Ruin The Wedding (The Murphy Brothers #1)

𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧 𝐞𝐟𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐭

"Maria?"

"There are about five billion Marias in the world, no."

"What about Tallulah? It's different." Looking up from the laptop, Charlie only glared at her cousin once before going back to ignoring her.

While Viviana kept reading a book about baby names, she was reading horror stories from the internet about how busy and stressful it had been after the second baby was born in the family.

And in all of those stories, there was always a Dad in the picture which meant that it would only be twice as hard for her. She really wouldn't have any free time, would she? If she had two young children with a job then the best she could have was perhaps five minutes for herself in a day.

The more she kept reading and thinking about that, the more doubtful Charlie became. Obviously, she wouldn't change her mind and put the baby up for adoption but she became more scared and nervous. Was she foolish for thinking that she could ever do this by herself? Maybe she should try to call Mason once and try to change his mind...

No! Even if things were hard, she wouldn't do that. Not for her but especially not for her children because that was what they were. Her children, not theirs. Her girls deserved someone who not only accepted them as part of her but also who loved them for themselves, not for Charlie.

Mason had made it clear that he wasn't that. Even before she got pregnant with their second child he had been disinterested in Aurora and rarely even acknowledged her presence. What had he said on that fateful day? That he never even wanted that?

Yeah, he wasn't an option.

But Charlie wasn't delusional enough to think that any other man wanted to get in his place and get in a relationship with a woman who had two children and get a family almost in the first date.

That meant that she had to stop doubting herself because the truth was that she didn't have any other option. She was all alone, a single Mom with very little money especially after the baby was born but she would do her best. The girls deserved nothing less.

Thank god she had managed to get good people around her. Her parents had never been anything but supportive and while she had picked a bad boyfriend in the college, her new friends couldn't be any better.

Although she didn't have many of those, the few that she had had helped her through everything. She was grateful for everything that Asher and Ramona had done for her. Especially Asher had shown her daughter all the love that she deserved and was a good male role model with her father.

His older brother though... Charlie shook her head, not wanting to think about that man even a second. Maybe she was overreacting, maybe not but what he had said yesterday was still hunting her.

All this time had been wondering and fearing of whether Fabian had spent time with her only because he felt bad for her. For a second she had thought that maybe that wasn't the case, that maybe he did it because he enjoyed her company and liked being with her despite her situation.

And then he had said that straight to her face, admitting that all of her fears were right and that she hadn't been wrong to doubt how genuine he had been. He had pitied her and probably thought that she was nothing but a sad, lonely single mother who needed some company.

"Hey, you okay?" Viviana asked from next to her. They were sitting on the couch, her trying to find a name for Charlie's baby while she was going through the internet which she clearly shouldn't have done because it had only given her more reasons to panic and fear for the future.

Nodding, she avoided looking at her. "Yeah, I'm just tired."

At least Viviana believed that because especially for the last three months she had always been tired so technically, she hadn't lied. It just wasn't the whole truth.