Page 33 of Make Your Save

ROWAN

Hadley doesn’t say a fucking word.

She doesn’t make a fucking sound.

She just stares at me.

“I’m sorry,” she starts, shaking her head as she lets out a soft laugh. “You did what?”

I swallow roughly over the lump lodged in my throat and shove my hands into the front pocket of my hoodie. “I panicked. He started talking about stability and my job and he brought up being single and I fucking panicked. I didn’t mean to say it, it just came out.”

“And you didn’t once stop and think to correct yourself?” She raises both of her eyebrows at me and slowly gets up from where she’s sitting.

“I—No.”

Fuck, fuck, fuck. I messed this all up.

Hadley walks around the island, silently handing Lucy to me. She doesn’t speak a word as she reaches forthe basket, pulling it into her arms as she stares me down. “What the fuck, Rowan?”

“I know, I know,” I tell her, running my hand through my hair again. “I fucking know.”

“You do know this is more than you just telling a lie, right?” She shakes her head at me, her eyes wide. “If they send someone out to your house, it has to look like I live here. If they question any of your friends or family, they’re going to have to go along with this lie.” She lets out a breath. “Did you once think about the fact that you’re dragging everyone into this little charade?”

“Obviously, I didn’t think about much, Hadley.” I scoff, feeling like a fucking idiot. “I told you, I panicked.”

“You can’t ask everyone to lie for you.”

I stare at her, feeling the weight of her words on my shoulders. She’s right. It’s not right for me to expect anyone to do something like that, especially when it’s going to involve them lying to the court. Hadley will be leaving in three months, and then what?

“I will just explain the situation to my lawyer and figure out a way to prove to them that she will have stability here.”

Hadley plucks a bar of chocolate from the basket and rips it open. “How good are you at pretending?”

My eyebrows pull together as I watch her lift the whole thing up to her mouth, taking a bite with no regard to the perfectly measured squares. “What?”

“Do you think you’d be able to make it believable?”

She throws me off-balance with her question and fora moment, I’m not sure I heard her correctly. “Could you?”

She chews the bite of chocolate, swallowing as she shrugs. “Maybe.” Silence stretches between us and Hadley sets the basket back down on the counter before she looks at me again. “How do we do this?”

My eyes widen. “Wait, you’re agreeing to do this? I thought you were mad about it.”

“Oh, I am,” she concurs, bobbing her head as she takes another bite of the chocolate bar. “What you did was careless and stupid, but you panicked. I get it.” She reaches in the basket and hands me an unopened bar. “If me pretending to be your fiancée makes it easier for you to get custody of Lucy, then I’ll do it.”

“Hadley, you don’t have to. I shouldn’t have put you in a position like this and I can just tell my lawyer the?—”

She holds her hand up. “Rowan, stop. We’re going to do this, okay?” She gives me a knowing look. “We’re going to make sure you don’t have to worry about having custody of Lucy in the future, okay?”

I let out the breath I didn’t realize I was holding, relief instantly flooding me as it chases away the anxiety. “Okay.”

“We need to figure out how we’re going to do this, though,” she says as she glances down at her scrubs and back up at me. “I’m going to run home and get showered and changed, and then I will be back and we will come up with a plan.”

“Okay,” I repeat the word, dipping my chin again. “I’ll order delivery from somewhere.”

“Perfect,” she says with a tender smile that sparks something in my chest. “I’ll be back in a little bit.”

She leaves the basket and I stand in the center of the kitchen as I watch her walk down the hallway, into the foyer, and to the front door. My feet move without my brain’s permission and I stop just as I step into the hall.

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