Terms and Conditions: Chapter 4

“You’re what?!” Mom’s dark eyes go wide. She clasps her hands together to prevent herself from running them through her spiral curls.

“She said she’s engaged,” Nana replies loudly before slurping on her coffee. Her graying Senegalese twists shift as she readjusts her position on the wicker chair across from me.

“How? Where? To whom? Last time I checked, you said you were single!” The brown skin around my mother’s eyes wrinkles.

“It’s complicated.” Well, that’s one way to put it.

Maybe I wasn’t prepared after all for this kind of conversation the day after my engagement party from hell.

“Well don’t leave us waiting here. I don’t know how long I’ll have on this earth, and with the way you’re stammering, you’ll be hosting a funeral before a wedding,” Nana adds with a serious face. She’s probably the reason I could fake an engagement in front of a room full of strangers for as long as I did.

“There’s not much to plan since I’m eloping.”

“Excuse me?!” Mom’s ragged breathing has my smile falling. “No, you are not. You’re my one and only baby and I will not let you have some wedding in a back room of a courthouse.”

“What’s wrong with that? That’s the way I got married.” Nana actually sounds offended.

“Exactly my point, Mother,” Mom says.

“The location was convenient. I took my newlywed ass to Bourbon Street, and your father and I made a night of it.”

“I’m well aware of the day I was conceived. No need to rehash that story.”

I’m not sure how these two live under the same roof without me mediating anymore. “Do you both want to hear my story or are you more interested in scarring me for life?”

“Story,” they both reply.

I go off, telling them about how Declan and I realized our true feelings during a dangerously turbulent flight to Tokyo. Of how I was crying about dying in a plane crash and how Declan kissed me to make it stop. The hardest part of my lie was saying how I kept our relationship a secret for a year because I wasn’t sure how things would turn out.

It’s funny how that lie is the most believable of all given my track record with men.

“You’re trying to tell me that you’re engaged to Declan Kane? Willingly?” My mother wheezes.

“Is it so hard to believe?”

Mom stops her pacing to look over at me. “No. Not really, to be honest.”

My jaw drops. “What?”

Grandma laughs. “Oh, come on. You skipped Christmas last year to spend time with him in Tokyo.”

“I was working.”

Nana laughs. “Right. We all like to work, darling. Some more than others. And preferably more than once a day.”

I choke on my coffee. “I thought libidos decrease with age.”

“I’ve got memories to last me a lifetime.”

Mom groans. “By all means, feel free to take them to your grave.”

Nana howls with laughter.

Mom takes a seat beside me and tugs my left hand into hers. She assesses my ring from all angles. “Are you sure you’re okay with this?”

I nod. “Of course.”

You’re going to hell for lying to your own mother.

At least Declan and you can remain together in the afterlife.

“This seems so…” Mom struggles.

“Out of the blue?”

“Yes.”

“It’s…special. I really do love him.” It takes all my willpower to say the words with a straight face.

She tilts her head. My mother has always gotten the truth out of me, one way or another. I bite down on my lip to stop myself from saying something stupid.

Like the truth?

Oh, shut up. I force my guilty conscience to take a back seat.

“He’s your boss.”

“I know.”

“He’s much older than you.”

“Is that supposed to be a bad thing because I only see the positives,” Nana asks.

I don’t miss a beat. “We can’t help who we fall in love with.”

Mom sighs. “No. We can’t.”

A twinge of guilt tightens around my heart like a lasso. She is the poster child of falling in love with someone she shouldn’t have, and I was the unexpected result.

She gives my hand a reassuring squeeze. “As long as you’re happy, then I’m happy for you.”

I nod my head because I’m afraid of what might come out of my mouth instead. If my mother knew the truth behind my engagement, I’m not sure she would be as supportive. She’s a worrier. I have no doubt she would be concerned about me tying myself to a man who barely likes me and a baby he doesn’t want. She would want more for me than to follow in her footsteps.

My anxious thoughts are intensified as Nana opens her mouth and asks, “So, when do we get to meet him?”

I open my front door to find Cal leaning against the frame.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” he says.

“More like I’ve been dealing with the fallout of my actions.” I give Cal some room to enter my apartment. He instantly makes the space feel ten times smaller. While my apartment isn’t much, it’s all mine after years of hard work and people doubting me.

He navigates through the minefield of potted plants before dropping onto my worn leather couch. “Why did you do it?”

I take a seat across from him and tuck my knees against my chest. “Because I’m stupid.”

“How did you go from breaking up with every boyfriend you had before things got ‘too real’ to agreeing to marry my brother?”

“When you put it that way, it does sound a bit out of character.”

He laughs. “What happened to swearing off men forever?”

“Well, forever does seem like a long time when you think about it…”

“Says the woman who thought an ex-boyfriend buying her a spare toothbrush was ‘moving too fast.’”

“This is different.” Sure, my relationship history isn’t the prettiest. I’m always the one to bow out before things get real because fear makes me act first and have regrets later. My patterns aren’t the healthiest, but they’ve prevented me from ever turning into my mother. Because while I love her, growing up witnessing her abusive marriage to my father turned me off from ever putting myself in that position. To love means to lose more than I’m willing to part with.

Cal yanks me out of my head. “Oh, it’s different all right. You’re getting married. And having a baby. As in you are going to make me an uncle.”

My stomach rolls. “I know it sounds crazy—”

“That’s because it is crazy.”

I throw my hands up. “Then why did you encourage it?”

“Because I didn’t think you would actually go through with it!”

My jaw drops open, but no words make it out.

He sighs. “My brother is the last kind of man you should marry.”

A tightness in my chest grows. “Why?”

“Because he will hurt you. It’s second nature for him, and it’s only a matter of time before you get caught up in the crosswinds.”

“It’s sweet of you to worry, except our relationship is nothing but a contractual agreement. There won’t be an opportunity for him to hurt me.”

That’s why I agreed to this whole idea in the first place. If I was worried about risking my heart, I would have never said yes. But with Declan’s lack of interest in relationships and my fear of commitment, we are a perfect fit.

“You could fall in love with him.”

I laugh until tears spring to my eyes. “Declan and I could be the last two people on Earth and I would still choose my vibrator over him.”

Cal’s lip curls with disgust. “TMI.”

“It’s true!”

“Then how do you plan on having a child together?”

“With the help of someone in a white coat.” While I haven’t reviewed the contract Declan developed, I’m familiar with his expectations for in vitro fertilization.

“Having a child together creates a connection between two people that can never be severed.” A dark look passes over his face, and the ache in my chest intensifies.

I swallow the lump in my throat. “I know that.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing.”

I don’t. Not in the slightest. But instead of letting the anxiety swallow me whole, I roll my shoulders back and face my reality.

“Marriage might be hard, but I’m willing to give it my all.”

I can only hope that I don’t look back at this moment and regret all my choices.