3
844 Words
Keira
I didn't sleep that night.
I kept replaying the way he'd said it, so calm, like he hadn't just reached into my life and pulled out the one thing I never talked about. My mother's café. The loans I hadn't told anyone about, not even my roommate. How does a hockey player know things like that? Who did he pay to dig through my life like it was a scouting report?
By morning I was still furious. I called my best friend Dani before my first class, pacing the length of my dorm room with the phone pressed hard against my ear.
"He had someone investigate me," I said. "Who does that? What kind of person hires someone to look into a random reporter's finances?"
"The kind of person who's desperate," Dani said. "Keira. Thirty thousand dollars."
"I don't care how much it is. It's insane. It's insulting."
"Is it insulting, or is it just embarrassing that he knows your mom's behind on rent for the café?" Dani's voice softened. "You told me last week she might have to close by spring. This could fix that. All of it. Gone."
I didn't answer right away. I stared out the window at the gray campus morning and thought about the sign above my mother's café, the one she'd hand painted herself fifteen years ago, letters slightly crooked because she'd been too proud to let anyone help her.
"I hate that you're right," I said.
"I'm always right. Sleep on it."
I didn't sleep on it. I stayed up until four in the morning arguing with myself, and by the time the sun came up I already knew what I was going to do. I just hated myself a little for it.
***
I met Ryder at a coffee shop off campus, one small enough that nobody would recognize either of us. He was already there when I arrived, sitting in the corner booth with a folder in front of him, looking entirely too composed for someone who'd offered a stranger money to fake a relationship.
"You investigated me," I said, sliding into the seat across from him. No hello. He didn't deserve one.
"I asked a few questions," he said. "I needed to know who I was asking."
"That's not an explanation, that's an admission."
"I'm not going to apologize for being careful." His eyes stayed steady on mine, no trace of guilt in them. "But if it makes you feel better, nobody else knows. Not your mom's situation, not your loans. Just me."
That didn't make me feel better. It made me feel like he'd been standing in a room I hadn't invited him into. But I was here, which meant some part of me had already decided the money mattered more than my pride.
"If we're doing this," I said, "there are rules."
"I'm listening."
I pulled out the list I'd written at three in the morning, edges of the paper soft from how many times I'd folded and unfolded it deciding whether to bring it at all.
"No kissing. Unless it's absolutely necessary for the cameras, and even then, minimal."
"Fine."
"No real dates. Only scheduled appearances, and I get advance notice for all of them."
"Fine."
"We don't sleep together. Ever. This is a job, not a relationship."
"Wasn't planning on it," he said, and something about the flatness of his tone made me want to throw my coffee at him.
"And when the championship ends, this ends. No lingering, no pretending afterward. Clean break."
"Clean break," he agreed. "I'll have Callum draw up a confidentiality agreement. Neither of us talks about this to anyone, not your friends, not my teammates. If it leaks, the deal's off and so is the money."
"Fine."
We sat there for a second, the paper between us like a treaty after a war neither of us had wanted to fight. Then he reached into his folder and slid an actual contract across the table, already typed, already waiting for my signature like he'd known I would say yes before I did.
I read every line twice before I signed it. My hand shook slightly on the pen, though I told myself it was from the coffee.
"There's a charity gala this weekend," he said once it was signed. "Northridge Athletics Foundation. It's the kind of event people will be watching. That's where we start."
"Fine," I said again, because apparently that was the only word I had left.
We left the café together an hour later, and out of habit, or maybe out of some instinct to start playing the part early, he reached over and took my hand as we stepped onto the sidewalk. His hand was warm, and bigger than I expected, and it startled me enough that I almost pulled away before I remembered what we'd just signed.
"Practice," he said quietly, like he could feel me hesitate.
"Right," I said. "Practice."
Neither of us noticed the man standing near the bike rack across the street, phone raised, camera already clicking.
- Writer
