Faking Love

Chapter Twenty-Three: dark paradise

The room erupted.

Screaming and shrieking and wild, uncontrollable laughter that felt like the first sip of champagne. Daisy and Honey were smiling and crying and switching between hugging Belle and Laia, then trying not to squeeze Laia too hard, then screaming again because they remembered why they were smiling and crying in the first place.

Daisy's friend was engaged. Her best friend was pregnant. It was like she'd bitten into a piece of cake to find it was two pieces stuck together.

"I took a test on Wednesday night," Laia was saying, her olive face flushed and russet eyes gleaming. "Took three, actually. Kenji took me to the doctor yesterday while you were all having lunch."

Daisy hadn't even known they'd slipped away. She'd been at the waterfall with Hunt.

"So this is official?" she asked, her vision blurring, her cheeks wet, her heart soaring. "This is really happening?"

Laia wiped her tears with her sleeve. "You're going to be an auntie, Dais."

Daisy couldn't contain it then—the all-consuming joy that burst her heart wide open, sending the happiest kinds of tears streaming down her cheeks. She scooped Laia into a hug, and they cried into each other's hair.

Her friend was engaged. Her best friend was pregnant. It was like she'd stumbled across a treasure chest on Christmas Day.

"And you." Honey whirled to Belle. She poked her arm playfully. "Laia's right. I can't believe you kept your engagement from us for a whole day!"

Belle accepted her hug. "I wanted you all to be the first to know. And I wanted to tell you together."

Daisy and Laia joined their cuddle, the four of them encased in a bubble of their own just like on wild, drunken nights out the year they all turned eighteen.

Daisy's friend was engaged. Her best friend was pregnant. And she couldn't have been happier, couldn't have been more thrilled for them.

It was around the time she saw Honey grinning wider than she'd seen her smile in over a year, announcing she'd better get back to her room so as not to keep Matthew up; when Belle fidgeted on the spot, her lips twitching into a coy grin when she, too, said she better get back to Ruby—and Laia purred in reply; when Daisy's best friend put her left hand on her belly, fiddling with her engagement ring as a quiet, secret happiness settled over her face. It was around that time when Daisy felt an awful, bitter stab of pain in her chest. When her heart was sliced raw by something not at all like joy.

Her friend was engaged. Her best friend was pregnant. And Daisy was pretending to date a guy she used to hate in order to spite his ex.

Daisy hated herself for it—that twinge of jealousy. She loved her friends. She wanted them to be happy more than anything in the world. But to see them so happy and content when she so wasn't ... Hard. Harder than the time Vanessa had fallen sick and Daisy had to learn her solos for Cinderella in a single weekend.

But she treated her face like a canvas, painting on a smile. She tried to slip out the door behind Honey and Belle. Laia pulled her back.

Literally.

She grabbed Daisy's arm and hauled her back into the treehouse, closing the door with a solid thud.

"Spit it out," Lai said.

Daisy willed her smile to widen. "Laia, I'm so thrilled—"

"Spit. It. Out."

Daisy's smile faltered. "Spit what out?"