“Okay. If this is how you wanna foreplay. I’m down…”
My eyes narrow to slits.
He grins wider.
God, he’s unbearable.
Big.
Loud.
Ball-hogging.
Confident like the world has never once failed to bounce in his favor.
Exactly the kind of man I should avoid.
Exactly the kind of man who, at this particular moment, is not looking at me with pity.
Just interest.
Just challenge.
Just the kind of maddening male certainty that says he has already decided this is a good idea and is merely waiting for me to catch up.
“What’s in it for you?” I ask.
There.
That’s the real question.
Because no man that big and smug and campus-visible offers fake dating to a girl fresh off public heartbreak just out of civic duty.
He doesn’t even blink.
“You.”
I roll my eyes so hard it almost strains something.
“That is the worst answer in the world.”
“It’s still true.”
“Try again.”
He shifts his jaw once, like maybe this is the first time today someone has made him work for a sentence.
Then—“You’re interesting when you’re mad. You tasted like sweet cream and I’m addicted to you when you speak to me in dirty broken up Spanish.”
“Honest.” I shrug, pretending my heart rate is still normal.
He keeps going.
“And I think maybe if I can’t date you for reals—fake dating you might help me get over whatever this is.”
My mouth falls open a little in spite of myself.
Not because that’s smooth.
