18. Caroline

My arms are folded as I watch a fresh leak springing from the lobby"s ceiling in my BB. Cade was right, apparently. I should've handled upgrading the pipes after the leak three months ago. Somehow, I completely forgot about it, though.

Between Walker, who is growing every day and always presenting new challenges for me as a mom, and everything that happened with Jake and the risk of losing my family's business… well, I'm going to give myself a pass. I'm just lucky I remembered to put pants on this morning.

I look down, double-checking that I did, in fact, put on pants. Okay, it's a skirt. But we're not half-naked, so we're doing good enough.

Once I shut off the water, I fire a text out to Cade, asking if he can come help.

It's not long before a frazzled-looking woman with suds in her hair appears in the lobby, asking when the water will be back on.

I smooth things over, promising a discount to her and the other two guests who come down before I can call the rooms and let them know I'll have the water back as soon as possible. For now, I send her back upstairs with a pitcher of water I had set out in the lobby.

Walker has graduated from sleeping most of the time to just sleeping a lot of the time. I have a play area on wheels that I drag around the BB with me. He's not crawling, but he's showing more awareness of the world. I can even get him to smile sometimes. He"s not laughing yet, but the pediatrician said that could come any day now.

I'm admiring him–a tactic I've found helps calm my nerves when I'm stressed. He's wiggling around, swinging his arms up and down while lying on his back. His eyes are on me, and I can tell he's actually seeing me. I smile down at him, ticking his belly and getting a smile.

His face screws up for a moment, turning red.

"Oh, don't you do it," I warn, lifting a finger. "Walker Scott Prince. If you poopy your diaper, I will–"

He lets out a shuddering grunt, relief clear in his little features. Then he's smiling again as the smell reaches my nose.

I sigh. "You're lucky. You know that?" I ask, unbuttoning his onesie and grabbing a diaper. "If you were even this much less cute?" I hold up my thumb and forefinger an inch apart. "You'd be in trouble. I might not think it's cute that you can't just poop all at once like a normal human. No," I say, wiping him clean. "You think it's necessary to poop every two or three hours. All day. Just save it up, hmm? Doesn't that sound like fun? Wouldn't you like it if Mommy didn't have to do this so often?"

Unsurprisingly, Walker offers no feedback. In fact, he looks sleepy.

"Am I boring you?"

"Nope," Mia says from the doorway. "You guys are super cute together. You know that, right?"

"Oh, hey. I didn't even hear you coming in."

"Yeah, well," Mia plops down on a couch in the lobby of the BB. Grams and Edgar haven't been by this week because they're in Colorado for a "lovers retreat." Nobody asked any questions, even though we could tell they wanted us to.

"Probably hard to hear when you're doing all that baby talk," Mia says.

I give Walker his pacifier, and he sleepily sucks it into his mouth, eyes closing all the way. I touch his belly gently, then smile and leave him to his nap. All that pooping will wear a guy out, I suppose. He needs to recover if he's going to keep up his impressive pace.

I join Mia, taking the couch across from her.

She's looking up at the ceiling, then points. "That looks bad. Is that water?" she asks.

"Yep. That's a water stain. My guests are currently getting a discount while I wait for Cade to finish hockey practice so he can come fix the pipe. Then he will ask me why I didn't replace my pipes with whatever he told me to replace them with the last time we talked. Lectured by a teenager. That's what my life has come to these days."

"I see," Mia says.

I can tell she's waiting to say something but probably doesn't want to seem insensitive to my troubles by bringing it up right away. I sigh. "Out with it."

Mia smiles, leaning forward and letting her excitement show fully. "Okay. So, you know how we discussed needing more game ideas for the Frosty Harbor Wedathon?"

I narrow my eyes. "Didn't we veto that name? I think I remember saying it felt too grand for what's essentially just going to be a few fun party games every day."

She waves off my question, continuing. "I've got ideas. Great ones, actually. First of all, I got Nolan to agree to cater the whole thing."

"Catering? We didn't talk about–"

Again, she waves my concerns away. "You can just shut your cute little mouth and accept it because this is happening. We all love you, and we all want this whole wedding and engagement to be freaking amazing. So your Frosty Harbor Wedpocolypse will be the smash hit of the winter. Nolan isn't charging anything, obviously. So if you're stressed about that part, you can just stuff it."

