Page 2 of Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire)
Karen reached out and snitched a chunk of pineapple off my plate. “So youplannedthis? Awesome. Did you kneel down and everything? And does this mean I get a college fund?”
“Karen,”I said helplessly.
Hemi, of course, was laughing. “Yeh,” he said. “You get a college fund. Long as you earn it, keep working hard.”
“No worries,” Karen said. “I’m very bright.”
She reached for another piece of pineapple, and I slapped her hand and said, “You had breakfast.”
“I’m a growing girl. With a college fund. Who’s going to be a bridesmaid.” She sighed. “Is this an awesome vacation or what?”
“But…” I said again.
“No buts,” Hemi said. “Three-day waiting period after the license, and we’re there. Call it five or six days, maybe, from today. Time to buy you a dress, find Karen something new as well, get the details sorted, and get people invited. It’s better anyway,” he went on, overriding anything I might have said, “as we’re on holiday already. I’ll take you to the Far North for a honeymoon, if you like, where it’s warmer. Or to the islands, if you want the tropics. Samoa, maybe. It’ll be short, but we’ll do it better later. And then we’ll go home and get you moved.”
I had my hands over my face. “Wait,” I said. “Wait. I can’t…that’s too fast.”
“What?” Hemi said, his face closing.
“Hope,” Karen said, “that’s just stupid. Youhaveto want to marry Hemi. Comeon.”
I tried to think of what to say, and couldn’t.
“Karen,” Koro said, looking at me. “Quiet, now. Come help me in the garden. We’ll leave these two to get themselves sorted.”
Hemi
“Right,” I said to Hope when Koro and Karen had disappeared outside again. “What?”
You could say my mood had changed. You could say that.
Hope jumped up from the table. “Do you want another cup of tea?”
I grabbed her hand and pulled her to sit beside me again. “No, I don’t want a cup of tea. I want you to sit here and tell me what’s wrong, so we can fix it. When I asked you last night, you seemed keen. What happened?”
“Keen? I seemedkeen?”
“Happy. Excited. This isn’t a bloody vocabulary lesson. It’s our lives. And Karen’s.” Right, so I wasn’t playing fair. “Fair” was for some other bloke who didn’t need it this much.
Hope looked down at her slim hands, clasped together at the edge of the table. Her absolutely unadorned hands. “I wasn’t thinking it would be so soon.”
“That’s what I asked you, though. If you wanted to get married here. Now. And you said yes.”
She flinched at the tone of my voice. The color was rising in her cheeks, and she rubbed her hands over the wood until I grabbed one of them again, because I had to hold her. Somehow.
“I don’t think I was listening too well,” she said.
I sat and tried to breathe, then finally said, “Well, listen now. I don’t care what the problem is, I’ll fix it. If it’s that you don’t have your friends here, we’ll bring them over. If you’ve got some family you haven’t told me about, tell me that. Whatever it is, tell me now.”
“No,” she said. “I don’t have anybody else. And that’s…that’s part of the problem. You’ve got this. Your family, yourplace.All this…” She gestured wildly, though I couldn’t have said what she was pointing to. Koro’s house wasn’t exactly the Taj Mahal. I’d offered to buy him a better one, of course. And he’d said no, of course.
Just like Hope was saying now. “This is going too fast. It doesn’t give you a chance to think it over.”
“I thought it over already. I’m done thinking. You mean it doesn’t giveyoua chance. You’ve never been scared with me. Why now?”
She stared at me. “I’ve never beenscared?Whose life have you been looking at? It sure hasn’t been mine.”
I tried to step out of myself and study her, the way I would in a tough negotiation, but I couldn’t get past my own emotion, and it was frustrating the hell out of me. “All right,” I said. “You’ve been scared. It’s never stopped you from telling me what you thought, or from doing what you had to do. So why now? Unless you’ve changed your mind.” The thought was freezing my blood, but I’d never run away from the truth, and now would be the worst time to start.
