CHAPTER 8 - THE FAKE DATING DEAL
1227 Words
I don’t sit down, but I stop and turn around long enough to let him know I’m listening.
"Here's the deal," he said. "You tutor me. I keep Caleb off your back."
"That's not a deal. That's a hostage negotiation."
"It's an exchange of services." He leaned forward, elbows on the table. "You need someone between you and a guy who's spent four years treating you like property he forgot to put a fence around. I need someone who won't make me feel like a lab rat every time I misspell something."
"You could get any tutor–"
"I don't want any tutor. I want someone who's already seen me at my worst and didn't run." He held up a hand before I could respond. "The bar doesn't count. That was my best."
I didn't laugh. I wanted to. I didn't.
"Caleb won't stop," he said. Quieter now. "You know that. He doesn't want you but he doesn't want anyone else to have you either. That's not love – that's inventory management. And right now, you're an item he thinks got misplaced."
It landed. Every word. Because it was true, and I'd known it was true for years, but nobody had ever said it to me that bluntly.
"So, what – you pretend to be my boyfriend and he magically backs off?"
"He backs off because the alternative is dealing with me. And after last night's game, he knows exactly what dealing with me looks like."
I sat down. Not because I was agreeing – because my legs were tired and my brain was full and he was making too much sense for someone with bruised knuckles and a smirk.
"Ground rules," I said.
"Whatever you want."
I pulled out my tutor evaluation form and flipped it over. Clicked my pen. All business.
"One. Nobody knows it's fake. Not Sienna, not Zara, not your teammates. If one person finds out, the whole thing collapses."
"Agreed."
"Two. Public displays of affection to sell it. Arm around the shoulder. Maybe hand-holding. Nothing excessive."
"Define excessive."
"Nothing that would make my mother cry."
"Your mother's about to marry my father. She's already emotionally compromised."
"Three." I ignored him. "Private sessions stay professional. Tutoring is tutoring. No – " I waved my hand vaguely. "No repeats of the restaurant."
"You mean no fingering you against the counter while your mom passes the bread basket?"
"Do you want me to write that down verbatim or–"
"I'm just clarifying the terms."
I wrote NO PHYSICAL CONTACT IN PRIVATE in capital letters and underlined it twice. He watched me write it with an expression that said he was already planning to break that rule and wanted me to know it.
"Four. This ends when I say it ends. If I'm done, we're done. No arguments."
"Fair."
"Five. You actually try in tutoring. I'm not putting my academic reputation on the line for a guy who won't open a textbook."
"I'll open the textbook."
"You'll do the readings."
"I'll do the readings."
"You'll write the essays."
"Now you're pushing it."
I held out the pen. He took it – our fingers brushed and I pretended I didn't feel it everywhere – and signed his name at the bottom of the form. Messy. Aggressive. The signature of someone who'd been signing things he didn't read his whole life.
He set the pen down. Looked at me.
"You forgot one."
"What?"
"No falling in love."
I stared at him. "That's not funny."
His face didn't change. No smirk. No amusement. Those grey eyes were steady and serious and looking at me like he was saying something important that he'd disguised as a joke because that was the only way he knew how to say important things.
"Wasn't trying to be funny."
The room felt very small.
"Fine," I said. "Rule six. No falling in love." I wrote it on the form. My handwriting was less steady than before. "Signed and sealed. We're done."
"One more thing."
"What now?"
"We need to practice."
"Practice what?"
"Kissing." He said it like he was suggesting they grab coffee. "If we're going to sell this in public, we can't look like two strangers who've never touched each other."
"We're not strangers who've never touched each other. You've literally been inside me."
"In a bar bathroom. Drunk. In the dark." He stood up. Walked around the table. Stood in front of me. "This is different. This is sober, in daylight, in front of people who are going to be watching for cracks. One kiss. Quick. Just so we're not awkward."
The logic was sound. I hated that the logic was sound.
"One kiss," I said. "Quick."
"Quick," he agreed.
He stepped closer. His hand came up – slow, deliberate, giving me time to stop him – and settled on the back of my neck. His fingers threaded into my hair. His thumb rested against my jaw.
It was not quick.
The second his mouth touched mine, every rational thought I'd had in the last fifteen minutes evaporated like water on a hot engine. He kissed the way he played hockey – instinctive, consuming, three moves ahead of everyone else in the room. His hand tightened on the back of my neck and my fingers fisted his shirt and suddenly we were back in bar-bathroom energy except worse, infinitely worse, because I was sober and it was daylight and I knew his name and he was saying mine against my mouth like he'd been practicing the shape of it.
Naomi.
Not Nomes. Not Ellis. Naomi – the full thing, breathed against my lips like it cost him something.
My back hit the edge of the table. His other hand landed on my hip – steadying, gripping, pulling me closer. The kiss deepened. Opened. His tongue against mine and my hands pulling him in by the shirt collar and both of us making sounds that had no business existing in a university library at two in the afternoon.
We broke apart.
Ten seconds of silence. Both breathing hard. His hand still on my neck. My fingers still twisted in his shirt.
He recovered first. Because of course he did.
"Convincing enough?"
I couldn't answer. My brain was static. My lips were swollen. My body was screaming at me to pull him back and finish what we'd started and to hell with every rule I'd just written on that form.
"That was – sufficient," I managed.
"Sufficient." He repeated it like he was tasting something bitter. "I'll take it."
We agreed to never discuss the practice kiss again. We were both lying and we both knew it.
We staged our first public appearance soon after: walking across campus. His arm around my shoulder. Heavy, warm, possessive in a way that felt nothing like performance. My heart hammering so loudly I was sure he could hear it.
The whispers started before we made it past the quad.
Is that Maddox? With the Ellis girl? Caleb's friend?
Phones angled toward us. Eyes tracking. The gossip machine spinning up in real time.
Rhys's arm tightened around me. Not for the cameras. For Caleb – standing thirty feet away, outside the athletics building, watching us with an expression that could have curdled milk.
My phone buzzed.
Caleb: Why the f**k are you still with Rhys Maddox?
- Writer
