Chapter 9
BEN
“Mr. Lawlor, could you move your hand a little lower on Ms. Hull’s waist? Perfect. Now look at each other like you’re madly in love.”
I adjust my position according to the photographer’s direction, my palm settling against the curve of Freya’s hip as we stand on the terrace of the Peninsula Hotel.
The Chicago skyline spreads out behind us in the golden afternoon light, providing what Carson assured me would be the “perfect romantic backdrop” for our engagement photos.
Everything about this feels wrong.
Not Freya. Never Freya. She looks stunning in a flowing emerald dress that brings out her eyes, her red hair caught by the breeze in a way that makes her look like something out of a painting.
The photographer, a man named Guillermo who comes highly recommended and charges more per hour than most people make in a month, keeps praising her natural camera presence.
It’s the artifice of it all that makes my skin crawl. The carefully orchestrated poses, the manufactured intimacy, the way Guillermo keeps telling us to “find the love” in our eyes as if love were something you could summon on command for the sake of good lighting.
“Beautiful,” Guillermo calls out from behind his camera. “Now, Ben, tip her chin up slightly. Freya, close your eyes. Perfect.”
I tilt Freya’s face toward mine, my thumb brushing along her jawline, and for a moment I forget about the cameras and the staging and Carson hovering nearby with his clipboard.
For a moment, it’s just her—the girl who once climbed through my bedroom window, who forced me to watch fireworks when I should have been studying, who sees through every wall I’ve built around myself.
The girl I was completely fascinated with when we were seventeen.
“That’s gorgeous,” Guillermo says, and the spell breaks. “A few more like that and we’ll have everything we need.”
I drop my hand from Freya’s face, stepping back to put some professional distance between us. She gives me a small smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes, and I wonder if she’s finding this as surreal as I am.
“How are we doing on time?” I ask Carson, who’s been directing this entire production like a small-scale military operation.
“Almost done. Guillermo wants a few shots by the fountain, and then we can wrap.”
Twenty minutes later, after what feels like hundreds of photos of us walking hand in hand, gazing into each other’s eyes, and generally performing coupledom for the camera, Guillermo finally declares himself satisfied.
“These are going to be stunning,” he tells us as he packs up his equipment. “I’ll have the edited selections to your team by tomorrow.”
Carson is practically vibrating with excitement. “This is going to be perfect for the announcement. Forbes is already interested in an exclusive feature.”
“Forbes?” Freya asks, and I can hear the note of alarm in her voice.
“Don’t worry,” Carson says breezily. “It’ll be tasteful. Business focus with some personal details. The American dream angle. Self-made billionaire finds love with his childhood artist friend.”
I watch Freya’s face as Carson talks, noting the way she’s gone very still. This is all moving so fast, spinning so far beyond what either of us originally agreed to. What started as a simple favor to help me through one dinner has become a full-scale media campaign.
“I’ll walk you out,” I tell Guillermo and Carson, needing a moment to collect myself.
After they leave, I find Freya sitting on a bench near the fountain, staring out at the lake. She’s changed back into her regular clothes—jeans and a soft blue top that makes her look young and vulnerable.
“You okay?” I ask, settling beside her.
“Just processing.”
“If it’s too much—”
“It’s not too much.” She turns to look at me, and there’s something in her expression I can’t quite read. “It’s just different than what I expected. The photographer, the fancy hotel, all of it. It feels very… official.”
“Carson likes to do things properly.”
“Is this what your life is always like? Photographers and PR strategies and everything carefully managed for public consumption?”
The question makes me uncomfortable because the answer is yes, and I’ve never really thought about how that might look to someone like Freya. Someone whose life isn’t a carefully curated performance.
“Not all of the time, but sometimes,” I admit. “It’s part of the job.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“You get used to it.”
But even as I say it, I’m not sure it’s true.
Watching Freya navigate today’s photo shoot, the way she had to be coached on where to look and how to smile and which angle was most flattering, I remember what it felt like to just be with someone without worrying about how it would look to the outside world.
I remember what it felt like to have a crush on her when we were teenagers, when the biggest complication in my life was finding excuses to study with her instead of alone.
When I would lie awake at night thinking about what it would be like to kiss her, before I realized that wanting something that much was dangerous.
My phone buzzes with a text, then another. Then a call that goes to voicemail.
“Popular today,” Freya observes.
I glance at the screen and see several missed calls from a California number. My mother.
“Just business stuff,” I lie, sending the calls to voicemail without listening to them.
