Page 152 of Boyfriend of the Hour
“It wasn’t enough, though,” he said. “Isla was with her mom when Lindsay died. She took her with her to her dealer, some man in a trailer in the woods that I guess Lindsay was also working with. There was an explosion. Isla managed to get out, but she was badly burned. She’s had several surgeries over the years to repair the damage, but it was quite disfiguring.”
So that part was true too. Jesus.
“None of this sounds that different from the story Carrick told me,” I admitted.
“There are some differences.”
“Like what?”
“For one, I didn’t love Lindsay.” He looked at me, his brown eyes wider than ever. “I never loved her. At all. I told you I was engaged in college, and it’s true. But it wasn’t because I loved Lindsay. It was because I came to love her daughter.”
I digested that for a moment. Went back over the relationships he’d listed. If Lindsay and the fiancée were one andthe same, that meant the woman I’d imagined was the one who was fake. A complete figment of my overactive imagination.
So, who was he asking for in his sleep?
Was it still this girl’s mother? This woman he never really wanted to be with?
It didn’t make sense.
“So what happened to Isla?” I pressed. “Where is she now?”
Nathan sighed. “She’s seventeen. I pay for her to attend a boarding school in Virginia for autistic children. She’s doing well. Enough that I think she’ll be able to attend college with some accommodations.” He looked at me with a pride that could only be described as paternal. “She’s very bright.”
“So you said,” I said. “Seems like everything is all right now.”
“It will be after she turns eighteen.” Nathan sighed. “Until then, things are…complicated.”
“Complicated, how?”
He turned. “After Lindsay died, my parents used their connections in the North Carolina court system to become Isla’s foster parents. And then, eventually, her legal guardians.”
“They adopted her?”
Nathan shook his head. “No. They just make her decisions officially since when her mother died, the courts said I was too young to become her guardian. I pay for everything, but they have to consent and sign the papers. And right now, they are proposing to send her back to North Carolina to live with some of Lindsay’s distant family. In a trailer park. The effect of that kind of change on someone like Isla, being ripped from everything she knows, placed in an environment like that, would be disastrous.”
Suddenly, everything made sense. The strange hold Nathan’s parents had on their thirty-four-year-old son. The fact that this man, who so staunchly marched to the beat of his own drum, was willing to go so far as to fake a relationship to appease them.Isla’s guardianship was clearly the tool they used to get what they wanted from the son, who otherwise wouldn’t come to heel.
No wonder he was so intent on giving them what they wanted. It wasn’t for them. It was for her.
If only I didn’t mess it up.
I turned. “Nathan, I think you need a different fake girlfriend. Or fiancée. You know.”
His head whipped around. “What?”
“I think…no, Iknow…I can’t…the stakes are too high.” I scrubbed my face, willing myself to find the words that just wouldn’t come. “I don’t want to mess things up for you, and I think I already have. Your brother knows what I do, and obviously, your parents won’t be thrilled with it either. You need someone they won’t find issues with, you know?”
“Joni.”
“Maybe that Charlotte person,” I rattled on. “We already know she likes you, and she’s pretty. I bet she’d play arm candy in a hot second, even if she knows it’s just a ruse, and then maybe you’ll come to?—”
“Joni,stop.”
“I won’t!” I was practically shouting now as I jumped off the ground and started pacing around the studio. “It’s too important. You can’t tell me a story like that, show me that a girl’s whole future literally depends on me playing a part, and then expect me, of all people, to not fuck it up.”
“Why?” Nathan demanded as he stood himself and started pacing with me. “Give me one good reason you can’t do this.”
“I don’t have one reason, I’ve got a million.”
