Page 55 of The Fake Boyfriend Fiasco

“I’ll text you hourly updates.”

“Thanks.” Keynes sighed. “Nik, what the fuck? I never would’ve let you pull this weird fake girlfriend thing if I thought you’d hurt Aria. I told her you were an okay guy!”

“Well, you were wrong. I’m a piece of shit.”

“Will you stop talking bollocks and say something that actually makes sense? What the hell happened?”

Nik ran a hand over his face. He’d never been so fucking tired in his life.

And yet, he knew he wouldn’t sleep if he tried.

“That night at the hotel,” he said. “When I kissed her. I… fuck, Keynes, I don’t know what happened. I just knew I needed her. Forever. But then I found her the next morning, and she didn’t want anything to do with me.” He laughed. “I didn’t ask her out. It hadn’t occurred to her that I was going to. She thought I wanted her to get rid of people for me, like she did with Melissa. So, I went along with it.”

“You hired her,” Keynes said slowly. “To be your fake girlfriend. Because you wanted…”

“A chance. That’s all. I wanted us to get to know each other, but things just happened. And then we were actually together—”

“Aria doesn’t date anymore.”

“Yeah, I know. She said something about that. But I guess she changed her mind. So, I told her I love her.”

Keynes gave a derisive snort. “Nice one, Romeo. How’d that go?”

“It was fine. She was dealing with it. But then I told her the rest.”

There was a pause. Then Keynes said flatly, “You tricked her into faking a relationship with you, made that relationship real, told her you love her, then revealed that, surprise! The whole thing was built on your aforementioned machinations.”

Well, fuck. That sounded almost as bad as the way Aria had put it. “I know the whole thing was reckless and ridiculous and selfish—”

“Did you tell her that?”

Nik winced. “Not exactly. I froze. I knew she was going to leave me, and I froze.”

“Of course you did,” Keynes drawled. “You spoiled man-baby.”

Nik supposed he should protest that statement, only it felt pretty accurate.

“You know what? Don’t bother texting updates. I don’t need to hit you. Because if you’re actually in love with Aria, you’re going to be hurting for a very long time.”

Even though Nik had thought as much, those words turned his stomach to lead. “You don’t think she’ll forgive me?”

“No,” Keynes said grimly. “I don’t.”

* * *

The next few days didn’t go so well for Nik.

Actually, that was an outrageous understatement. The next few days were hell.

It took him precisely one night of wallowing to remember that he was Nikolas Christou and giving up was not in his vocabulary. There was no way—absolutely none—that he was letting the love of his life just walk away from him. Even if he was the one who’d pushed her.

Of course, after that invigorating realisation, he hit a wall. The problem was, Nik couldn’t see any way to reach out that wouldn’t make things a thousand times worse.

Aria had told him pretty fucking clearly that she didn’t want to be near him. She hadn’t even let him drive her to the airport. She’d almost seemed afraid of him. And he could see now, after looking at the situation from angles other than his own self-centred, lovesick perspective, that she’d be well within her rights to think of him as a manipulative creep.

Manipulative creeps generally did not endear themselves via further harassment.

Over the days that followed their separation, Nik went home—not back to La Christou, where his family would demand to know what the hell was wrong with him, but to his flat in England. There, he spent his time thinking about Aria, mooning over Aria, and fantasising about accidentally bumping into Aria in the local Tesco (which was impossible, since he knew she lived miles away). All he wanted was to speak to her, to see her, to get on his knees and tell her he’d do anything to regain her trust. But if he came within fifty feet of her without permission, she might just call the police. And Nik believed that would be counterproductive to his aim.

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