Page 6 of Fake it ’Til Fall

I do need it.

A good cut from that wedding could cover rent. Maybe two months if I kept eating like a raccoon with access to coupons. It could handle the pharmacy charge. It could let me stop calculating how long I can wait before replacing a boot that clicks like a tiny omen. It could even allow me to buy produce without treating the price of berries like a personal attack.

Soren hears it anyway.

“You could help remotely and get your cut,” he says.

I open my eyes.

The café comes back in pieces.

Remotely.

A safe word, almost.

A way to touch Winterberry Cove without letting it touch back.

“I hadn’t thought about that,” I say.

“You’d be good at it.”

“I’m good at most things when emotionally cornered.”

“That’s not funny.”

“It was a little funny.”

“No.”

“Fine. It was theoretically funny.”

“Daisy.”

His voice has that older-brother edge now.

I glance at the romance shelves, at all those bright promises lined up spine by spine. Second chances. Secret weddings. Men who learn how to apologize in chapters twenty-six through twenty-eight. Women who get to be chosen without becoming a cautionary tale first.

My life, rude as always, refuses proper genre placement.

I swallow. “Eight months is plenty of time to organize a wedding.”

“You don’t have to do it.”

That should help.

It doesn’t.

Because of course I don’t have to. I don’t have to work two jobs. I don’t have to pretend Boston fixed me. I don’t have to be the cheerful daughter, the capable sister, the woman who turns heartbreak into logistics and then alphabetizes the guest list.

I chose it anyway.

That’s the humiliating part.

I choose being useful because useful has always been safer than needing things.

“I can do it from here,” I say.

“Day.”