Trouble with the Fake Boyfriend (Rock Bottom #3) - Holly Renee Page 0,39

trip.” She was in the stall next to me, and she was so sincere.

I felt like the walls were closing in around me.

“I’d love that.” I sank to my ass and stared at myself in the mirror. My chest was starting to rise and fall in panic. What the fuck was I doing?

I didn’t even look like myself. I hadn’t put a trace of makeup on my face this morning which never happened. I never left my apartment without makeup, but somehow, I looked happier in that moment than my reflection had looked in a long time.

My skin was kissed by the sun, my blond hair piled on top of my head in a messy bun, and I felt happy.

But it was all a facade.

“Are you in your first dress?” Her voice carried over the stall, and I heard her unlocking hers.

“Almost.” I could barely mask the anxiety that was clouding my every thought.

“What’s wrong?” She sounded like she was just outside my door.

Shit.

“Nothing’s wrong.” I quickly stood and grabbed the first dress I could reach.

“Brooke, open the door.” It was a demand, but it was filled with worry and zero command.

I took a deep breath and pulled the door open still dressed in jeans and my t-shirt, one dress crumpled in my hands, the others still hanging on the wall.

“Hey.” Sarah stepped into my dressing room, and I didn’t even get a chance to tell her how beautiful she looked in her dress. She wrapped her arms around me, crushing the dress in my arms between us, and she ran a hand over the back of my head.

I didn’t know what was happening, but I couldn’t stop the emotion that was rushing through me or the way my eyes burned with tears I never shed. This wasn’t me. I wasn’t this girl.

But here I was in the middle of a dressing room clinging to my fake boyfriend’s mom while tears ran down my nose.

“Everything is going to be okay,” she whispered the words against my hair, but she didn’t know that. Nothing felt like it was going to be okay.

I didn’t even know what I was crying for. Everything was going just as we had planned it, and when I got home, Liam was going to help me make my dreams come true.

Nothing else mattered.

I told myself that over and over.

“I know.” I nodded into her, but my words didn’t even sound believable to me.

She pulled me away from her, just far enough for her to look at me, and she wiped the tears from my face. “You really love him, huh?”

The urge to tell her that wasn’t it was overwhelming. But I couldn’t do that. It wasn’t because of this stupid fake relationship or the things that were relying on my lies.

It was because I didn’t think it was a lie at all.

I was an idiot and I was falling for her son.

I nodded my head, and she pulled me tighter against her for a hug. “Everything is going to be okay,” she repeated her words. “He loves you too.”

Her words hit me like a ton of bricks because she actually believed them. But her son didn’t love me. I was a means to an end and I needed to remember that.

Liam wasn’t my knight in shining armor. He was just a guy with a secret, and I somehow got lost in it.

Thirteen

The Fair

Liam

I had no idea what we were doing.

Last night was the most intimate the two of us had ever been, and it should have had me running away from her as fast as I could go. But I didn’t want to.

But she did.

She flew out of my bed this morning as if she had been on fire, and I let her have her space. It was the least that I could do.

Last night felt like too much. It felt like we were breaching a line we were never meant to cross. I should have known better than to ask her to come here, but if I was being honest, I wanted it to be her.

Brooke had been an anomaly to me since the moment I laid eyes on her. She was gorgeous and free and fun, but she was so much more than she let people see. She was more than I knew what to do with.

I could tell by the way she looked at me that things were changing for her. And I wasn’t an idiot. I knew they were changing for me too.