Mother Faker

It only takes a minute for Brooks and Gavin to rip Beckett off Drake.

My ex-husband scrambles to his feet, dazed and bloody. He spits on the floor, and a tooth goes flying.

Shit.

“I will own you,” Drake grits between pants, glaring at an equally heavy-breathing Beckett.

“What the fuck?” Gavin hisses while Brooks holds Beckett back.

“He called my wife a whore. He threatened her.” Beckett points at him. “I’ll fucking murder you.”

“You gonna tell your brothers about your little deal with my ex?” Drake taunts. “With the settlement I’ll get from this assault, I’ll have plenty of cash to throw at an attorney who’ll help me get sole custody of my kids.”

Gavin looks at me and then back at Drake. “Nah, from where I was standing, it looked like you tripped and fell. Too much alcohol, no doubt. Must have hit your head on the way down.”

Drake’s eyes bulge, and he puffs out his chest. “You can’t be serious. There are cameras everywhere. The media is all over the place.”

Gavin nods. “Yup, Bouvier Media. You know who owns that? Jay Hanson. You know who his best friend is?” He points at Beckett. “So let’s try this again. You tripped and fell. Isn’t that right?”

Drake turns his hardened gaze on me. “You won’t get away with this.”

My heart pounds and blood whooshes in my ears as Drake’s threats run through my brain on repeat.

“You don’t speak to her,” Beckett growls.

Sara appears by my side and takes my shaking hand. “Let’s get you out of here. People are watching.”

Numb, I nod and allow her to lead me out of the venue and into a limo.

The ride home is a complete blur. Rewinding every moment from the last twenty-four hours I’m confused how we even got here. Things were so good. Perfect even. After tonight, there’s a good chance that all the work we did to turn Beckett’s reputation around was erased in a single moment. Swiped away in one spectacular punch.

And what if Drake does go to a judge? Could he really take my kids?

It doesn’t take long for the story to break.

I’m lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, dress still on, waiting for Beckett to walk through the door, when the alert pops up on my phone.

Premiere for Sienna Langfield’s new television show cut short by fight.

I don’t click on the link. I can’t bear to read in black and white what I had to witness with my own eyes. Every moment is seared into my brain, playing on repeat in the quiet of my bedroom.

My phone chimes again, this time with a text.

Sara: Don’t stress. We’ve got this under control. You okay?

Yeah. Any word from Beckett?

Sara: His brothers got him out of there. Put him on the plane early to avoid the press. He’s traveling with the team for the next few days. Probably a good thing if he’s not here during this shit storm.

My stomach drops and tears burn at the backs of my eyes. I forgot Beckett is traveling this coming week. Normally, I’d be right there with him, but since he put his foot down this morning about me staying home with the kids…

I sigh. I just want to see him. Talk to him. And now he’s on a damn plane?

Sara: He said to make sure you don’t go into the office tomorrow. Let us get our stories straight first.

Right. I don’t even respond to her text. I have no idea what to say.

A knock sounds against the door and Dylan pushes her way in. Behind her, Shayla and Delia follow. At their stricken faces, I offer a weak smile.

“Who do I have to kill?” Delia asks, settling on the bed beside me.

I huff and run a hand down my face. “Drake.”

“Never liked that name. Let’s come up with one more fitting. Take a line out of Beckett’s playbook,” Shayla muses as she paces my room. The girl is never not moving. “Douche-wad? Dickface? Tiny dick!”

Dylan curls up on Beckett’s side of the bed and studies me, her red hair splaying around her. “You okay?”

My entire being shrugs. “Drake overheard us talking about ‘the deal.’ He called me a whore, so Beckett punched him. Then he threatened to take the kids…” I fling myself back onto my pillow. “I think that about sums it up.”

“Holy shit,” Delia mutters. “Score one for Beckett.”

“Where is he now?” Dylan’s brows pinch together.

I huff out a laugh. “Probably on a plane, far, far away from here.” I close my eyes and let out a long sigh. “He asked me to move into the penthouse,” I whisper.

Delia sucks in a breath. “You’re leaving us?”

“No.” I shake my head. “I would never. It’s us forever.”

Dylan frowns, still resting on Beckett’s pillow, but on her side now so she’s facing me. “What did Beckett have to say about that?”

I let out a choked laugh. If I don’t laugh, I’ll most certainly cry. “He doesn’t want to be here; he never wanted kids. Now I’m telling him that if he wants me, he not only has to live with my kids, but my three best friends and their kids too? It’s too much.”

Shayla comes to a stop and hovers over the bed on the other side of Dylan. “We love you, and the last few months have by far been the best I’ve had since I lost Ajay, but that doesn’t mean you have to stay.”

Delia squeezes my leg. “If Beckett makes you happy, and it’s clear the big idiot does, you should give this a real chance.”

I look from Delia to Shay to Dylan, at an absolute loss as to what I should do. I’m not leaving them, I know that. But if Beckett doesn’t want to stay, am I willing to say goodbye?

