that would grant me my greatest unfulfilled wish.
Time with Finn.
“I can’t,” I told her. “I hate lying. Not only do I hate it but I’m also terrible at it.”
Lia clasped her hands in front of her. “Please.”
“I know you love school, Lee, but it’s one lecture. How much more English Lit does one need to be lectured on?”
She gave me a look because even though our majors were sun and moon different, we both loved school with equal intensity. Sometimes, I worried that the youngest Ward sisters would forever be enrolled in college because we just loved learning.
Our brother, Logan, often said if anything put him into debt, it would be the multiple doctorates he feared the two of us would acquire and never use for anything.
“It’s not just a lecture.” She put on her pleading face. “It’s Catherine Atwood from Oxford.”
“Am I supposed to know who that is?”
Lia shrugged helplessly. “No, but ugh, she’s like … everything. She’s a freaking rock star to anyone who’s ever studied the Bront? sisters. Her dissertation on Religion, Gender, and Authority in the novels of Charlotte Bront? is basically my bible.”
I rolled my eyes. “Only mildly sacrilegious, but okay. Why do I have to pretend to be you? Why can’t you just tell Finn you can’t go?”
Lia ignored my questions. “She’s from
Oxford, C. She rarely does guest lectures, and she’s in the States for the first time in years, and she’s here at
UDub.
” Her eyes widened. “It was meant to be.”
“Lia,” I prompted.
From the set of her jaw, she knew exactly how little all that extra information would sway me. She blew out a hard breath. “His parents want to impress some richy rich dude so they can get money for their community center, and they think I’ll help.”
“How exactly?”
Her arms waved around. “He’s a Washington fan. Logan. All that. I guess one Ward is as good as any other.”
Oh, great. My favorite feeling in the entire world was when it didn’t actually matter who I was as an individual because I was being lumped into a crowd. Of course, when your brother was a Hall of Fame football player turned coach, it kinda came with the territory.
Lia’s eyes lit.
Mine narrowed.
“Their community center,” she said quietly, “where they help all those kids every year.”
I tsked. “You don’t need to resort to guilt-tripping me by using my major.”
“Really? Because I haven’t heard you say yes.” She assumed a praying position, hands folded together over her chest. “C, please. Finn would never agree to lie to his parents. Think of how many kids this will help if they get this money.”
No, Finn wouldn’t lie to his parents. It was one thing I’d always liked about him. We both sucked at lying.
But he’d also think it was weird if I attended with him. He’d only feel comfortable if his best friend were on his arm.
My brain spun visions of accompanying him into a beautifully decorated ballroom with my hand resting on his tuxedo-clad forearm.
“He’ll know,” I argued weakly.
But my heart … it muted that argument so fast, my head spun around in place.
Lia blew a raspberry through her lips. “Nah, he won’t. You know how to be me, Claire. It’s one dinner. Then I’m off the hook to see Catherine Atwood, and his mom gets off his back, they get all the money, and everyone is happy.”
One dinner with Finn. One night to soak up his attention instead of playing the third wheel between him and my sister.
Not a third wheel like on a date. They’d never even hinted that they wanted to cross that line, which was the only reason I was even considering this insanity. Because for one night, I wanted to know what it felt like to have his eyes on me. To wear a pretty dress and spend the evening by his side.
“One dinner,” I said again.
She bounced excitedly in the doorway. “You’ll do it? Seriously?”
I could do this. One night. One meal. Maybe we’d dance. And if he realized I wasn’t Lia, I could prepare a very convincing argument ahead of time about why he should enjoy the evening with me.
My head settled, swirling with all the thoughts of how I needed to prepare and the things I needed to learn to feel ready.
Their handshake, some weird combination of bumped fists and hand slaps and a few snaps. Inside jokes.
Panic welled up because the thought of trying to harness Lia’s energy—that thing that made her her
—felt impossible.
I had three days to get over that.
So I began muting every argument that sprang into my head. Slapping the words away one by one until my brain was silent of objections.
“I’ll do it.”
BAUER
“You got fired, Bauer. You won’t be able to talk them out of it.”
My trainer, Scotty, knew me well enough that saying that kind of shit to me would only make me that much more determined to do it. Like he’d waved a red flag in front of a snorting bull.
“Listen, I had a great relationship with Burton before the … situation.”
“The situation?” he hooted. “You’re talking about when you got caught on camera, drunk—“
“I was not drunk,” I interrupted. “I’d had three beers and was having a good time with my friends, but I was not drunk.”
“Whatever. You got caught on camera cussing out Burton’s favorite athlete; the gold medalist snowboarder who’s been with them forever, and everyone loves and adores.” He was quiet, probably waiting for me to argue. He’d known me since I was a punk-ass seventeen-year-old, and I pretty much always had an argument. But because it was Scotty, I stayed quiet. “And you are not a gold medalist who everyone loves and adores. You are a few good competitions away from qualifying for the Olympic team, but that doesn’t mean shit in the grand scheme of things.”
I winced. None of that was wrong.
But, in my defense, the other guy had been drunk, and the camera didn’t catch the part where he was standing behind my friend Cassidy making some pretty rude-ass gestures about her figure. So who looks like the asshole on Twitter?
Me.
My main sponsor, the one making it possible for me to keep competing, dumped my ass before I could so much as blink.
They apologized, of course. Told me it had been great working with me for the past couple of years. Just … not enough.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.