Real Fake Love (Copper Valley Fireballs #2)(90)

I hang my head. “Yes.”

“How do I know you’re not using her now?”

My eyes are getting hot again. “You don’t.”

“Hm. I’ll consider your request. Go home. Get some sleep. I might text you later.”

I bite my tongue to keep the are you kidding me? inside while she slips into the waiting car.

Brooks nudges my shoulder. “It wasn’t a no. And she’s right. You don’t want to fuck up your last chance because you’re tired and dumb.”

“You think I can sleep like this?”

He grins. “I’m sure she’ll keep that in mind.”





35





Henri



For all the emotions that keep leaking out of my eyeballs, you’d think I was the one who pushed two babies out of my vagina after leaving my husband and flying all the way across the country with three other children under the age of five, and also her pets.

And yes.

Elsa did deliver her twins naturally.

Here in Copper Valley.

Right on their actual due date.

Because that’s what she does.

“No, Rosa, you tell Roberto that if he ever wants to see me and our children ever again, he’ll learn how to mop a damn floor until it shines, and he’ll learn that I hate pancakes, and he’ll learn that the way to this woman’s heart is through changing fucking diapers.”

Tatiana stares wide-eyed at me, like I’m supposed to explain to her that her mommy is having a breakdown and it’ll pass before she starts kindergarten in a year.

Probably.

Titus whips out his penis, announces, “Potty,” and then pees on the floor next to Elsa’s hospital bed.

And Talia, who’s barely eighteen months, bursts into tears.

“Oh, sweetie, it’s okay.” I try to beckon her to my lap, but I’m balancing Jake and Ruby, the newborn twins, in both arms too, and so far Talia isn’t a fan of being a big sister.

So she drops her diaper and pees on the floor too.

While screaming.

I’d leave with the older three, except Elsa has basically begged me to not ever, ever leave her side, and she’s also forbidden me from calling Mom for help, because I don’t want her to know I’m a failure.

That would sting if I hadn’t realized in the week since Elsa crashed my new and unexpectedly tiny apartment with her whole perfect life imploding around her, that the only reason Elsa looks like she has everything all put together is because she’s been burning herself out making it seem perfect when she’s completely and totally miserable.

And basically alone, since Roberto works like sixteen hours a day and doesn’t give her any orgasms.

I lied, she sobbed that first night after all three of her kids had gotten up for their seventh drink of water or trip to the potty or, in Titus’s case, to dash around my small living room on all fours while shouting that he was a leopard. Roberto never gave me any orgasms. He didn’t even care. He just wanted a hole to stick his dick in for two pumps, and that was it.

I’m never thinking of my brother-in-law the same again.

Though I did have to stifle tears of my own every time she said orgasm, since I’ll probably never have any of those in my life ever again.

But it’s for the best.

If Elsa can’t make her marriage work, who can?

Not me.

I left a man who never said he loved me, but showed me in all the little things that I was important, that he paid attention, and taught me that I deserved better than someone who’d give me lip service and leave me.

I freaked out and ran away from the one man who finally got it better than all the men who could say the words, but didn’t know how to actually show them.

I don’t deserve a happily ever after either, do I?

Luca Rossi, the man who hates love, whose family broke it for him, who’s been abandoned by father figures and baseball teams for years and has no reason to believe in love, loves me.

I know he does, but I don’t think he knows he does.

Not if he’d propose merely because us being married would be comfortable and convenient.

Which means our future would be full of me trying to convince him of something that his entire childhood taught him was a lie. I can’t not believe in love, even if I can believe I’m not meant to have it.

So instead, I’m concentrating on what my life is today, and probably for the foreseeable future, and that’s my sister and her kids.

Maybe, between the two of us, we can do something right so they’re not just as ducked up as we are.

So they know they deserve flowers on release day, and being cared for when they’re sick or having an allergic reaction to alcohol, and that they owe it to that person to tuck a card into their luggage before they leave so they’ll get a smile when they find it, and to stand up to the people who hurt him when he’s too tired of fighting that fight for himself.

So they know that love has nothing to do with the size of a person’s bank account, and everything to do with the size of their hearts.

And so they know that when their significant other loses the most important game of his life, they should be there for him, and not making excuses about how they can’t go anywhere because they need to stay in a hospital holding someone else’s hand.