My Fake Boyfriend Is My Biggest Rival

Being Fake is Exhausting

By lunch I was completely wiped out. Not from classes. From the fact that becoming Luca Hayes's girlfriend, even a fake one, apparently came with a full-time audience attached.

Every hallway felt like a runway all of a sudden. Every classroom felt like a stage. Every time I looked up, somebody was already looking back at me first.

Some people smiled. Some whispered behind their hands like that made it subtle. A few weren't even bothering to pretend anymore. One sophomore walked straight into a locker because he was too busy filming us to watch where he was going.

Honestly, I wanted his problem. A concussion sounded like it might wipe the last twenty-four hours clean out of my head.

"You okay?" Emma slid onto the bench next to me in the cafeteria, dropping her voice low. "So."

"No."

"I didn't even ask yet."

"I know what you're about to ask."

She laughed. "Fine. Is it real?"

I stabbed a fry harder than the fry deserved. "What do you think?"

"I think you've spent your entire life threatening to throw Luca Hayes into an active volcano."

"Still might."

"And now you're dating him."

"I'm not."

"The whole school says otherwise."

"The whole school is wrong, then."

Emma studied my face for a second too long. "You don't sound very convincing, you know that?"

Before I could answer, a voice cut across the whole cafeteria.

"Harper!"

Conversations actually paused. I looked up. Noah, walking toward our table like he still believed the room was his by default, Sasha a step behind him chewing gum with a smile that put me on edge immediately.

Emma muttered "oh no" under her breath and started gathering her tray. "I just remembered I have somewhere else to be. Anywhere else, basically." Coward. She gave me an apologetic little shrug before vanishing into the crowd.

Noah stopped at my table. "So this is where you've been hiding."

"I'm eating lunch."

"I can see that."

"You've been avoiding me."

"I've been protecting my own peace, actually."

A few tables over, people were doing that thing where they eat very slowly while listening in as hard as they can. Noah glanced around before dropping his voice back to me.

"You know everyone thinks you're only dating Luca to make me jealous."

I reached for another fry, unbothered. "Do they."

"I know you, Harper. You don't even like guys like him."

Guys like him. Funny. Yesterday I wasn't good enough for the popular crowd. Today apparently I couldn't possibly want to be near one of them.

"I don't think you know me at all, actually."

A muscle jumped in his jaw. "You expect me to believe you moved on overnight?"

"I don't need you to believe anything about me anymore."

"You kissed him because you were embarrassed."

"I kissed him because you handed me an excellent reason to stop kissing you."

A couple people nearby snorted. Noah's ears went a little pink. "You always do this."

"Do what."

"Act stubborn the second you're hurt."

"I'm not hurt."

That wasn't entirely true. It also wasn't entirely a lie. Somewhere in between, probably.

His face hardened. "So this is revenge, then."

"No."

"You found the one guy more popular than me."

I laughed, actually laughed, a real one. "You genuinely think this is about popularity?"

"What else would it be about?"

Before I had to answer that, a tray hit the table next to mine.

"Mind if I sit?"

Luca, not waiting for an answer, already pulling the chair out and dropping into it like he'd eaten lunch beside me every day since kindergarten. The whole cafeteria got strangely quiet around us.

He looked between me and Noah. "Am I interrupting something?"

Noah's arms crossed tighter. "We're talking."

"Looked more like bothering, from where I was standing."

"I'm talking to my ex."

Luca picked a fry off my plate without asking permission. "Correction." He ate it. "You're bothering my girlfriend."

I turned so fast I nearly knocked my drink over. "My what?"

He looked completely innocent while going for another fry. "You heard me."

"My fries."

"They're really good."

"My fries, Luca."

"You've got plenty left."

"Stop eating my lunch."

"Tastes better when it's yours."

I just stared at him. Was he doing this on purpose. The little smirk pulling at his mouth answered that one for me. Obviously.

Noah looked like he might actually combust. "So this is your plan?"

Luca finally turned back to him. "What plan."

"You think pretending to date Harper makes you some kind of hero."

"Wasn't really going for hero."

"No?"

"No."

He went for another fry and I smacked his hand away before he got there.

"Violence, really?"

"They're mine."

"Babe—"

The word landed on me like a physical thing. I inhaled at exactly the wrong second and the lemonade went straight down the wrong pipe, and I started coughing hard enough that my eyes watered.

Luca slid my drink closer without missing a beat and put a hand flat against my back. "Easy. There you go." All the teasing had dropped clean out of his voice. "Slow breaths, Bennett."

I finally got enough air back to glare at him properly. "Don't," I wheezed, "call me that."

He leaned in close enough that it was just for me. "There's about eighty people watching us right now."

I looked. He wasn't exaggerating even a little. Dozens of eyes locked on our table, a couple phones already up and recording. Somebody whispered, "he called her babe." Somebody else answered, "she's blushing so hard right now."

I was not blushing. My face was just running a little hot. Completely separate issue.

Noah scoffed. "This is pathetic."

Luca looked back at him, still calm. "No. What's pathetic is cheating on somebody who actually trusted you."

Noah's face went dark. "You don't know anything about it."

"Know enough."

"You think she's actually going to stay interested in you?"

Luca just smiled. "Don't have to think about it."

He stood up, grabbed my backpack off the floor, slung it over one shoulder like it was the most normal thing in the world, and held his other hand out to me.

"Come on."

"What?"

"English. We're going to be late."

"We are?"

I checked the clock. He wasn't lying. I looked at his hand, then at all the people still watching us, and sighed hard enough to make a point of it.

"This is completely ridiculous."

"It is."

I put my hand in his anyway. The cafeteria erupted into noise behind us, somebody actually clapped, and Luca just ignored all of it while he walked me straight out the door.

I didn't pull my hand back until we were halfway down the hallway. "I cannot believe you called me babe in front of the entire school."

He looked zero percent sorry about it. "It worked, didn't it."

"I nearly died."

"You looked convincing, though."

"My acting deserves an award for that."

"I was thinking Oscar-level, personally."

I rolled my eyes hard enough to strain something. My phone buzzed before I could answer him back. Then again. Then a whole string of them, three, then seven, then twelve, then twenty-one, until I finally unlocked the screen to look.

The school gossip account had posted again. This one was Luca holding my hand in the cafeteria, caption underneath it: *Forget the rumors. They're definitely together.*

My stomach dropped straight through the floor. Then one more notification popped up over the top of it.

**Mom ❤️**

I smiled without even thinking about it. That smile lasted exactly as long as it took me to open the message.

*Harper Bennett. Is this finally happening?*