Chapter Six
The Negotiation
Crew
Emmie pulls the notebook toward her, pen poised like a weapon. “If we’re doing this, I want to add Boyfriend Duties. Fair is fair.”
“Boyfriend Duties,” I repeat, the words foreign.
“You have a whole list of things I have to do as your fake girlfriend. I should get something out of this too.” She taps the pen against her lips, thinking. She labels the notebook page Addendum. “First: jars.”
“Jars.” My eyebrows shoot up.
“Opening them. All of them. Non-negotiable.” She writes it down in loopy purple script. “They’re always sealed too tight, and there’s a lot of pasta sauce in my future. You’re on jar duty.”
I open my mouth to point out that she could just buy a jar opener, but something tells me that’s not the point. I never imagined she’d negotiate, but opening jars for her isn’t exactly a hardship for me. “Fine.”
“Second: high shelves. You’re tall. I’m not. You reach things when I need them.”
I tip my chin, considering this. “That seems reasonable.”
“Third: my car makes noises sometimes. Weird noises.” She waves her hand vaguely. “When it does, you look at it and tell me whether I’m going to die.”
“I’m not a mechanic.”
“You don’t have to fix it. Just look at it with a serious expression and tell me if it’s a problem or if I can ignore it for another few months.”
I want to argue, but honestly? I’ll probably end up doing this anyway. “Fine.”
“Fourth: checking the locks.” Her voice shifts slightly, something softer underneath. “Sometimes I get anxious at night, and I need someone to check that everything’s locked. Even if it’s already locked. Even if it’s the third time.”
I understand that more than she knows. “Done.”
“Fifth: emergency extraction.” She smiles. “If I’m on a bad date and I text you an SOS, you call me with a fake crisis, and I leave.”
I consider this, and for some reason, the idea of Emmie on a date doesn’t sit well. “What kind of fake crisis?”
“I don’t know, be creative. The apartment is on fire. The cat is sick. My, um, grandmother needs emergency surgery.” She pauses. “Actually, don’t use the grandmother one. My mom would find out somehow, and then I’d have to explain why Nana isn’t actually in the hospital.”
“Noted.”
“Sixth: taste-testing. You have to taste everything I make. Even the disasters. And there’s an emphasis on the disasters part. Sometimes things go wrong, and I need someone to try it anyway and tell me why it tastes like sadness.”
“Tastes like sadness?”
“You’ll know it when you taste it.” She keeps writing. “Seventh: honest feedback. Even if it hurts. I don’t want you to just say everything is good because you’re being polite. I need real criticism.”
“That won’t be a problem.”
She looks up and narrows her eyes. “Wow. Was that an insult?”
“It was an acknowledgment that I’m not known for sugarcoating things.”
“Oh.” She turns back to her list, quiet, thinking. “Eighth: self-defense lessons.”
That one catches me off guard. “Self-defense?”
She waves one hand. “I’ve been meaning to learn. Sadie and I talked about taking a class, but we never got around to it. And now I’m living with an FBI tactical guy.” She shrugs. “Seems like a waste not to take advantage.”
The thought of teaching Emmie self-defense sends my mind to places it shouldn’t go. Close proximity. Physical contact. My hands on her body, showing her how to break a hold, how to throw her weight, how to—
“Sure,” I say, cutting off that train of thought. “I can do that.”
“Great.” She smiles, bright and warm, and my chest does something uncomfortable. “Ninth, and this one is very important.” She writes something down and then turns the notebook to face me.
MANDATORY CUDDLING SESSIONS.
I stare at the words and read them again. They don’t change.
“Absolutely not.”
“It’s non-negotiable.”
“It’s insane.” I push back from the table. “I don’t cuddle.”
“You do now.” She crosses her arms, completely unfazed by my reaction. “If I have to hold your hand in public and pretend to be in love with you, you can snuggle with me once a week.”
“I don’t—” I stop, searching for words. “I’m not a… snuggling person.”
I don’t think I’ve ever even said the word snuggle before. Not once in my thirty years on this planet.
“Then we don’t have a deal.”
I wait while the silence around us builds.