I'm overcome again by the urge to spill it all and tell Mia. Jake's legal guys are convinced it doesn't matter if Peter can prove we were just getting married for the contract. But the secret matters for Jake's contract, and I know he'd still do everything he could to protect the secret if the situation was reversed. Even if this secret feels like it's tearing both of us apart, bit by bit.

"Okay," Mia says slowly, noticing the look on my face and thinking it has something to do with what she said. "Wedpocolypse is out. You're right. That one has a little too much doomsday scenario, ‘we're all gonna have to learn to eat a little bit of human to survive if we want to make it through this,' kind of a vibe."

"You said you had ideas?" I prompt carefully.

"I have spent weeks brainstorming perfect couples games. Since you two are so lovey-dovey, I made sure to include a few raunchy ones. You're welcome, no need to thank me."

I've opened my mouth to respond, but she shuts me up with a raised hand.

"I've got so many good ideas," she continues. "Lover's limbo, belly hockey, oh, and I came up with this great idea I'm calling ‘manhunt, but with stripping."

I stare. "I'm glad you're an amazing chef because if your job was coming up with names for things…"

Mia waves me off. "It's going to be so fun I could pee myself!"

I grin. "That's what you do when something is too fun? Pee yourself in solidarity?"

She rolls her eyes. "It's just a common expression. I think."

"It does sound fun," I agree. "I really appreciate how much of the planning you're handling. I know you're busy at Taste, so I really, really owe you for this."

"I'm your maid of honor. I'm happy to have something like this to plan. It's like a dry run for the big day." She balls her fists, shaking them excitedly, and stands. "Can't believe my best friend is marrying the guy we all definitely never suspected she was banging in ‘secret' for two years!"

"Right," I say, putting on a smile.

"Okay. Well, I'm going to get out of here. I'll call Mikey and tell him to tell his kid to leave practice early and help you with this leak. Can't have our darling bride-to-be stressing. It'll ruin your hair on the wedding day!"

"Ruin my hair on…" I trail off, shaking my head. "Thanks, Mia. But you really don't have to do that."

"Too late," she says, pulling out her phone and widening her eyes. "She's already…" her fingers move. "Doing it!"

She backs out the door and leaves me alone in the lobby.

I sit back in the chair. If I didn't know better, I'd say Mia has acted suspiciously. The Mia I know would be excited for me to get married. It's not that, exactly. There's just something subtle about the way she's acting that doesn't feel right, and I can't put my finger on it.

I get up and grab a mob to clean up the water that has dripped all over the floor.

Jake comes back from his latest away game this weekend. Then they've got the whole week off for the team's bye. I'm excited to see him just as much as the thought makes my stomach feel like it's in knots. We've been butting heads over my plans to do wedding games. While I understand where he's coming from, I don't think I know how to handle this any other way. It's what my mom would do. She always turned every good thing into a celebration–a reason for Frosty Harbor to come together and bond.

Even if it will be hard for us, I know it's the right thing to do for the town. I also understand Jake's arguments to the counter. We're just deepening the lie with this event. We're putting more stress on ourselves. We're going to look like even bigger assholes when we have to finally come clean to everybody in the end if they know we did something like this, too.

But I haven't told him that I also wanted to do this as a kind of dry run. If we can't survive a week of fun and games with ourselves as the centers of attention, we'll never make it through an entire fake wedding. Does it hurt that the town will also love the games and activities? Nope.

I think me and Jake both need a reality check. And… Cynical or not, I need time to find out if we can do this. I still have three months until I need to get married for the contract. If Jake wants to back out, then, well, maybe I'd have time to find another fake husband.

I run my hands down my face. I feel like such an asshole for even thinking like that, but I'd be lying if I said things between us have been good the last three months. Maybe if we could just go live on a deserted island with us and Walker, things would still be good. Instead, he's squeezing in time to see us during a busy NHL season that started shortly after our trip to Manhattan. I've felt like the past three months have been a reminder of why we never jumped from casually hooking up to dating in the first place, even if I don't like admitting it.

We"re pretty great when we're together and not arguing about how to handle the ongoing lie between us and all our friends. But the rest of the time, Jake is away playing for the Vandals and I'm here like I always am, except now I have to pretend to be as excited as everyone else for a wedding I'm dreading.

Yay me.I hear Walker stirring from his crib, and a familiar smell reaches my nose.

"You have got to be kidding me," I groan.