When the phone rings, I startle. I leap for it and accept the FaceTime call from my husband.

“Hey,” I whisper, wincing at my image reflected back at me in one corner of the screen. My face is red and my eyes are puffy from crying.

He scrubs a bandaged hand over his face. His eyes are rimmed red, and the scowl he so often wears has been replaced with a frown filled with pain and exhaustion. “I’m so sorry, Livy. Are you okay?”

“I’m okay.” I force a smile, but it’s not very convincing. “Why are you apologizing? It’s my asshole ex who caused all this.”

Beckett’s jaw tenses and his eyes dart away from the screen. “He won’t be a problem.”

“How do you know that?”

“We’ll figure it out.”

A heaviness settles between us. Can we really? There’s no stopping the story from spreading now that it’s out there. I’ve avoided reading anything about it, but it’s only a matter of time before the truth comes out—before the details of our arrangement are spelled out in black and white. And then what?

“I’ll talk to Sara. We’ll make a plan.”

“No, Livy. Stay away from Langfield Corp for now. I don’t want this to affect the kids. Take them to your brother’s. Just—” He grunts. “Just worry about the kids; I’ll deal with the rest.”

“When will you be home?” I bite my lip and scan the room. Why in God’s name would he want to come back here if the penthouse is available?

Beckett lets out a sigh full of defeat.

In this moment, I want nothing more than to crawl inside myself.

“We’re on the road for the next few days.”

I knew that, but I just, I don’t know… I wanted him to tell me that he was choosing us—that he’d stay. It’s ridiculous, really, because he told me when we started this ruse that this was exactly what he was afraid of. Becoming attached. Being needed like this. Letting his family down.

He didn’t want this.

He doesn’t want this.

“Okay. I’ll take the kids to Bristol. Have a safe flight, Beckett.”

“Livy, I—” He clamps his mouth shut and swallows, his Adam’s apple working. He watches me silently for a moment. Is he thinking all the same things I am? That he doesn’t want to let me down, but he can’t relinquish his responsibilities. He can’t change himself completely and suddenly become a man who’s yearned for a family all his life. He tried, he gave it his best, and I won’t hold him to his promises when I know that it’s hurting him to let me down. “Get some rest,” he finally says.

As the screen goes black, I look at each of my friends, who’ve practically been holding their breath around me, feeling lost, confused and a whole lot sad.

“We’re playing baseball, bud. Tutus and cleats don’t really go together,” my brother says to an unamused Finn.

We spent three days hiding out at Declan’s house before I packed the kids back up and headed home. Pulling Winnie out of school for three days was dramatic enough. I needed to start acting like an adult and face the music. My brother wouldn’t let me do it alone, though. He followed me back to Boston for the weekend and now we’re heading to T-ball for Finn.

For weeks, Beckett had been upset about missing his first game, but I told him not to worry, that in the grand scheme of things, Finn was unlikely to remember it anyway.

Now, after what happened with Drake, the last place Beckett should be is at my son’s T-ball game. It’s unlikely that Drake will be there, but that’s a risk I’m not willing to take.

“Bossman says I can wear whatevers I want.” Finn taps his foot as he stares my brother down.

Declan holds up his hands in surrender. “Tutus and baseball cleats it is.”

Holding back a laugh, I pat my brother on the back. “Thank you for your help.”

He drapes an arm over my shoulders and pulls me close. “Anytime.” Then, under his breath, he replies, “Speaking of Bossman, where is the idiot?”

I shrug. He should have landed this morning. They’re playing at Lang Field tomorrow, but he hasn’t come home.

Or maybe he has. Maybe he went back to his penthouse.

Examining my bare ring finger, I wiggle it. Since I haven’t been to the office for the last several days, there’s been no need to wear that piece of jewelry, but God, does my finger feel empty.

The T-ball game is far too long, but I snap a few pictures and send them to Beckett, per his request. He replies that Finn looks great, but that’s all.

No When will I see you? No I miss you.

Maybe the week away gave him the clarity he needed. Maybe he realized that this life is just too much—that all his fears were warranted.

My brother offers to take us out to dinner, but this week has taken its toll on me emotionally. All I want is a bath, a couple of glasses of wine, and some space, so I let him take the kids.

Bottle of wine in hand, I pull the tumbler Dylan got me from the cabinet. On second thought, though, I put it back, opting to take the bottle with me. As I’m heading up the stairs, I hear the first giggle, followed by an “Oh shit. He didn’t!”

I follow the squeals, bringing the open wine bottle to my lips as I go.

“Wait, rewind! Go back!” Shayla howls, pointing at the computer in front of Dylan.

Delia rolls her eyes. “I knew he was behind the water in my bathroom.”

My mind swirls in confusion, and I’m not even drunk yet. “Huh?”

Dylan beams at me, the glow of the computer screen brightening her expression further. “And you thought he didn’t want to stay.”

