“I love you. And I’m happy for you, even if I’m a little hurt that you kept this from me.”
“I love you, too.”
After we hang up, I stand on the sidewalk for a long moment, feeling like the worst sister in the world. I just lied to Bella’s face—multiple times—about something huge. She’s going to help me plan a wedding that isn’t real, and she’s going to do it with enthusiasm because she thinks I’m marrying the love of my life.
Which, in a twisted way, I am. Just not in the way she thinks.
My phone buzzes with a text from Ben: “Everything okay with Bella?”
“She knows about the engagement,” I type back. “I told her it’s the real deal.”
“Did she buy it?”
I stare at the message for a long time before responding: “She’s hurt that I didn’t tell her sooner, but she understands.”
What I don’t add is that understanding and buying it are two different things. Bella might have accepted my explanation, but I could hear the questions in her voice. She knows me too well to believe that I’d keep something this big from her without a really good reason.
And she’s going to keep digging until she figures out what that reason is.
Another text from Ben: “We need to talk. Can you come to my office this afternoon? We need to discuss next steps.”
“What kind of next steps?”
“The kind that involves photographers and public appearances. If we’re doing this, we need to do it right.”
I lean my head back against the building, looking up at the Chicago sky. A week ago, my biggest worry was whether I’d have enough money to replace my broken easel. Now I’m fake-engaged to a billionaire, trending on social media, and lying to my sister about the most important things in my life.
“I’ll be there at two,” I text back.
As I walk home, I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve crossed a line I can never uncross. Not just with Ben and this fake marriage, but with Bella and the lies I told her.
Suddenly, the personal component of this all, how it will affect me and Ben, doesn’t seem so big. There’s something else on the line, a change that feels more threatening. I’m doing somethingthat I never thought I would. I’m stepping into a national spotlight, and there’s no going back.
I’m terrified that by the time this is all over, I won’t recognize myself anymore.
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, theway 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.
