9. Jessica
Jessica
My phone lit up on the nightstand, and Garrett Calloway's name glowed in the dark. My stomach clenched before I'd finished reading the preview.
Hey — just came across this article on outdoor event acoustics. Thought of you. Hope you're having a good night.
It was the kind of text that, if you showed it to anyone, they'd say that's nice, what's the problem?
The problem was that it was eleven fourteen on a Tuesday and he'd been "thinking about my work" at eleven PM just about every night for two weeks running, and the consistency made it feel less like a casual share and more like a knock on a door I hadn't opened.
I put the phone face down. Stared at the ceiling.
The texts had been arriving since the dinner.
Always wrapped in something professional — a venue update, a permit question, a link he thought I'd find useful.
I'd replied to the first few with short, professional responses.
Then shorter ones. Then I'd started leaving them for twelve hours.
Then twenty-four. The gaps made no difference.
The texts kept coming on the same schedule, at the same time, like the silence between my replies was a language he'd decided not to learn.
Flowers appeared at my apartment on a Thursday.
Lilies, generic, the kind of arrangement that comes from a website.
The card said Thinking of you. I threw them out on Saturday.
More flowers the following week. Different card.
Same handwriting. Hope these brighten your day.
I left them in the hallway outside my door. They were gone by morning.
And then there was Penny.
I was at the county offices dropping off the revised Showcase budget when she appeared at the end of the corridor with a coffee in each hand and a smile that arrived a beat too early — already assembled for my benefit before I'd turned the corner.
"Jessica. Just the woman I was hoping to run into." She handed me the second coffee. I hadn't asked for it. "I wanted to tell you how much Garrett enjoyed your dinner the other week. He said you two had a wonderful time."
"It was a professional dinner, Penny. Vendor introductions."
"Of course." The smile didn't shift. "But he did mention how much he admired your work. Your drive." She sipped her coffee. "He's always been drawn to ambitious women. His father was the same way. The Calloway men appreciate a woman with substance."
The sentence sat between us — warm, complimentary, completely strategic. She was framing her son's pursuit as admiration. Packaging his persistence as a family trait. Making it sound hereditary and charming instead of what it actually was.
"You know, we'd love to have you over for dinner. Just family. Garrett's a wonderful cook, actually. He makes this brisket that —"
"I'd love to, Penny, but I'm booked solid this week. Callie and I have plans Thursday, and the rest is wall-to-wall Showcase prep."
"Next week, then."
"Let me check my calendar and get back to you."
I smiled. She smiled. We both knew I wasn't going to get back to her. We both knew she was going to ask again.
I walked to my car with the coffee I hadn't asked for growing cold in my hand and a tightness in my chest that hadn't been there ten minutes ago.
Penny and Garrett in tandem were becoming my waking nightmare.
Neither of them hearing the no. Both of them treating my resistance as a scheduling problem that could be solved with persistence and brisket.
I poured the coffee out in the parking lot. Sat in my car with my hands on the wheel.
I needed this to stop. But stopping it meant confronting Penny, and confronting Penny meant jeopardizing the contract. I’d just have to find another way.
The idea arrived at two in the morning — fully formed, uninvited, sitting in my brain like it had been there for weeks and was tired of waiting.
I needed a boundary that Garrett would respect.
My own no wasn't sufficient — I'd said it clearly, and he'd heard it as a negotiation he hadn't closed yet.
I needed a no that came with a man attached to it, because that was the grotesque reality: Garrett Calloway wouldn't hear a woman's voice, but he would hear a man's claim.
And that made me want to scream into my pillow, but screaming wasn't going to solve the problem.
I needed a fake boyfriend. Someone the town would believe. Someone Garrett would actually back down from.
The moment the thought formed, there was only one face. One person I trusted enough to ask. One person whose presence had always made me feel like the ground was solid underneath me.
I lay in the dark and thought about asking Hunter to pretend to be mine, and the idea was so simple and so terrifying that I didn't sleep for the rest of the night.
The next day came too fast, and I as much as I didn't want to, I knew I had to ask Hunt now or I’d chicken out.
