Page 88 of Dare Me

Holding up a finger, Liam then typed out something on his phone and less than a minute later, he held the phone up again to show him.

Liam: Should Will be there?

Mom: No!

Patrick: No!

Jamie: What am I missing?

Ryleigh: Is he a glutton for punishment?

Arianna: NO!

“Alright. I guess I’ll just…not be there,” he said grimly.

Liam got to his feet and clapped him on the shoulder. “For what it’s worth, I think it’s admirable that you want to be there. But as my sister shouted at us just minutes ago that she doesn’t want anyone protecting her. I think this is going to be her moment.” Then he shrugged. “And I think you need to let her have this.”

As much as he hated the thought of it, Liam was right.

Arianna deserved to have her moment to prove to her family just how incredible she was.

And he’d be waiting right here for her—more than willing to stand back and simply applaud.

He just had to hope she was speaking to him by then.

Chapter Fourteen

“I’m scared. I feel like I should be scared,” Ryleigh whispered to her as they walked up to the pub together. “Am I supposed to be scared?”

“Oh, for crying out loud, Ry…”

“Well, you have to admit, it’s not often that we get a heads-up that there’s going to be some sort of family brawl.”

“There isn’t going to be a brawl. There’s going to be me putting my foot down and confessing that Will and I have been dating and that we’re in love.”

Ryleigh looked around dramatically.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m looking for Will,” she replied. “One would expect him to be here to take his punishment like a man. I don’t see why you have to do this on your own. It’s not going to look good for him to be absent from the big smackdown.”

Groaning, she opened the door to the pub. “We told him not to come, okay? I didn’t want him here because otherwise no one would listen to me. They’d all be focused on him and wouldn’t take me seriously. It needs to be this way.”

“Yeah, those texts were hysterical,” Ryleigh said with a laugh.

Looking around, Arianna spotted her uncle behind the bar talking to her father and Jamie was setting up their usual booth with the extra table. It was surprisingly empty for a Thursday evening and it seemed eerily quiet.

“This is strange, right?” she murmured to her sister.

“Um…definitely.”

Kate Donovan came out of the kitchen and immediately spotted her daughters. With a determined stride, she walked over and didn’t look the least bit happy to see them. “We closed the pub until eight for this, Arianna. In all the years that this pub has existed, no one has made us do this!”

“I didn’t ask you to close it, Mom. I told you what was going on and asked if we could all meet so we could talk.”

“You think we can talk about this mess you’ve made while serving drinks and smiling at customers?” she cried out dramatically. “I can’t believe you would do this not only to me, your own mother, but your sister!”

“Um…excuse me?” Ryleigh asked. “What’s this about me?”

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