Page 45 of Living Hell

“Sex. Your brother means we were busy having all-night sex.”

Tyler’s eyes widened and he coughed. Choking on his own shock. Jake shook his head. “Nope. Unnecessary. Totally didn’t need to hear any of that.”

“You two are prudes. We’re adults. In an adult house. We are adulting so hard that two of the people in the room are engaged.” I ticked up the corner of my mouth and nodded, confirming my fake fact.

“Let’s see the ring.”

“What?” Tyler’s blush drained from his cheeks as he turned to look at his brother.

“The ring. I don’t see it on her finger. Did she give it back already?” He smirked and chuckled at his own joke.

“Let me go get it,” I said, and Tyler’s head whipped around so fast to gaze at me in surprise I thought it might fly off his neck and land in my lap.

Oh, what I could do with his head in my lap. Though, that was kind of creepy the more I thought about it.

“Let me help you, honey.” He jumped up and followed me up the stairs.

Once we got inside the master bedroom and he shut the door, Tyler turned to face me. “You have a ring?”

I nodded and moved over to the one drawer he allotted me in the dresser. For a man who dressed in either a white button-up shirt and khakis for work or jeans and a T-shirt outside of work, his clothes took up a lot of space.

Pulling out the navy velvet box from under my socks, I closed the dark wooden drawer. I felt Tyler behind me and before I could turn around, he snatched it from my hand.

“Hey. You know, it’s the woman who takes the ring from the man, not the other way around.”

He was about to open it when he said, “Welcome to the twenty-first century.”

Opening the box, his eyes widened.

“This isn’t real, is it?” Tyler reached in and lifted a platinum band with a two-and-a-half carat emerald-cut diamond in the center.

“Now get down on one knee.” I held out my hand for him to place it on my finger.

“Holy shit! No one’s going to believe that I gave this to you.”

“Well, you didn’t. It’s Babette’s. She’s letting us borrow it for the charade. Now, knees, please. This is really turning me on right now. I want to play it out.”

His brow wrinkled as his eyebrows rose. The man stared at me with his mouth open.

“What’s wrong?”

He waved his hand toward the door. “What’s wrong? All this is wrong. This ring is fake.”

“It is the opposite of fake. It’s so real that all other diamonds have to get plastic surgery to look that good.”

Taking a deep breath, Tyler clenched his jaw. “Fine. The ring is real, but our supposed proposal is fake. Our living arrangements are fake. For the first time in my life I have to lie to my brother.”

I frowned. He wasn’t handling this well.

For so long I had been surrounded by people who had no problem lying in order to win over a director, get a part, or appease the public. Tyler hadn’t. He was the same honest guy I would beg to stay the night so we could continue to make out past curfew when we were teenagers. My mother usually had fallen asleep, and I knew she’d never find out. But he would hate to lie to her. Told me that I was lucky she cared so much about me and it would hurt him to betray her trust.

“Then what should I wear? I already told your brother I had the ring.”

He opened my drawer and plopped the ring and box back inside. Once he closed it, he opened the drawer below it—his T-shirt collection drawer. The man owned at least forty T-shirts. I think some had holes, yet he still wore them.

“Here. You can wear this.”

It was an old white leather box. I opened it to find a small gold band with three diamond chips embedded next to each other. He lifted it and we stared like it held the truth we were seeking.

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