Page 39 of The Fake Date Deal

I looked down at my feet. “It’s not like that with us. We don’t have all that built-up tension. We’re getting to know each other, and one day, when we’re ready?—”

“No tension? Are you joking? You have all these feelings and you’re holding them back. Are you afraid he won’t feel the same? It’s better to know one way or the other. The longer you wait, the harder it gets.”

“But it hasn’t been long. It’s only been?—”

“Eve Hansley!”

I gasped and whirled at the sound of my name. A camera flashed, but I barely saw it. I barely saw the phones bristle out of the crowd, dozens and dozens, all pointed my way. I stood stunned and slack-jawed, no breath in my lungs, my whole field of vision filled with… Rafael.

“Eve, over here!”

“Are you here with Marco?”

My head spun. I grabbed Mother’s arm. Rafael towered over us three stories high, a massive ad up the side of a building. He was in his driving gear except for his helmet, his head tilted back, his hair blowing wild. Lightning forked behind him, along with some slogan, but I couldn’t read it. Couldn’t catch my breath.

“Look at her face!”

“Get them both, get the shot!”

Mother tugged at my sleeve, but I was frozen, my feet rooted tight to the ground. Rafael was laughing, eyes sparkling with mirth. Cracking open a can of some energy drink. I flashed back to his note. To the day of our wedding. To my headlong flight through the house I grew up in, out the front door, and… humiliation. Cameras. Shouting. My tearing dress. Had Rafael laughed at that, like in his picture?

“It’s all right, come on.” Mother’s arm around me. She was waving her other arm, shooing the gawkers. They weren’t press this time, just people with phones, but that was worse. That spelled disaster. They’d get every angle, every stage of my shock. I’d be ten memes, a hundred. A jaw-dropping GIF.

“Go on, get out of here. Don’t you have lives?”

“Mother…”

She hauled me away through the chattering crowd. At first, the phones followed, the shutter-snap sounds, but a mounted policeman came trotting up. He cleared us a path, blocked their shots with his horse, and then we were piling into our car.

“Vultures,” said Mother. “It was never this way when I was growing up. The press was the press, not this… camera culture.”

I hugged myself, shivering in the AC. All I could think was, I wanted Marco. I wanted him to hold me and tell me he had me, and it didn’t matter what anyone thought. And Rafael looked like a douche in his ad.

CHAPTER 16

MARCO

There’s almost no point in using the gym showers. You shower, you get clean, and you think you’re all good, but your body stays in workout mode for a while after. It’s still trying to cool itself, and you’re still sweating. By the time you get home, you need to shower again. You might as well save water and just shower the once.

That’s what I was thinking in the hotel lobby. My bag had been stolen while I worked out, my room key with it, and I was fuming. I was waiting for the concierge to find me a new one, my mind on the cool shower I’d soon be having, and that was when the commotion broke out behind me.

I didn’t look at first, too tired to engage. Then, I heard Camille call out from the doorway.

“Eve, wait! Calm down.”

I spun on my heel just as Eve hurried by, making a beeline for the elevator. I caught a glimpse of her face, a taut mask of fury, and then she was past me. She half-ran to the elevator and jabbed the call button.

“Eve, hey! What happened?”

She didn’t turn around. The doors slid open and she got on. I went to chase after her, then I remembered Camille. She’d come up behind me, a bag in each hand.

“What happened?” I said again.

She pursed her lips. “Rafael.”

“You guys ran into him?”

“Not exactly.” She held out a bag to me. “Here, would you take this? You’re going up, right?”

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