The whole point of a fake relationship was to pretend. But if that were true, I was already in trouble because that kiss didn’t feel fake. Not even a little. There was something in the way Gosto kissed me that short-circuited everything rational inside me.
Agreeing to this arrangement had seemed borderline logical at first, but the more I sat with it, the more unsteady I became. One kiss had turned my brain to jelly. And if that’s what one kiss could do, I didn’t dare imagine what would happen when the pretending deepened.
This whole setup felt wrong on too many levels to count. And yet... part of me some ridiculous, traitorous part actually believed I could handle it. Worse, another part of me ached for more of these so-called "performances." It was stupid. I knew that. Naïve, even. But
