Twenty-four hours to figure out how to tell her that this has stopped being fake—has never been fake.
I don’t want us to break up. Which means, of course, I’ll break the contract.
Lose everything.
I’m no longer the dragon in the cave, too scared to let anyone in. And the blind princess isn’t the one who needs him.
He’s the one who needs her.
CHLOE
He admires me.
The thought has been playing on repeat in my head for the last four hours.
I’m lying on a heated massage table in the resort spa, wrapped in a plush white robe, while someone named Svetlana works lavender-scented oil into my shoulders with the kind of pressure that borders on aggressive. Maya insisted on a full spa day for the wedding party—massages, facials, mani-pedis, the works. Her gift to her bridesmaids and, apparently, to me.
“You are very tense,” Svetlana says in a thick accent that could be Russian or possibly just very rural Minnesotan. “You must relax.”
Easy for her to say. She’s not the one whose fake relationship ends tomorrow and who just realized she’s completely, hopelessly, irreversibly in love with her contractually obligated boyfriend.
Which wouldn’t be terrible except the contract includes the epic fight.
The breakup.
And if we break the contract, well…
Who decided a contract was a good idea anyway?
The spa smells fresh, like eucalyptus and mint. Very spa-ish. Soft music drifts overhead, playing some sort of pan-flute monstrosity that’s been drilling into my brain since I stepped into the room. Candles flicker in glass holders, casting a dim, eerie glow from under the massage tables.
“Breathe,” Svetlana commands.
I breathe. Or at least, I try to.
I try to focus on the sensation of her hands working out the knots in my shoulders. On the warmth of the heated table against my stomach. The rich smell of oils. Anything other than the roiling anxiety bubbling up through my chest.
This is supposed to be relaxing.
Why isn’t it relaxing?
Oh, I don’t know, maybe because every time I close my eyes, I see Brody. Standing in the morning light, looking rumpled and soft and like he didn’t sleep well. Speaking French to waiters. Holding my hand under the table. Looking at me in the woods like he was about to say something important before Maya interrupted.
You see the dragon underneath the scales everyone else wants.
Who says things like that?
Brody Kane, apparently.
The man I thought was all performance and charm and carefully constructed image. The man who turned out to be vulnerable and scared and kind and real underneath all of it.
The man I’m absolutely, completely in love with.
“You are tensing again,” Svetlana says disapprovingly. “What is wrong?”
“Nothing. Everything. I don’t know.”
“Man problems?”