She’s not backing down. I can see it in the set of her jaw, the steadiness of her gaze. Emmie Marshall, five-foot-four of chaos and cookie dough, is drawing a line in the sand over cuddling.
“Why?” I finally ask. “Why is this so important to you?”
She leans back in her chair, considering. “Do you know how hard it is to get guys to just cuddle?”
“Uh, no.”
“Impossible.” She gestures emphatically.
“There’s a severe cuddling deficiency happening in the world right now—an epidemic, really.
My friends complain about it all the time.
They’re all dating guys who want to have sex but won’t just hold them on the couch for ten minutes.
And you can’t ask for more cuddle time without seeming needy or clingy or whatever. ”
I try to wrap my head around this. “So… women want to cuddle, but they can’t ask for it?”
“Exactly. It’s a whole thing.”
“That seems counterproductive.”
“Welcome to heterosexual dating.” She throws up her hands. “But with this arrangement, it’s all fake anyway. No feelings, no weirdness, just… contractual. I might as well get something out of it.”
I’m still stuck several steps back. “But why do you even want to? What’s the appeal?”
She looks at me like I’ve asked why people enjoy breathing. “Are you serious?”
“I’m trying to understand.”
“It’s…” She pauses, searching for words. “Okay, have you ever been really cold? Like, bone-deep cold, and then you get under a warm blanket and everything just… settles?”
“I guess so.”
“It’s like that, but better. Human touch is calming. There’s actual science behind it—oxytocin release, lowered cortisol, all that stuff.” She tilts her head. “Think of it like… human Xanax.”
Human Xanax?
I reflect on what cuddling has meant in my limited experience with it—a face full of hair, not knowing where to put my hands, the inevitable awkward boner when my body reacts uncontrollably. And the suffocating feeling of someone else’s expectations pressed against me.
“I don’t get it,” I admit, shaking my head.
“Crew.” Emmie stands up and approaches me, stopping just out of arm’s reach. “When’s the last time someone hugged you? Like, really hugged you?”
I remain silent, brain buffering as I come up blank.
“Okay, when’s the last time someone touched you at all? Not a handshake, not an accident—actual, intentional contact.”
“I spar with Foster sometimes. Training exercises—”
“No.” She shakes her head. “Not that. I mean someone touching you just to be… nice. Gentle. No agenda, no combat training, no—” She waves her hand vaguely. “Just human contact. Because they wanted to. Because it felt good.”
My mind flickers to a woman from about eight months back. Blonde. Amanda? Andrea? She’d gone down on me in my living room after a forgettable first date, and I’d called her an Uber fifteen minutes later. Does that count?
Probably not what Emmie means.
“Your face is doing something weird.” She narrows her eyes at me. “Where did your brain just go?”
“Nowhere.”
“Oh good grief.” Her nose wrinkles. “Ew. Gross. I meant non-sexual, Crew. Like a hug. A real one. Someone playing with your hair. Holding your hand just because.”
I open my mouth. Close it.
The silence stretches between us.
“I don’t remember,” I finally admit.
Something shifts in her expression. Not pity—I couldn’t handle pity—but something softer, sadder.
“That’s…” She shakes her head. “That’s not okay. Humans need touch. You can’t just go years without being touched and expect your brain to function normally.”
“I function fine.”
Her mouth presses into a line. “You made a seventeen-page roommate contract with color-coded tabs.”
“The tabs are organized by topic, not color.”
“My point stands.” She moves closer, and I fight the urge to step back. “You’re touch-starved. It’s a real thing. But that’s okay; we can fix it.” She says this with absolute certainty and a cheery tone to her voice. “And I’m an excellent cuddler. Ask anyone.”
“I’m not going to ask anyone about your cuddling abilities.”
“Your loss.” She taps the notebook. “So? Do we have a deal or not?”
I’m sweating—actually sweating—over the prospect of sitting on a couch and letting someone be close to me. Voluntarily. On purpose. Not someone…Emmie… with her soft curves and her kind eyes. I’ve diffused bombs with steadier hands than this.
This is absurd. But I need this arrangement to work, and she’s not budging.
