Chapter 10
10
brYCE
I stare at Daisy for too long without speaking. My brain churns and churns through several replies, but they’re all muddled with too much confusion to make sense of.
It’s an out-of-pocket suggestion, considering my lack of love life. I’d be offended if it were anyone but her asking. The woman wouldn’t know what it means to purposely offend someone if it bit her in the ass.
“Maybe,” I manage to say once I’ve cleared my throat.
“Are you up for trying?”
“Where do you suggest I find a girlfriend? The supermarket?” I ask stiffly.
She worries her lip, eyes darting around the kitchen before landing back on me. The gleam in them has me standing straighter, a tight feeling growing in my chest.
“What about me? Would I do?”
I choke on air. Spit, maybe.
She opens her mouth, but I spin away from her before she has a chance to speak her next sentence. I beat my palm to my chest in hopes of soothing my coughing, but it only makes it worse.
“Drink this,” she orders before my beer is shoved in my face .
I take it and drink, focusing on swallowing instead of spraying it out all over the kitchen counter. My hand is sweaty around the glass as I clue in to how close she is to me.
Fruity perfume swirls in the air around me, and I breathe it in despite myself. She’s warm, the heat from her body trying to tug me into an embrace that feels as appealing as it always does. As she always does .
The thought has me shoving away from her. With space between us, I suck in long, non-Daisy-soaked breaths, no longer coughing. She doesn’t try to come closer, and I avoid looking at her to confirm whether I’ve hurt her feelings or not.
“You don’t want to date me,” I tell her bluntly, staring at the wall across the room instead of at her.
“Why not?”
She’s so inquisitive. It’s a piece of her personality that I noticed the first time we met.
“Why would you?”
“Touché.” Her laugh is soft, nervous. “I was thinking more in the fake sense.”
That has me snapping my head to the side. She doesn’t balk at my confusion and jostles a shoulder instead. Appearing nonchalant, she holds my stare and tugs her mouth up at the corners.
“I’ve been thinking of a way that I could pay you back for letting me stay here besides the bare minimum things, and, well, you need help with your parents. It’s a win-win. You let me stay here, and I’ll pay you rent, of course, but I’ll also help with this. It’s the only way I’ll feel like I haven’t taken advantage of you,” she adds.
A win-win.
“You’re fucking crazy, Daisy.”
It’s the wrong thing to say. So wrong on too many levels to count. But I’m unable to say anything else. If she knew what I thought about her, she’d rescind the offer and leave, never looking back .
The hurt that flickers across her pretty features makes my jaw tense, teeth grinding. I hate that look on her. Lips no longer upturned but tugged down and curled the wrong way. Her blue eyes a shade darker than usual, more ocean at night and less clear summer sky. I struggle with the weight of the knowledge that I’ve tarnished the bright aura she always has pulsing off her.
“Why is it crazy? Because you don’t think it would work or that you’d be fake dating me?” she asks, straightening her posture just enough for me to notice. Like she’s preparing for a fight and doesn’t plan on losing.
I like the sight of her backbone. Always knew it was there, but having it in play with me brings something hot and heavy to my gut.
With a firm grip on the counter, I hop up and sit on the edge of it. She watches me move, lips twitching. I pat the space beside me, and she doesn’t hesitate to join, her legs swinging in the tiny shorts she always wears around the house once she’s comfortable.
“It’s crazy because nobody would believe it just suddenly happened. Let alone my parents,” I tell her, clarifying.
“I think we could do it. You’ve dated women, right?”
I chuckle. “Yeah, Sunshine. I’ve dated my fair share of women.”
With a glance over, I catch the slight flush of her cheeks before she dips her head and lets her hair hide them from me. The deep red waves are thick and shiny, healthy in the way they bounce even with the slightest movement of her head. I’d bet it feels just as smooth between my fingers as it looks.
I curl my hand into a fist and shove it beneath my thigh.
“Well, then I think we could pull it off,” she states.
“You don’t need to pay me back for staying here. It’s not some huge burden, and you’re not getting a room for free.”
“Maybe not, but I feel like I do. And this is the perfect way to do it.”
“No,” I say, deciding for the both of us .
She scoffs in her throat. “Yes. Unless you have some serious reason as to why you can’t, then we’re going to be fake lovers.”
“You’re pushy.”
“Thank you.”
My laugh is genuine but short. “It wasn’t a compliment.”
“I’m not pushy. I’m just sure of myself and what I’m offering. It will work, I’ll make sure of it. And once your mom grows to realize that you’re not interested in any of these men she keeps feeding you, we’ll call it off and go back to whatever we are now.”
“Feeding me?” I ask, stuck on that one part of her statement. “I’m not a succubus.”
“No? Could have fooled me.”
“Now I’m the one getting offended.”
