Chapter 9
lilah
Fake dating Michael Valentine. What was I thinking?
Technically, we hadn’t even started yet—unless you counted the part where he walked me to the dorms yesterday, loudly saying things like “See you tomorrow, babe!” while a minimum of three sophomores filmed it for proof.
But fine. I’d agreed. I wasn’t going to back out now. I just needed to survive until everyone got bored and moved on to something else. Would it be possible for me to bribe my brother’s band into releasing their new album early so everyone had something better to focus on?
In a weird twist of fate, Poppy was already down at breakfast by the time I was finished getting dressed. Despite being the cheeriest person I knew, she also broke the stereotype of being a morning person and most days I had to drag her out of bed to get to class on time.
The dining hall was its usual morning chaos—students yelling across tables, the smell of burnt toast and coffee taking over every sense, and the morning sun streaming in through the large glass windows where I spotted Saylor and Poppy huddling over a phone together.
I didn’t even need to ask what they were looking at.
I decided I couldn’t deal with any of this fake dating stuff until I had at least three cups of coffee in me, so I veered for the coffee machines near the back.
The coffee here was absolutely disgusting but it was also free and convenient, unlike the coffee shop over by the tuck shop.
I knew plenty of people who stopped there before classes every day, but I wasn’t willing to walk that far before school.
I’d only just filled the mug and was looking for the cream that had moved from its usual spot when Poppy and Saylor materialized behind me. Lucky for them, I didn’t have the energy to jump or I would have spilled coffee everywhere.
“Do I want to know?” I sighed as I saw their face-splitting grins.
Saylor turned her phone toward me. “Someone posted a clip from last night. Of you and Tino.”
I braced myself and looked. It was a somewhat grainy video, clearly taken from a distance, but unmistakably the two of us walking down the hallway after leaving the closet. Someone had slowed it down and added some romantic song with the caption: When he looks at her like that <3.
I groaned aloud. “I should have just made coffee in our room.”
“But this way you get breakfast and socialization!” Poppy chirped. She was especially cheery this morning.
“I don’t want socialization,” I muttered. “I want caffeine and silence.”
“Too bad. You’re in the spotlight now—you can’t date someone like Michael Valentine and not be.”
I groaned and rubbed a hand on my forehead. “Don’t remind me.”
And, as if summoned by the universe just to make my life harder—I saw him.
Tino stood across the room, laughing with Crossy near the cereal station.
His tie was crooked—shocker—and his hair was still damp from his shower, the ends curling slightly against his forehead.
A few people nearby were clearly watching him, whispering behind their hands.
That wasn’t unusual. He was one of those people everyone seemed to know—not famous exactly, but visible.
Loud. Friendly. The kind of guy people noticed.
Unfortunately, now that “people” included me.
I turned away quickly, pretending to be fascinated by the muffin display.
“You’re staring,” Poppy mumbled in a sing-song voice under her breath.
“I’m not,” I hissed.
“You so are,” she said, grinning into her cup.
Saylor didn’t even lift her head. “You totally are.”
“Traitors,” I muttered. I finally found the cream and poured a ridiculous amount in, before grabbing two pieces of toast I had no intention of eating and following them back to their table.
Maybe if I was lucky, Tino wouldn’t notice us and I would have a moment of peace before having to deal with this ridiculous plan of his—because yeah, in the light of day, I was questioning exactly how this was going to work.
I wasn’t lucky.
“Morning,” Tino said, casually sliding into the seat next to mine.
A moment ago, the seat had been filled by Saylor and I hadn’t even noticed her get up, but when I looked now, I saw her and Crossy heading out the main entrance, probably going to Heart’s Coffee.
Bear and Mako were nowhere to be seen, so I figured they were either taking the chance to sleep in like I was wishing I had or had already gone to the coffee shop.
Tino grabbed a piece of toast off my plate as if it was his and I glared at him even though I wasn’t planning on eating it.
None of this was particularly unusual, since the boys tended to join us for meals now that Saylor and Poppy were both in relationships, but something about this morning felt charged.
I guess it was just the knowledge of our agreement in the back of my mind that was making everything feel like it was a bigger deal than it should be and twisting my stomach into knots.
