“You didn’t seem nervous. You came off passionate. Confident.” I glance at her. “You should do more of that. You’re a natural.”
“Ha. Hardly.”
But I stop her. “Listen. You’re honest. And real. And not caught up in worrying what people think of you.” The words come out before I can stop them. “I admire that about you.”
She is looking at me, nonplussed. “You admire me?”
“Yeah. I do.”
“Brody Kane, hockey’s golden boy, admires me?”
“I’m not—” I stop. “I’m not a golden boy. That’s just a persona. A performance. Candy Kane isn’t real.”
“I know.”
“You’re the only person who sees that. Who sees me.” My chest is tight. And then I say something completely corny. “You see the dragon underneath the scales everyone else wants.”
Oh brother. On the list of most cringeworthy moments in my life, I think that one will be holding a top spot for a while. But she doesn’t laugh. Doesn’t cringe. She just nods.
Then, “And the princess needs the dragon too. Because while her blindness lets her see beyond his sparkle, he makes her laugh and helps her to feel…safe. And maybe special.”
And right then I know.
I’m in love with her. And this isn’t a game, and…
The words fill my lungs. “Chloe, I?—”
“Chloe!” Maya’s voice carries through the trees. She’s jogging down the path toward us, still in her pajamas but with a coat thrown over them. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you! We have final dress fittings in an hour, and the florist called and the flowers have arrived frozen?—”
“Calm down—we’ll fix it.” Chloe takes her hand, then looks at me apologetically. “Duty calls.”
“Go. I’ll see you later.”
I’m left standing alone in the woods with the crushing realization that I have approximately twenty-four hours left on this contract.
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 Svetlanaworks 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.