“Ten minutes,” I hear myself say. “Once a week. On the couch. Over clothes.”
“Over clothes?” She laughs, startled. “Obviously over clothes. I never said naked cuddling. What kind of arrangement do you think this is?”
My face heats. “I was just clarifying—”
“Crew Jensen, did you think I was demanding nude snuggle sessions?” Her mouth twitches with a smile.
“I was being thorough.”
“You’re being ridiculous.” But she’s grinning now, and something about it makes me feel less like I’m drowning. “Thirty minutes.”
“Ten.”
“Twenty.”
I hold her gaze. She holds mine.
She tilts her head, waiting for my answer, and I’m momentarily distracted by the curve of her mouth. The flush on her cheeks. And I notice, not for the first time tonight, that Emmie Marshall is dangerously pretty. The kind of pretty that makes men agree to things like mandatory cuddling.
Apparently.
“Fine,” I concede. “Twenty minutes. Once a week. Clothed. On the couch. And we never speak of it outside this apartment.”
“Deal.” She extends her hand across the table.
I take it. Her palm is warm and small, callused in the places where she grips her kitchen tools. I notice her pink fingernail polish and the way her pulse beats quickly in her wrist.
“So,” she clears her throat, “when do we have to sell this thing? The fake relationship?”
“There’s a work event. A charity gala.”
“Okay. When?”
“One week.”
Her eyes go wide. “ONE WEEK?!”
“It’s doable.”
“Crew, I don’t even know your middle name! Or your birthday! Or, like, literally anything about you beyond the fact that you’re FBI, you have a cat, and you hate cuddling!”
“I don’t hate cuddling. I just don’t understand it.”
“Not the point!” She’s on her feet now, pacing the small kitchen. “How are we supposed to convince your boss we’re in a serious relationship when we’ve known each other for three days?”
“We’ll practice.”
“Practice what?”
“Being comfortable with each other. Learning the details.” I stand too, because it feels wrong to be sitting while she’s spiraling. “I can put together a, uh, dossier.”
“A dossier.”
“Background information. Facts about each other. A believable timeline for how we met and how we started dating.”
She stops pacing and stares at me. “You want to make a study guide for our fake relationship.”
“Is that a problem?”
For a long moment, she doesn’t answer. Then, slowly, a smile spreads across her face. Not the bright, easy smile I’m getting used to—something warmer. Almost fond.
“You’re such a weirdo,” she says.
“I prefer methodical.”
“Sure you do.” She picks up her notebook and rips out the page with her boyfriend duties. “Okay. We’ve got one week to turn this into something believable. What’s the plan?”
I look at her standing there in her flour-dusted cardigan and messy bun, holding a handwritten list of demands that includes mandatory cuddling, and I realize I have absolutely no idea what I’ve gotten myself into.
But for the first time, that doesn’t feel like a disaster. It feels like the beginning of something. A new chapter, maybe.
“Tomorrow,” I say. “We start tomorrow. I’ll make the dossier tonight.”
“Of course you will.” She folds the paper and tucks it into her back pocket. “Try to include a fun facts section. If anyone asks, I want to know your favorite movie.”
“I don’t really watch movies.”
“Crew.” She puts a hand on my arm, and I flinch—can’t help it, the reaction hardwired into my body before my brain catches up.
But she doesn’t pull away. Her fingers stay, warm and steady, and the touch burns through my sleeve.
“That’s the saddest thing you’ve ever said. And you told me about the foster care.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I remain silent.
She squeezes my arm once, then she’s gone, disappearing down the hallway to her room, leaving me standing in the kitchen with a half-eaten plate of cookies and the lingering warmth of her hand on my arm.
I look down at the original contract, still spread across the table. Section 7. The Girlfriend Clause.
What began as a calculated solution to a bureaucratic problem has transformed into something entirely different—something I can’t categorize, something that defies the boxes I’ve built my life around.
Emmie Marshall is chaos.
And I’ve just agreed to cuddle her once a week.
I rub my hand over my face, grab another cookie, and head to my room to create a dossier about our fake relationship.
This is either the smartest decision I’ve ever made or the biggest mistake of my life.
Probably both.