Faking with Benefits : A Friends to Lovers Romance(69)

My wife wants to get a divorce. I’m still so in love with her.

I want my parents to come to my wedding, but they don’t believe in gay marriage.

I just found out my husband got a vasectomy and didn’t tell me. I can’t stop crying. I’ve been trying to have a baby for years. Is this the end?





Josh is drafting a reply to that one in another window.

Hello. I’m so sorry to hear what you’re going through. I can’t imagine the pain you’re in. We won’t be able to address this on the show, as our advice segments for the next few weeks are full — but I thought I’d message you privately with some suggestions on how to address your relationship, and a few recommended resources…





It suddenly hits me that he has to do this every single day. Every day, hundreds of people are messaging him, unloading on him, begging him for help. And he tries to help every single one of them. Even the emails he can’t read aloud on the podcast, he answers privately.

It must be exhausting.

I lean over him and shut the laptop. “You don’t need to do this now.”

“Our numbers are up,” he says dully. “We can’t lose momentum.”

“Don’t act like you’re doing this for the numbers. You’re not doing marketing or social media, you’re answering emails.” He doesn’t say anything. I sigh. “You don’t record for another week,” I remind him, wrapping my arms around his neck and sliding into his lap.

He clears his throat and shifts. “No, but these people can’t wait another week. They have problems now.”

“They’ll cope. You’re a podcast host, not a mental health professional.”

“I just need—”

I cut him off. “No. You’re shaking, Josh. Look.”





FORTY-THREE





LAYLA





I lift one of his trembling hands. He stares at it for a moment, then threads our fingers together. I lean forward, pressing my lips to his. It’s a slow, gentle kiss, with none of our usual fire, but heat still simmers through me. When I finally pull back, blood is pumping through my body, and Josh looks vaguely more alive.

I trail my lips over his cheek, then look up, finally noticing the corkboard he has pinned over his desk. It’s covered in small cards and slips of paper, and it takes me a second to realise what I’m looking at.

“The infamous wall of wedding invites.” I reach out, brushing one of the embossed cards with my fingertip. “I thought Zack was joking about this.”

He tilts his head against mine. “Is it weird?”

I shake my head, running my eyes over the collage. There must be over a hundred invitations here. Cream, pink, white. Some are handwritten. Some are embossed. Some have photographs, or floral details, or watercolours. There’s so many that they’re overlapping each other, pinned two or even three pages deep. It’s incredible. “Do you go to all of the weddings?”

He shakes his head. “We did at the beginning. Now there’s too many. We make them if we can, though.” He points at a line of photographs at the bottom of the corkboard. I lean in to get a better look.

They’re wedding photos. In each picture, all three boys are standing in suits and ties, with their arms around an assortment of beaming brides and grooms. In a couple, Zack is wearing a tartan kilt, which is doing fun things to my insides.

“That’s so cute,” I whisper, glancing across the line. My eyes automatically focus on one photograph, tacked right at the end. Unlike all of the others, it’s not a wedding photo; it’s a black-and-white headshot of a middle-aged woman, smiling brightly at the camera. I immediately recognise the silky black hair and intensely dark eyes. “Is that your mum?” I point. Josh nods slowly. I examine her. “She’s lovely.”

“She was.”

I glance across at him. “She’s dead?”

“When I was nineteen. Car crash.”

I look down, leaning back against his chest. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

His voice is robotic. “I didn’t tell you.”

I squeeze his elbow, my heart thudding. God, no wonder he’s locked away in here, having a breakdown. The rest of England is spending time with their mums today, and he’s stuck here with no one.

I try to think of the right thing to say. “She’d be so proud of you, for everything you’ve done.”

He sighs, his breath rushing over my cheek. “I hope so. She was the reason I came up with the idea for the podcast in the first place.”

“Did she like advice shows?”

He shakes his head. “Her and my dad’s relationship was… bad.” He stares at the photo, his face blank. “He met her in Vietnam, on a month-long business trip. She was a maid at the hotel he was staying at. Working fourteen hours a day for pennies, while rich men spent ten times her daily salary on one drink in the hotel bar. She and my dad had a fling, and then he brought her back to England and married her.” His mouth twists. “My grandparents thought it was so romantic. He’d met this pretty, poverty-stricken foreigner and dragged her out of the gutter. Like a Cinderella story.”

I find his hand and hold it. “But it wasn’t.”