I repeat, huh? “What are we talking about?”

Dylan points at a frozen image. “We’re watching footage from the camera Delia had installed when Beckett moved in.”

“Delia!” My stomach drops. “You promised you wouldn’t do that.”

Delia pries the bottle of wine from my fingers and takes a swig. “You think I was going to let that man move in and not watch his every move? It’s a good thing I did. He’s been sabotaging this house. The brownstone isn’t nearly as bad as we thought.”

Dylan giggles as she takes the bottle from Delia. “Yes, it is. This is all child’s play. Look here.” She backs up the footage.

When she hits Play again, Beckett is walking into the kitchen. He tilts his head one way, then the other, as if he’s checking to make sure he’s alone. Then he takes out a wrench and drops to the hideous linoleum, the upper half of his body disappearing under the sink.

I steal the bottle and take another long pull. “That’s when we asked him to fix the faucet.”

Dylan giggles. “Not quite. Watch, here.”

We all obey, rapt, as Liam ambles into the kitchen and turns on the faucet. Water shoots out at him, hitting him straight in the eye and taking him by surprise. He stomps out of range of the camera. A moment later, Dylan appears. She studies the faucet and shakes her head.

“I told Liam I wasn’t falling for this trick. I figured he or one of the other kids was pranking me.”

Delia grumbles, “Turned out to be the biggest freaking kid of them all, Man-child Beckett.”

Shay slaps a hand to her mouth to mute her laughter and shakes her head.

On screen, Dylan drags Beckett into the kitchen. He makes a big deal of looking at the faucet. Then he disappears from view, only to return with the same damn wrench he had before. He drops to the floor, his movements so like the ones from earlier, and disappears under the sink. When he pops back up, he tests the faucet, and voilà, all fixed.

Hmm.

“This doesn’t prove anything,” I murmur before taking a healthy swig of wine.

Dylan waggles her brows. “Just keep watching.”

She jumps to footage from another camera. This time, Beckett is pulling the broken step off the stairs—the one Dylan and Shay watched him fall through. He cuts a cable. One he told me later he found hanging. In another shot from the hallway upstairs, he’s jumping just inside the bathroom. He does it over and over. Footage from a camera downstairs that lines up with this one’s time stamp shows plaster from the ceiling in the living room raining down all over the furniture. He vacuumed up the mess and spackled it that same evening.

“I don’t get it,” I mumble.

Dylan tilts her head back and smiles up at me. “He wanted to be needed, Liv.”

“Or he wanted her to believe the house was crumbling around us so she’d move out,” Delia points out.

Dylan shakes her head, clicking on another video. “Then why would he have worked so hard to decorate Addie’s room? Or to fix the stairs? Everything he tampered with was something we were already having problems with. He made them worse so that we were forced to fix them.”

“And yet, we still have a leaky roof,” Delia grumbles.

My heart skips a beat. “Actually…” I hedge. “I was staring at the ceiling in my bedroom last night—the water spots are gone.”

Dylan sighs. “Go take a look at the roof, ladies. Then tell me Beckett was trying to get her to leave.”

I tuck the glass bottle in the crook of my arm and practically sprint out of the room, the wine sloshing as I go. With every step I take, I feel more sure of Beckett’s feelings. Maybe I’m delusional, but he worked so hard to break things so we were forced to fix them—why else would he do that if he didn’t care? Sure, it’s slightly unhinged, but isn’t that precisely what love is? What it does to a person?

It’s not rational; it’s leaping and believing with no chance of knowing what the outcome will be. And yeah, it can make a person a little unhinged—a little crazy—but God, I’d prefer that over the robotic life I was living before Beckett asked me to marry him in Vegas like it was the most rational thing in the world.

I fling open the door to the roof, and all the breath whooshes from my lungs. It’s beautiful. It’s everything I described that first night he moved in.

A place to relax. A place for our family to spend time together. Couches with outdoor cushions in shades of teals, purple, pink, and blue. Twinkling lights and plants. A water table for Addie, a small table for the kids, and a longer teak one for the adults. A small patio table with a fire pit built into its center. Candles, big and small, in all corners of the space.

“Holy shit,” Shay mutters from somewhere behind me.

I can practically hear Dylan’s smile. “Told you. He loves her. He wants to give her everything. Whether it’s with him or without him.”

“But what if I want it with him?” I whisper, taking in the space, envisioning our family gathering up here. The kids crowded around their table with coloring books, us girls curled up on the couches with a bottle of wine or two to share. And Beckett, right there in the middle of the mess. Sometimes beside me, holding my hand or kissing my forehead. But more often sitting cross-legged on the floor, having a tea party. Going over stock options with the twins. Making bracelets with Winnie. Discussing baseball with Liam or watching hockey on his phone with Kai.

That’s when it hits me.

“I know what I need to do,” I whisper to my friends. “But I’m going to need your help.”