I sat on the edge of the workbench with my coffee in both hands, my legs frozen in place.
The silence coming off me was so wrong that even I could feel it.
The workshop was dim — late afternoon, the light coming through the west-facing doors at a low angle — and Hunter was underneath the truck doing something to the undercarriage.
I'd been sitting there for eleven minutes, and I hadn't said a word.
I was overthinking it. I was overthinking it so hard my brain was eating itself.
I'd rehearsed this conversation fourteen times in the shower and twice in the car and once standing in front of my bathroom mirror, pointing at my own reflection like a lunatic.
Every version sounded insane and every version made me feel small.
Even worse, every version required me to do the one thing I had spent my entire adult life avoiding — ask for help.
The wrench went still under the truck.
“Jess?” My eyes drifted shut at the concern in his voice. But me sitting in silence for this long was something to be rightfully concerned about.
"Yes?" My voice came out small. Thin. Unrecognizable.
The silence under the truck lasted one beat. Then he slid out. He didn't stay on the floor this time. He stood up. Wiped his hands on the rag. Walked over and planted himself in front of me — close, his hips level with my knees, his eyes level with mine.
"Okay. What's going on?"
"Nothing. I'm fine. I was just thinking about the Showcase vendor layout and whether the east paddock drainage is going to be a problem if it rains and —"
He tilted his head. The sweet smile came — the one that cracked his whole face open, the one that made his eyes go warm and soft, and that he deployed so rarely it had the force of a weapon every time it appeared.
"I have known every look on your face since you were twelve years old, and something is up." The smile widened. "Now tell me what it is before I have to use my magic coercive skills."
I laughed. The tension in my chest cracked a fraction. "Your magic coercive skills? Hunt, your idea of coercion is standing quietly until people get uncomfortable. That's not a skill, that's a hostage situation."
He shrugged once. ”It works."
"It works because you're six-foot-two and you look like you could bench-press a tractor. People don't comply because you're persuasive. They comply because they're scared."
"Whatever gets the job done." He put the rag down.
The smile faded into something steadier.
He hoisted himself up onto the bench beside me — the wood creaking under his weight, his shoulder close to mine, his body angled toward me.
His eyes were serious now. Warm and serious and completely focused on my face.
"What's going on in that pretty head of yours?"
I looked at him. "You think I have a pretty head?"
The flirt was automatic. The armor sliding into place before I could stop it — the joke, the deflection, the sharp thing to bridge the gap between what I was feeling and what I could handle showing.
"Jessica." Low. Gruff. The voice that said he wasn't playing.
I huffed in defeat. "Okay. Fine. Okay." I put my coffee down.
Pressed my hands flat on my thighs. Took a breath.
"Garrett Calloway is making me uncomfortable.
And so is his mother. And I don't know what to do about it because I've said no — I've said it clearly, I've said it politely, I've said it professionally — and neither of them are hearing it. "
My hands were shaking on my thighs. I pressed them harder.
"I just want to do my job, Hunt. I want to do the work I came here to do and enjoy being home and spend time with my family and yours — all of the people and places that make this town feel like mine again.
And I can't do that with Garrett in my phone every night and Penny in my face every week and both of them treating my no like a maybe.
But I can't confront them without blowing up the contract, and the contract is —"
"The reason you came home."
"The reason I came home." My voice cracked on the word.
I pressed my lips together. "So I've been thinking. And the only solution I can come up with — and I know this sounds insane, I know it does — is that if I had a boyfriend. A fake one. Someone the town would believe, and would keep Penny and especially Garrett away. Because the grotesque reality is that this man won’t respect me, but he’ll respect?—"
“I’ll do it."
I stopped. My mouth was still open around the next word. He'd said it before I'd finished. Before the logistics, before the rules, before any of the careful framing I'd been rehearsing since two in the morning.
"Hunt, I haven't even —"
"I said I’ll do it, Jess."
There was no hesitation. No questions. No conditions. Just the word, delivered in a voice that was quiet and level and carried a weight that landed on me like a hand pressing down on my shoulder.
Something broke.