Maybe I just needed to look at this as a game. A fun experiment to see just how gullible the rest of the Hartwell student population was. An experiment that unfortunately involved having to kiss Tino, but I could look past that.
“Everyone’s staring at you,” Poppy said, a grin tugging at her face. “Maybe it’s time for you to do something couple-y.”
I glared at her, even though I knew she was right. The whole point of this was to convince everyone we were together—if I avoided touching him at any cost, we would just be in the same position we had been all week: everyone obsessing over the hidden clues of our supposed romance.
I was debating what I should do when Tino leaned back in his chair, draping one arm casually along the back of my chair, his fingers brushing the ends of my hair and sending tingles down my spine.
A purely physical reaction that would have happened no matter who was sitting with me, of course.
Tino, meanwhile, had moved on to stealing my coffee. I didn’t even notice until he was already taking a sip.
“Hey!” I reached for it, but he just held it out of reach with that infuriating grin.
“You already look wired,” he said. “I’m saving you from a caffeine overdose. Though I do have to say you take this with a disgusting amount of sugar in it. I would have expected that from Poppy but you—hey!”
I stole the mug back, making the liquid slosh around in the mug, but none of it spilled over the side. I stared him down as I took a long sip, daring him to make another comment. He just stared right back, his eyes darkening for reasons I couldn’t make sense of.
The tension was only broken when a sophomore girl passed by and said, “You two are so cute!” I almost choked on my coffee and Tino smiled like he’d been handed an award.
As soon as she was gone, I turned to him. “You’re enjoying this way too much.”
“I told you,” he said, leaning back again. “We have to sell it.”
“You don’t have to enjoy selling it.”
He grinned goofily. “But I do.”
Right. Of course he did. This ploy was everything Tino had ever wanted—a chance to finally go out with me.
“You know,” Tino said, leaning and dropping his voice so nobody could overhear. From a distance, it probably looked like he was whispering something sweet and romantic to me. “You could at least pretend to be happy about dating me.”
I gave him a sweet, fake smile. “Oh, I’m thrilled. This is everything I’ve ever dreamed of.”
“Better,” he said approvingly. “You almost sound convincing.”
I rolled my eyes. “Remind me again why we’re doing this?”
“Because,” he said, “it’s easier than fighting it. And because you said it yourself—you’ll get to prove how incompatible we are.”
Right. That had been the deal.
In the next twenty minutes that we sat there, three different girls came up to tell us we were adorable, Tino kissed my cheek once, and there wasn’t a single moment that I didn’t feel eyes on me.
When the warning bell went off signalling a few minutes until first period, I shot to my feet. “We should go.”
Poppy raised her brows. “Someone’s eager for math.”
“Well, I do need to raise my grade,” I pointed out, my voice awkward and stilted. I wasn’t even sure why I was lying, given that we all knew the truth, but somehow this felt easier than saying that just pretending to be dating Tino like this was setting my skin on fire.
Tino stood too, picking up both our trays before I could.
“You don’t have to—”
He cut me off with a small, easy shrug. “What kind of boyfriend would I be if I didn’t?”
I guess that was a good point. I reluctantly swung my bag over my shoulder and waited for him by the table, glancing around at the other students who were packing up their stuff as well. Was I imagining it or were people moving slower than usual and watching me?
In all the years of my brother’s fame, I’d never gotten used to the idea of anybody being so single-mindedly obsessed with one person and what they were up to.
I still remembered the early days of his own relationship, as well as when my sister Nina started dating one of his bandmates—the news had been all over every social media platform and in every magazine about the band.
I’d even seen some girls at school cry over their favorite boy band members getting into a relationship, as if they genuinely thought they’d had a chance with them.
I didn’t know how he could handle that when even this was making me go insane.
When Tino returned to the table, he picked up his bag then slipped his hand into mine without missing a beat.
He did it so smoothly that if I were a spectator who didn’t know this was fake, I wouldn’t have doubted that it was real.
It felt so practiced, as if he’d done it a thousand times before.
His fingers slid through mine, his thumb brushing over my knuckles once.
Just enough to sell it.
And apparently, sell it, it did. The room went weirdly quiet for a second, a ripple of awareness moving through the tables nearest us.