Page 18 of Honeymoon Phase
“Relax, okay. This Boulder event is small and doesn’t use any power tools so at least our risk of dying goes way down.”
“That’s a relief,” Luke scoffs, propping his hands on his hips.
“Except for the speed pole climbing. I think you could seriously die from that. Or paralyze yourself, because I can’t find anywhere for you to practice that. How many weeks do we have until the competition?”
“Six.” Luke swallows hard and I do the same.
I nod, deep in thought. “You’ll be fine. Some of these other activities aren’t so bad. Chopping will be easy for you. You guys do that up here already. Axe throwing is literally a date night activity now, so if you suck at that, there’s no hope for you. Boom running could be tricky, so you’ll definitely need to work on that. You have to sprint over a series of linked, floating logs from one dock to another and back, as logs begin to spin out of control. Good chance you get wet but at least you won’t be dead.
“Then there’s the two-person bucking saw competition where you have to pull the saw through a twenty-inch white pine log. You have to sever a complete wood cookie off the end of the log faster than the other teams. You get randomly assigned another contestant as a teammate for that but you need to practice which is why—”
“She called us,” a voice bellows from the distance and I lookpast Luke to find Calder and Wyatt walking up the gravel lane toward us.
“You told them?” Luke hisses, shooting me a lethal stare like I totally betrayed him.
“I’m going back to Ireland next week and you need help training,” I exclaim, using a band around my wrist to tie my hair up. “And I’m not going to be here for the competition so you’re going to need all the support you can get.”
Luke steps closer and whispers, “How much do they know?”
“We know you’re doing this because of Addison Monroe,” Calder drawls, flopping down on the front step and stretching out his legs like he’s trying to get a suntan through his denim. “I knew you’ve had the hots for the lumberyard chick for years. Just didn’t know you had the balls to marry her. Fake marry her? Honestly I’m still confused with what’s going on exactly.” Calder picks up the long rope that’s supposed to be used for the pole climb.
Luke turns to glare at me and I hold my hands up defensively. “Oh please. You already told them she was looking for a husband. Why hide it now? Plus, you know how hard it is to keep secrets in the Fletcher family.”
Luke pinches the bridge of his nose. “This is humiliating.”
“Calder and Wyatt are the only ones who know. I told them they can’t tell Dakota and Trista or Grandma because if they do they’ll mess up phase two.”
“What is phase two?” Luke groans, looking like he’s about to vomit.
“I’d like to know too,” Calder says, raising his hand. “Keeping secrets from Dakota makes me really nervous. That woman can see right through me.”
“Yeah, Trista will kill me too,” Wyatt interjects as he leans on the deck railing.
“Hey, who do you think is scarier? Dakota or Trista?” Calder asks, looking thoughtful.
“Good question,” Luke answers, weighing in. “My knee jerk is Trista ’cause her cowboy boots look like they could kick Wyatt’s ass real good. But Dakota was super scary that day we brought the shelves to her T-shirt shop.”
“Right!” Calder says excitedly like he wants his girl to win this competition. “She gets these freaky veins in her forehead when she yells. They kind of look like rabbit ears with horns. I worry about brain aneurisms.”
“You guys haven’t seen Trista try to pen up her pig when he’s not wanting to come in,” Wyatt says with a grave look. “She makes these weird noises that aren’t words, just a slur of letters... like she’s speaking in tongues. She kind of sounded like that when she gave birth to Stevie too. Don’t ever tell her this, but I hate thinking about it.”
“All the more reason Dakota and I should never have children,” Calder says with a shudder.
“I think Mom could be a contender for scariest as well,” Luke adds with a tightness to his jaw. “She is so small but you know she can inflict weird pain with her boney fingers. Remember as kids how she’d reach into the back seat and pinch us when we were fighting?”
Calder and Wyatt both nod in silent agreement.
“Guys, tighten up!” I clap my hands to get them to focus on me. “We need to stay on track. It’s important to keep the fact that you know this is a marriage of convenience a secret from Addison and the ladies because otherwise, Luke will have no reason to fake it with her. And it’s going to be those faking moments I strategically set up that will make Addison stop seeing him as the lovable best friend and start seeing him as a man she wants to spend the rest of her life with.”
“And go to Bone Town with,” Calder says with a wave of hishand. He holds his fist up to Luke, silently asking him to pound it and Luke hesitates a moment before giving in. Wyatt chuckles under his beard and I slap my hand over my face in horror.
I am working with a bunch of apes. My uncles are knuckle-dragging morons who are lucky I’m here or otherwise they wouldn’t even be able to form complete sentences.
“Calder, I need you to take this seriously,” I state, feeling some forehead veins of my own pop out. “And if you can’t then I will kindly ask you to get the heck out of here so we can get to work.”
“Cool your jets, Ev,” Calder huffs, looking hurt. “I’m in, okay? I just have to fuck with Luke because... well... he’s Luke and it’s kind of just what we’ve always done.”
Luke rolls his eyes, clearly used to this sort of treatment while I have to inhale deeply to lower my heart rate before I punch my lovable uncles in the face.Maybe I should try the Grandma pinching thing.
