Page 109 of Fake it With Me

“This is so cool!” she announced. “It’s like a tiny house! Can I live here?”

Darek followed her inside. I watched his expression shift from curiosity to shock to something like horror.

“You’ve been living here?” He looked around at the single room, the futon, the tiny kitchenette. “Liza, this is so… small.”

“All I could afford,” I said defensively. “Not all of us are billionaires.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it.” He stopped, ran a hand through his hair. “I just meant you should have called me. Should have let me help.”

“It’s a shack but it’s been fine. Katie gave me a good rate, and it’s on the beach. I’ve been able to work on my dissertation.”

“I could have this whole thing moved to my backyard if you want,” Darek said, still looking around like he couldn’t believe people actually lived like this. “Put it on the property. You could have your own private writing space.”

Despite everything, I laughed. “You want to move an entire shack to your backyard?”

“If it means you’ll come home, yes.”

“I love it here!” Daisie called out. “It’s like a fairy house! Can we stay for dinner? Please?”

Darek looked at me, eyebrows raised. “Do you have food?”

“I have ramen and canned soup. And I think there’s some bread that’s probably still good.”

“How about we go get actual food instead? There’s a seafood place down the road. We could talk there.”

Part of me wanted to stay in the cabin and keep things small and contained. But Daisie was looking at me with such hope. And I was hungry. And I couldn’t deny the idea of getting out of this tiny space was appealing.

“Okay. But I’m not dressed for anywhere fancy.”

“You look perfect,” Darek said.

We piled into the SUV, Daisie in the back seat singing some song about whales. He drove to a casual restaurant right on the water. The kind of place with picnic tables, paper plates, and the best fried clams in Maine.

We ordered food and sat outside as the sun finished setting. For a few minutes, it felt almost normal. Like we were just a family grabbing dinner and the past week hadn’t happened. It all felt so right.

Darek gave Daisie some quarters to play some of the games lined up against the wall. It was just Darek and me at the table. I knew we couldn’t avoid the conversation any longer.

“I’m sorry,” he said before I could speak. “I’m so sorry, Liza. For everything. I was scared and I lashed out, and I hurt you in the process. It’s not your fault. It was me. The whole Sasha thing really screwed me up. I was just waiting for you to leave. I kept expecting to get hurt and I guess I thought if I struck first, you couldn’t hurt me.”

“But you hurt me. Really badly.”

“I know. And I don’t know if I can ever make that right. But I need you to understand—it wasn’t about you. It was about me. I’m a little gun shy about giving my heart to anyone again. I’ve been terrified of letting someone in again only to have them leave.”

“So you pushed me away first.”

“Yeah. And it was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. Della called me. Told me you refused the payment. She said you quit Faux.”

“I didn’t want the money. Taking it would make everything you accused me of true. It stopped being a job for me pretty early on. I thought you knew that.”

“I did. I do. You were planning to stay. I believe you wanted to build a life with us.”

“I did,” I admitted. “I had already decided I was going to tell Della I was done with Faux. But with the hearing and stuff, I put it on the backburner. I figured I had a few days.”

He closed his eyes briefly, pain crossing his face. “I’m such an idiot.”

“Yeah, you kind of are.”

“Can you forgive me? Can we try again? Because this past week has been hell. Daisie is miserable, I’m miserable, and I know it’s my own fault, but I don’t want to do this without you.”