urge to attempt, or even imagine, inviting him closer. I wanted to hear his sweet words again, have him pepper my face with his kisses, and pretty much make me forget the world around me existed for a while.

He seems to be the only one who can keep me sane in my insane world. How does he do that? I still don’t have a clue.

For right now, and with the time that I have alone with my sister, it’s time to make the most of it.

“So how’s married life?”

She turns her focus to me with a sigh. “Don’t do this.”

“Don’t do what?”

“I know what you want to say, Kami.”

“How do you know? I haven’t said anything yet.”

She groans. “You want to lecture me about my life choices, tell me eloping at my age was stupid, and that it won’t last. Did I leave anything out?”

She took the words right out of my mouth. “Can’t you understand where I’m coming from?”

“And can’t you understand that your beef isn’t with me? I appreciate your concern, but these are my choices to make. If they do end up being mistakes, then at least I’ll learn. But your issues are more with Mom than they are with me, and you know it.”

Dammit. She knows me too well. “Aren’t you the least bit concerned she’ll get hurt again? She has so many times before.”

“I am, but it’s none of our business. Other people’s decisions on what they do with their lives don’t affect you.”

She’s right. They don’t. But there was a long time where my mother’s love life was my business. How could it not be when it was in my face constantly? Countless times our mother tried to convince me each new man she was seeing would be our new father. But after a while and too many disappointments, I got tired of the rejection and pain. Isn’t she tired yet? Isn’t she exhausted by doing the same thing over and over and still expecting a different result?

“I think Mom has finally found it.” Optimism is in my sister’s tone.

“Found what?”

“The one.”

“After all this time?” I scoff.

She sighs. “Believe what you will, but we’re not kids anymore. We don’t have to let her decisions affect us.”

“But they did.” I shake my head. “I can’t fault Mom for being brokenhearted so many times. What I am faulting her for though, is never seeing how each goodbye crushed us. How devastated I was when Dad left. Or when the man who called us his daughters, and I considered a father, said to my face we were no children of his and walked off. She never asked how you and I felt. She only focused on herself and her emotions. I don’t know if I could ever forgive her for that.”

“I’m so sorry you had to hear that, sis. We’ll never be able to change the past, but we can move on from it. That’s what I did,” Sophia says with tears in her eyes.

“And that’s what I tried to do, too. Do you remember the guy I dated in high school? For three years, he made me believe he loved me. And then I had to find out from someone else that he’d been cheating on me the whole time.”

“So that’s somehow Mom’s fault?”

I shake my head. It’s not that simple. “Forget it. You don’t understand.”

That relationship, ending the way it did, solidified in me that I not only wasn’t enough to be loved as a daughter, but also as a girlfriend and potentially more than that.

I start to walk off when she grabs my arm forcefully, pulling me back to a vacant aisle. She speaks softly but firmly. “I know more than you think, Kami. And I’m not that fragile little sister you think I am.” She then brings me into a hug.

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