I’d rather be the sister who shut him out than the one who held him back.
“Cut the shit,” he said, his voice sharp. “You might have the retiree renters fooled, but not me. This marriage is about as real as Dad claiming he taught the goats to sort laundry.”
I remembered that story. Beau and I had been maybe nine or ten, and my dad had sworn up and down for a week he’d done it. Even then when we were so young, we’d called him on his bullshit.
My heart lurched and my stomach bottomed out. I opened my mouth to respond, my words tripping over themselves. “It’s not— It’s notfake-fake—it’s… Complicated. There’s this grant?—”
“Agrant? Are you out of your goddamn minds?” he asked, each word landing like a blow. “This is your plan? Marry my best friend for money? Did you even think about what this would do to him? Toyou?”
I glanced at Lincoln, who stood still, his arms crossed, jaw tight. Expression utterly unreadable.
Turning back to Beau, I said, “It’s not like that.”
He huffed out a humorless laugh. “It’sexactlylike that. What about the future? Did you think about that? About the two of you being exes in a town this small? Spending the next fifty years bumping into each other at bonfires and farmers markets and pretending this—” he gestured around the tiny silo “—never happened?”
The thought made my eyes sting, my chest tightening over the idea of a future where Lincoln wasn’t mine.
Beau turned his attention to Lincoln, his gaze narrowed. “And you. I thought you had a brain in that pretty head. You let this happen?”
Lincoln’s shoulders tightened, a silent crack in his composed façade. “I didn’t justletit happen. Ichoseit. Because I care about her.”
“Then you’re an even bigger idiot than I thought.” Beau took a step closer, voice cold as he stared Lincoln down. “Admit it—you went along with this sham marriage foryourbenefit, not hers.”
Lincoln’s jaw twitched—the barest reaction, but I saw it. Beau did too.
“And what happens if the grant goes through and you get the money?” he asked. “This fake matrimony has to end sometime, so what then? You think you’ll just amicably separate? Have a nice, clean fake divorce?”
“You think I haven’t thought about that every damn day?” Lincoln said, his voice harsh.
Beau pressed his mouth together in a thin line and shook his head. “Not enough to make you come to your senses, apparently.”
Panic clawed its way up my throat, and my pulse raced. This was going even worse than I’d anticipated, and I’d feared something bad. But this? My brother was more upset than I’d thought he’d be. And if we couldn’t get him to come around…if he said one thing to the wrong person… This could all implode in our faces before the grant was approved.
“Beau,stop,” I snapped, my composure long gone. “I’m not going to let you ruin this.”
Lincoln stepped closer, settling in next to me, his hand a comforting, grounding weight against my spine.
“The grant isn’t even approved yet,” I continued, “and if anyone hears about this, we’re fucked.”
Lincoln stiffened, then slowly turned to face me, his brows drawn down. “Are you serious right now?” he asked. His voicewas low, but his tone scraped against me like sandpaper over skin.
He was looking at me like I’d just happily kicked the air out of his lungs. Like I wasn’t the woman who’d shared a bed with him every night for two months or laughed with his family over Sunday night dinners. Like I wasn’t his wife…even if we were only supposed to be pretending.
“With everything we’re talking about, the fuckinggrantis what you’re concerned about?”
“That’s not—” I started, then swallowed hard. Because the grantwaswhat this whole thing was about. It was why we were here in the first place. Why Lincoln and I wore matching wedding bands, why we’d shared this too-tiny space for so long.
Even if I wanted it to be something else.
But that was too scary to voice right now, in the midst of everything else. So, instead, I allowed myself to give him a lie wrapped in truth.
“It was supposed to be business,” I whispered.
Lincoln’s entire body went still. Completely, utterly still. And then he exhaled once, a short, tired sound, and ran a hand through his hair. “I really thought we were past pretending, hellcat.”
He didn’t glance at my brother. Didn’t kiss me goodbye. Instead, he strode toward the door, turned the knob, and walked out into the night without looking back.
The door shut behind him with a quiet finality that hurt worse than anything Beau had said. Worse than the possibility of losing the grant. Worse than the fear of everything tumbling down, of me fucking up and costing my family our legacy.
