Page 43 of Fake It For Him

Sure, but not for the reasons you think, I’m afraid. “Oh, right.”

Still, even though I knew she was drawing the wrong conclusions, I couldn’t help the tiny stab of disappointment I felt in my gut.

Until she continued, anyway.

Leaning forward a bit, she covered my hand resting on the table with her own, giving it a soft squeeze. “His edges also aren’t so sharp with you, Ella. You seem to have a calming effect on him, and for the first time when he’s been with a woman, I saw real emotion in his eyes when he looked at you at dinner. That’s what convinced me you were the real deal.”

Aww, fuck.

Something stirred in my chest that definitely shouldn’t have stirred, but I knocked it down, convincing myself that it was just nice to hear it from his sister. Not because it actually meant anything.

“You think I have a calming effect on him?” I asked mildly, focusing on the one part of her statement that seemed a little out of place to me. “Why’s that? We weren’t exactly in a charged situation around the dinner table with your family.”

She laughed softly. “You’d think that, but the last few years, every family dinner we’ve had has been charged in a way that you can’t possibly imagine. When Finn went at him, I totally expected him to fly off the handle and he didn’t, and that was because of you.”

Withdrawing her hand, she peered at me with a strange depth of emotion in her eyes. “Did he really tell you why he and Finn hate each other so much? I know you said that he told you what happened four years ago, but did he really? Did he tell you everything, or only a little bit?”

For a fraction of a moment, I considered lying so I could try to get the full story from Freya, but in the end, I nodded instead. “He really told me everything. I know that he slept with Finn’s fiancée during the bachelor and bachelorette trip to Scotland and I also know that Finn has never forgiven him for it. It doesn’t seem like anyone else has either.”

Freya sighed, and real pain and sadness reflected in her eyes as she looked back at me. It was so intense that I felt a frisson of hurt shooting through my own insides. For her to look like this, I wondered how hard it must’ve hit their family.

So far, I’d only really considered it from my perspective and a little bit from Finn’s, but looking at Freya now, the repercussions had been further reaching than I’d thought. The damage seemed to have smacked her right in the heart, tearing her up from the inside out.

All the pain, the betrayal, and the shock of it still seemed pretty fresh in those beautiful, dark eyes of hers. For my money, she was still living it all every single time her family got together and it was obvious how much she loved them all.

It was no wonder she was secretly hoping her wedding would have such a profound effect on them. Repairing broken bonds had to have been hard on her so far, especially because it seemed it was impossible for Finn.

I didn’t know if I’d be able to forgive a sibling who had slept with the person I thought I’d be spending the rest of my life with. From Freya’s point of view, it had to be difficult to navigate such hostility between two people she cared so much about and probably loved equally.

Her gaze was slightly unfocused for a moment as she thought it over. Then she blinked and shrugged a shoulder at me. “I suppose you’re right. In a way, none of us have forgiven him for it. I’ve tried, but it’s hard when I don’t understand how or why it happened. I think I’m most of the way to forgiveness, but you’re right about the rest of my family. I’m still mad at him, but they’re nowhere near as close to forgiving him as I am.”

I tried to ignore that weight that dropped down right on the very center of my heart. “Do you think they’ll ever get there?”

Asshole or not, I had to feel for the guy. From what he’d told me, it sounded like I knew more about the run-up to the incident than she did. None of what he’d said excused his behavior, but damn.

“I don’t know,” she admitted eventually. “His drunken error in judgment has caused rifts in our family that will probably never heal. Before it happened, we used to be pretty close, you know? It probably doesn’t look like it now, but Finn and Calan used to be best friends. Calan was still, well, Calan, but Finn and I both knew as surely as the sun rose every morning that our brother had our backs. Now?” She shrugged.

I found myself reaching for her hand this time, squeezing it as gently as she had. For some reason, I felt the need to comfort her, but also to stand up for him. “If given the chance, I’m sure Calan would still have your backs, Freya. I doubt anything could ever change that.”

She blinked away and smiled, and I bit the inside of my cheek, knowing that I was once again venturing into dangerous territory. The Reids were a rich and powerful family, and I was sticking my nose in where it didn’t belong. Not really.

I was trying to help this time and not to hurt, but I’d dug up old skeletons before and it hadn’t ended well for me that time. I just hoped this didn’t turn out the same way.

23

CALAN

I sat in front of the fireplace in my living room, an Isle of Reid whiskey in my hand as I watched the flames in the hearth. I still hadn’t heard a word from either Freya or Ella, and it was really starting to bug me that I had no idea how their afternoon together had gone.

The TV mounted on the wall over the fireplace was on, but I had no idea what was happening on the screen. A ballgame of some sort, perhaps, but I’d only flicked it on for the sake of not sitting in complete and total silence.

Surprise rippled through me when there was a knock at my door, and then I nearly fell over backward when I answered it to see my sister and my girlfriend standing on my doorstep. Freya was bright eyed and smiling while Ella looked a little uneasy, but she played the part of being happy to be at my house.

“I had a great time with your girl today, big brother,” Freya said as she brushed past me, still smiling as she walked into the house.

Ella was carrying half a dozen shopping bags, and I held out one hand to help her with them while wrapping the other arm around her. She let me do it, even leaning into me and dipping her head back to look into my eyes.

I bent my head to drop a quick kiss to her forehead, hoping it looked intimate and loving instead of forced. “I’m glad you girls enjoyed yourselves. What’s all this, then? Did you buy half of Fifth Avenue?”