CHAPTER 11 #2
His phone is in his hand, and he slides it into his pocket like he’s hiding something.
“Ready?” I ask.
“Almost.”
He turns. Crosses the room toward me.
There’s something different in his face tonight. A tension I haven’t seen before. His jaw is set, and his eyes keep flicking toward the windows, the door, the shadows in the corners of the room.
“We need to practice,” he says.
“Practice what?”
“This.”
He reaches up and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. His fingers linger against my jaw—cool and precise and so gentle it makes my throat tight. The touch is exactly what a boyfriend would do. Affectionate. Intimate. The kind of casual contact that says we know each other.
But there’s nothing casual about the way my skin burns where he touched it.
“You’re still flinching when I touch you,” he observes.
“I’m not—”
I stop. Because I am. I definitely am. I felt my whole body go rigid the second his hand moved, and now I’m standing here like a board trying to pretend I didn’t.
“Okay, maybe a little.”
“We’re supposed to be in love.” He states matter-of-factly. “That requires comfort with physical proximity.”
“I know. I’m trying.”
“What are you afraid of?” he asks.
“I’m not afraid.”
“You’re terrified.” His eyes hold mine. “I can see it in the way you hold your breath when I get close. The way your pulse jumps.”
His fingers brush my wrist. Light as a thought. Light enough that I shouldn’t be able to feel it through my entire body.
“There. Like that.”
My heart is doing something irregular, and he can feel it. He can literally feel my body betraying me with every beat.
“Maybe I’m just not used to being touched by someone who looks at me like—”
I stop.
“Like what?”
Like you’re scared of something I can’t see.
“Like you’re running calculations,” I say instead. Safer. Less vulnerable. “Every time you look at me, I can see you thinking and processing me. It’s unsettling.”
Something shifts in his expression. Surprise, maybe. Or recognition. Like I’ve named something he didn’t realize was visible.
“You’re right,” he says. “I do look at you that way.”
“And?”
“And I’m sorry. It’s...” He pauses. Actually pauses, which is new. Julian usually has his answers ready before I finish asking. “It’s how I’ve learned to interact with people. If I gather enough data, I can predict responses. Protect myself from variables.”
“I’m a variable now?”
“You’re the most unpredictable variable I’ve encountered in a very long time.”
I don’t know what to do with that. It sounds like a compliment, but it also sounds like a warning. Like he’s telling me something important, something that should concern me, but he’s wrapped it in enough flattery that I’m not sure how to receive it.
“It’s fine,” I say, because I don’t know what else to say. “This is fake. You don’t have to pretend to feel something you don’t.”
The words come out more bitter than I intended. More honest. I watch him register them, process them, file them away in whatever mental filing system he maintains.
And then he says: “What if I’m not pretending?”
The question hangs between us like something breakable.
My eyes search his face. Looking for tells, for performance, for any sign that this is part of the act.
He’s supposed to be playing my boyfriend.
He’s supposed to make my family believe we’re in love.
Maybe this is just very good method acting.
Maybe he’s so committed to the bit that he’s forgotten where the character ends and he begins.
But there’s something in his expression I haven’t seen before. Vulnerability, maybe. Or fear. Something raw and unguarded that doesn’t match the polished surface he usually presents.
He leans closer. Close enough that I can see the flecks of gold in his dark eyes, like something burning at the edges. Close enough that his breath catches at the same moment mine does.
My brain screams at me to step back. To remember this is just a contract—finite, professional, ending when the wedding does. To keep protecting myself with filters and distance and the curated performance of someone whose life is together.
“Julian—”
His phone buzzes.
He steps back so fast it’s like he’s been burned. One second he’s inches away from me, the next he’s across the room, phone in hand, face transformed into something hard and cold.
I watch tension ripple across his face. His shoulders go rigid. Whatever he’s reading on that screen is bad news. Worse than bad. The kind of news that makes someone’s whole body change.
“We should go,” he says. “We’ll be late.”
“What was that?”
“Nothing. Work.”
“You looked at that message like someone threatened your life.”
He meets my eyes. For a second—just a second—I think he’s going to tell me. Going to explain whatever just shifted, whatever pulled him away from the moment we were having.
“It’s handled,” he says. “Let’s go to dinner.”
He grabs his jacket and heads for the door. I follow because what else am I supposed to do? Demand answers from a man I’m paying? Insist on transparency in a relationship that’s explicitly transactional?
But as we walk down the corridor toward the restaurant, something keeps nagging at me.
Something is wrong. Something has been wrong since we landed.
Julian keeps checking his phone every few minutes.
He positions himself between me and windows, scanning the lobby like he’s looking for threats that don’t exist.
Or maybe they do exist. Maybe I’m just not seeing them.
Here’s the thing about being an influencer: you learn to read subtext and notice when someone’s performance doesn’t match their reality. I’ve gotten pretty good at identifying the gap between what a person shows you, and what they’re actually feeling.
Julian’s gap is massive. And getting bigger.
The elevator arrives. Julian holds the door for me, and as I pass him, his hand lands on the small of my back. Light. Guiding. Possessive in a way that makes my skin tingle.
“Whatever happens tonight,” he murmurs near my ear, “stay close to me.”
“Why? What’s going to happen?”
“Probably nothing. I’m just being cautious.”
“Cautious about what?”
He doesn’t answer. The elevator doors close, and we descend toward the restaurant, toward my family, toward whatever performance we’re about to give.
But I feel his hand on my back the whole way down. Cool and steady and exactly where it belongs, like it was always supposed to be there, like we’ve done this a thousand times instead of a handful.
And I can’t figure out if the performance is the problem—or if the problem is that I’ve stopped being able to tell where the performance ends and Julian begins.
Where he ends and I begin.
I need to figure out what’s actually happening before it destroys me.
Then I paste on my smile—the professional one, the one I’ve perfected over five years of content creation—and step into the lobby, ready to pretend.
Again.
Still.
Always.
The difference is that tonight, I’m not sure which part of me is the pretend.