She hits my arm with hers and laughs louder. Fuck, she has a pretty laugh. Like a wind chime blowing through a quiet, dull night.
“Don’t be offended. Look at you, Bryce. You could eat men for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Late-night snack too,” she teases.
“I prefer fruit to vegetables.”
“Oh yeah? Do you have a favourite fruit?” she asks. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she’s baiting me.
“Peaches.”
Her throat bobs, eyes darting to my thighs. I follow her stare and realize how high my skirt has ridden up. The denim is tight, but I like it that way. And right now, it’s high enough that both of my thigh pieces are fully on display. Peaches, juice, and fangs.
My body is covered in sexual innuendos. From my first piece, I knew I wanted every bit of ink to mean something. And once I got started, I couldn’t stop. An addict in every definition of the term. The rush I feel with the press of a needle to my arm is the closest thing to an orgasm that’s available without fingers in my pussy.
I’m proud of every design on my skin and always make sure all of my favourites are placed somewhere I’ll be able to see them at any given time. My twin cobras are no exception.
“Did they hurt?” she asks, voice airy.
I twist the thigh closest to her, showing the inner parts of the design with a risk of flashing my panties. She doesn’t tell me to stop, so I don’t.
“Like a bitch. Especially right here.” I trace the underside of the peach where it curves high up my inner thigh, exactly four inches below my bikini line. “The nerves here are incredibly sensitive.”
“I bet.”
She’s leaned in to see, and I don’t move in fear of scaring her. With her eyes so focused on the area between my legs, I fear they’ll start to shake. When I can’t help but clench between them, I decide we’re done and slam them shut.
“Anyway. We’d have to convince everyone. Your brother included,” I say, changing the subject.
Daisy sits back, nodding almost to herself before pushing her hair behind her neck. She smiles at me, shifting on the counter.
“We could tell him the truth.”
I shake my head. “He’d tell Rory, and she’d tell the rest of the girls. From there, everyone would know.”
“I could swear him to twin secrecy,” she suggests, too damn hopeful.
“If we do this, nobody knows the truth. Not your siblings and not my best friends. It has to be real to everyone. The moment someone learns the truth, the plan is ruined. If my mom figures out that I turned to fake dating to get out of these dates . . . I’d rather suffer through a million more of them than suffer that embarrassment.”
She chews on that for a moment. “Alright. Okay, nobody will know. But that means our story has to be perfect. No holes, and we have to be ready to explain it a thousand times without getting our facts mixed up.”
“Easy enough. ”
“What is our story, then?”
“You don’t have anything to suggest? This was your idea.”
Daisy exhales, jerking her chin in agreement. “That’s true. Well, we’re already living together, so we could say that it just happened naturally?”
“What happened naturally? You took one look at my empty fridge and decided you wanted to be the one to fill it?” I ask sarcastically.
She hits my arm again, and I think I like when she does that. “Not exactly. How about you just let me come up with something in the moment. It will feel more genuine that way. We don’t bring it up to anyone alone before then, and we’ll just make note of the story we tell the first time so neither one of us forgets.”
“Will that work?”
“I’m a pretty good actress.”
“I hope so.” I hold her stare with one that I hope she can understand the seriousness behind. “How long will we date for?”
“As long as it takes. I don’t have anything else to do besides work. School starts Monday.”
“Okay.”
She does a double take. “Okay?”
“Okay, we’ll do this. Fucking fake date.”
It sounds ridiculous, yet my heart is thrashing at the agreement. The crush I’ve had on Daisy Mitchell for the past three years should have made me turn this idea down and build a permanent wall between us. Instead, it’s encouraging me to go along with this.
It’s going to get messy. I’m going to torture myself by picking at an unhealed wound over and over again. I’ve thought about Daisy in the exact way I’m going to be “pretending” to over the next who fucking knows how long. If she ever found out that I agreed to this, knowing that I want her for real, she might never trust me again .
It feels dirty and sneaky. But I’m not doing this just for my own selfish reasons. It’s more than that. The idea of telling my mom that I’m no longer able to entertain these blind dates feels like a well-deserved fuck off. Having my fake girlfriend be Daisy is just a bonus. Even if I know that by the end of this agreement, I’ll be left worse off than how I entered it.
For three years, I’ve successfully hidden my affection for the sunshine girl beside me. Every blunt, cold reply and blank expression were my only ways of keeping my cards hidden. I’ve never reacted to someone the way I do her, as if she’d somehow already burrowed herself into my life without my knowledge by our first meeting.
Nobody knows how I truly feel. Not Anna or Poppy and Darren, despite their suspicions that I may be playing a little too hard against Johnny’s twin. I wasn’t planning on confirming those feelings, and now, it seems I have no choice.
They’ll believe me when I say that they were right. This plan could actually work, but I fear it will break me in the process.
Too bad I’ve never feared a little pain.