“I should get going,” Freya says. “I have a client presentation tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll drive you.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to.”
The drive to her apartment is quiet, both of us lost in our own thoughts. It’s only after I drop her off and I’m alone in my car that I finally listen to my mother’s voicemail.
“Benjamin, darling, I just saw the most interesting article online about your engagement. This is quite a surprise, as you can imagine. Your father and I had no idea you were even seeing anyone seriously. And Freya? Please call me when you get this. We need to discuss this… development.”
I delete the message without calling her back.
The thing about my parents is that we don’t really talk.
We exchange pleasantries during the obligatory holiday calls, and they send expensive gifts for my birthday that feel more like corporate gestures than personal ones.
They moved to California five years ago when my father retired from the bank, and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen them since.
It’s not that we had some dramatic falling out. It’s more that we never really had a relationship to begin with. Growing up in their house was like living in a very expensive museum. Beautiful, pristine and completely devoid of warmth.
My parents’ marriage is the perfect example of form over function.
They look good together, attend the right events, and say the right things at parties.
But behind closed doors, they barely speak to each other.
When they do communicate, it is through cutting remarks disguised as polite conversation or silent treatments that could last for days.
I learned early that love, at least the kind my parents claim to have, is really just a business arrangement dressed up in romantic language. A strategic partnership designed to advance careers and maintain social standing.
Which is exactly what I’m doing with Freya.
The realization hits me like a physical blow. I’m sitting in my car outside her building, and suddenly I can’t breathe properly. Everything I swore I’d never become, everything I’ve spent my adult life avoiding. I’ve walked straight into it with my eyes wide open.
I’m using someone I care about for professional gain. I’m staging a relationship for public consumption. I’m turning love into a transaction.
I’m exactly like my parents.
The worst part is that it’s working. Carson’s strategy is brilliant, and I can already see the shift in how people respond to me.
Red and Marnie see me as family oriented and trustworthy.
My business associates are commenting on how “settled” I seem.
Even my own employees are treating me differently, like getting engaged has somehow made me more human.
But it’s all built on a lie, just like my parents’ marriage is. And eventually, lies have a way of destroying everything they touch.
My phone rings again—my mother, persistent as always—and this time I answer.
“Hello, Mother.”
“Benjamin.” Her voice has that carefully modulated tone that means she’s displeased but trying to hide it. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”
“I know. I’ve been busy.”
“I imagine you have been. This engagement news is quite unexpected.”
“Is it? I’m thirty-two years old. Most people my age are already married.”
“Most people your age aren’t worth so much money. Marriage changes things for people in our position, darling. There are considerations—prenups, estate planning, public image management.”
Our position. As if we’re some kind of royalty instead of just people with money.
“I’m aware of the considerations.”
“Are you? Freya is lovely, but Benjamin, you must understand how this looks. A sudden engagement to someone nobody knows, someone who doesn’t move in our circles… People will talk.”
“Let them talk.”
“Your father and I think it might be wise to have a conversation with your attorneys before this goes any further. Just to protect everyone’s interests.”
Protect everyone’s interests. Not “congratulations” or “we’re happy for you” or “we can’t wait to meet her.” Just calculations and protections and strategic thinking.
This is what marriage looks like in my family. This is what I’m subjecting Freya to.
“I have to go,” I say abruptly.
“Wait.”
“I’ll call you later.”
I hang up before she can respond, then sit in my car feeling sick to my stomach. My mother’s reaction is exactly what I expected, but it still stings. Not because I care about her approval, but because it highlights everything that’s wrong with what Freya and I are doing.
We’re playing a game that my parents have been playing for forty years. A game where love is a commodity and relationships are strategic assets. And we’re doing it so well that even I’m starting to forget it’s not real.
When I was seventeen, what I felt for Freya was the purest thing in my life. It was complicated and terrifying and completely outside my control, but it was real. It made me want to be better, to be worthy of someone like her.
Now I’m almost in my mid-thirties and I’m using those same feelings—whatever’s left of them—to manipulate a business deal. I’m turning the best parts of who I used to be into a performance for public consumption.
My parents would be proud.
The thought makes me want to drive my car straight into the lake.
Instead, I pull out of Freya’s parking lot and head home to my huge, empty penthouse, where I can pretend that none of this matters and that I’m exactly the cold, calculating businessman everyone thinks I am.
Because the alternative, admitting that I still have feelings for my best friend and that this fake engagement is killing me, is too dangerous to consider.