Page 16 of A Chance for Us
She nods and then fidgets a little. “Thank you. He means the world to me, and when he said he feels like leaving me without someone to love me and care for me was destroying him, it destroyed me. I can’t do that, Ollie. I can’t . . . I can’t let him . . . I need to give him this peace before . . . before . . .” She traps her bottom lip between her teeth, but I can still see it tremble.
I step back because this beautiful creature might just get me to agree, and that is absolute lunacy. “I’m sorry about your dad.” I pause, searching for an easy way to let her down. “I don’t know what more to say.”
“Tell me you’ll help me. It won’t be real,” she rushes to say. “We’ll go through the entire thing as though it is, but . . . I wouldn’t ask you to really marry me. It’s just . . . well, I need to do this for him.”
My head is spinning, and thank the heavens above my sister finally joins us.
“You must be Maren.” Stella’s voice holds a hint of amusement. If she knew what Maren had just asked me, she wouldn’t be so happy.
“I am.”
“I’m Stella, Oliver’s twin, and that is my brother, Josh.”
Josh waves.
“It’s great to meet you.”
“Likewise. We’re really happy to help you with the wedding. I know you have been dealing with Oliver, but I’d like to make sure that this goes off as smoothly as possible. Therefore, I’ll step in for the final coordination parts. Flowers, cake, final dinner menu, and seating chart. All the fun stuff.”
Maren smiles. “I really appreciate that, but I’m not sure there will be a wedding.” Her pleading eyes turn back to me as my sister’s gaze burns a hole in my cheek.
Stella cuts her gaze to Josh.
“My fiancé—well, I guess ex-fiancé now—called it off.” Maren launches into the lengthy speech about her father, recounting everything she said to me. Hearing it again isn’t any easier. I wish I cared about my father so much that I’d beg someone I haven’t seen in ten-plus years to fake marry me just to make him happy.
Stella, the bleeding heart under all that steel, wipes at her eyes. Great. Not the reaction I expected.
“Oh, Ollie, you have to!” Stella says quickly, her hand going to my shoulder. “You have to do this for her. Can you imagine? Her father needs this.”
“You want me to marry her?”
Maren steps back in. “Fake. We won’t be married. We’ll do all the things we need to make this look real, but it won’t be legal or anything. We won’t be married, we’ll just have a wedding.”
“I’m not going to do that.”
“I know I’m asking a lot, but . . .”
Yeah, no shit she is. “I can’t marry you.”
“Fake.”
She bites that lower lip again, and I want to slide my thumb against her skin, tug her lip free, and then kiss it.
Yeah, this is so not going to work.
“Believe me, I wish there were another way. I am sort of desperate and haven’t thought every part of this through, but I know this is the right thing.”
“I don’t think you’ve thought any of this through,” I say.
“She’s thinking with her heart,” my sister defends.
Maren smiles, and the sun shines brighter. What is with this girl? What is with my reaction to this girl? “I know this is a big ask, and if you say no, I’ll understand. I just can’t help but think of him being so sad. This trip is all he has to look forward to. My stepmother keeps him couped up, making him go to a million appointments and making more excuses as to why his family can’t come visit. He’s exhausted. He’s been fighting this cancer for almost fifteen years, and . . .” Tears fill those beautiful green eyes. “I want to give him something happy.”
“I don’t think lying to him would make him happy.”
“I think it’s better than disappointing him.”
I run my hand through my hair. “I know you’re desperate, but I’m not the right answer here.”
