4. Mario #2
I stared at him, my brain processing the logic. The cold, tactical part of me, the part that analyzed race data and calculated braking points, whirred to life. He was right. A quiet, stable relationship was a perfect piece of misdirection. It was a shield. A boring story was a safe story.
“As for you, Lil,” Ben said, turning to his sister, who still looked like she’d been struck by lightning. “Mom gets off your back. The whole town gets off your back. No more surprise Todds showing up with pie. You’re with Mario. End of story. Everyone’s happy.”
Lily shook her head, a dazed, frantic motion. “No. No, I can’t. We… we can’t stand each other.”
“You don’t have to,” Ben countered. “It’s an act.
A performance for the season. You go to a few festivals together, hold hands at the farmers market, let Mom see you being a ‘couple.’ Then, when winter comes and Mario’s ready to leave, you have a quiet, amicable breakup. No harm, no foul. Everyone moves on.”
It was insane. It was a stupid plan.
It was also the best one I’d heard.
I looked at Lily. She was chewing on her lower lip, her arms still wrapped tightly around her waist. She looked cornered, trapped.
She looked exactly how I felt. My presence here, this situation, had made her life a living hell.
This wasn’t just about me anymore. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement.
A clean solution to two very messy problems.
But it would mean more time with her. More time in this town. More public performances. It was a trade-off.
My privacy for my peace.
“What are the terms?” I asked, my voice flat.
Ben’s eyebrows shot up. Lily’s head snapped toward me, her eyes wide.
“You’re actually considering this?” she whispered.
“It’s a logical solution,” I said, not looking at her. I was talking to Ben, the strategist. “But it needs rules.”
“Okay. Rules. Good,” Ben said, nodding enthusiastically, sensing he was closing the deal.
“Rule one,” I said, my gaze finally meeting Lily’s.
The dim light caught the panic in her eyes.
“This is a business arrangement. A performance. It is for the fall season only. The day the Christmas lights go up on the town square, the deal is over.” I was leaving in December, to what, I didn’t have a clue, but at least now, I had a plan.
She just blinked at me.
“Rule two,” I continued, a cold knot tightening in my stomach. “We maintain a public-facing relationship. That means hand-holding, showing up at events together, the bare minimum required to sell the story. In private, we are not friends. We are business partners.”
“Rule three,” I said, my voice hardening. “No real feelings. At all. This is about managing perceptions, nothing more. We do what we have to do, and then we walk away, clean.”
The porch was silent again. Lily was staring at me, her expression unreadable now. The panic had been replaced by something else, something cooler. A spark of the same stubborn pride I’d seen in her shop.
“And what do you want out of this farce, Lily?” I asked her directly.
She straightened up, her chin lifting. “My family leaves me alone. The town leaves me alone. I get my life back.” She took a breath. “And you have to help me with the rest of the festival setup. For real, this time. Not just standing there and judging my pyramid.”
Ben stifled a laugh.
It was a fair price. Manual labor in exchange for a human shield.
“Fine,” I said.
I held out my hand. It was a gesture I knew well. The handshake that seals a contract, a sponsorship deal. Clean. Impersonal.
Lily looked at my outstretched hand for a long moment.
I could see the wheels turning in her head, the same cost-benefit analysis I had just run.
Her desperation versus her pride. She glanced back toward the sounds of her family laughing in the dining room, then looked back at me.
Her expression settled into one of grim resolve.
She placed her hand in mine. Her skin was cool, her fingers surprisingly strong. “Deal,” she said, her voice quiet but firm.
We shook on it. Once. A single, brisk up-and-down motion. A business transaction.
But as I went to pull my hand away, my fingers brushed against her pulse point. A faint, rapid flutter against my skin. A warm, living current that had nothing to do with business. Her breath hitched, a tiny, audible sound in the quiet of the porch.
For a split second, my hand lingered. Our eyes met, and in that moment, under the dim, unforgiving light from the kitchen, the carefully constructed walls of our arrangement felt terrifyingly thin.
This was not a contract. This was not a sponsorship deal.
The contact felt less like a business deal and more like the start of something far more complicated.
I dropped her hand as if it were on fire and took a step back, the cold knot in my stomach tightening into a block of ice.
“So,” Ben said, his voice bright and oblivious, clapping his hands together. “Who’s ready for dessert? Mom made apple pie with the crumble topping.”
I looked at Lily, who was rubbing her wrist where my hand had been. She looked as shaken as I felt.
This was a stupid, stupid plan.
And we were both already in way too deep.