Page 80 of The Enemy of My Enemy Is… My Fake Boyfriend?

"But how did I not see that?" I leaned forward, putting my head in my hands. "It makes me seriously question my judgment. How could I not see what he was really like?"

"You're not the first to be fooled by him. He's a master at it. We're just the lucky ones to see what he's truly like under the mask he wears so well."

"Lucky?" I scoffed.

"Yeah. Lucky. It's better to know the ugly truth about someone than to be fooled like everyone else."

"I guess. I just still don't understand how I was fooled so badly. Like who else in my life is fooling me? Besides my family, who can I really trust?" I mumbled into my hands.

"You can trust me."

"Can I though?" I looked up, meeting his eyes. "What's going on between us isn't real. This whole thing started as a revenge scheme and we're just... just..."

Tension outlined his jaw."We're just what?"

"I—I don't know." I struggled to define exactly what we were to each other. "We're just fooling around I guess. It doesn't mean anything."

The tension in the air seemed to thicken around us with each passing second, until he finally said, "Do you want to fake breakup with me? Is it time to pull the plug on this?"

I exhaled heavily, the weight of the moment bearing down on me. "God, you must think I'm crazy because we just literally went through this."

If he would only admit that this was more to him, I'd feel so much better. But he wasn't saying that. He wasn't fighting for me like I wanted him to, and it made me sick.

Ultimately, it was all my fault though for letting myself get carried away. This had always been fake. Ethan had never said otherwise. And I'd let myself get confused, blurring theboundaries, even though they were apparently crystal clear to Ethan.

Maybe he could mix the physical and all this togetherness while still keeping me at a distance emotionally. After all, he knew everything about me, and I knew next to nothing about him. The fact that he couldn't confide in me or open up with me about his life told me everything I needed to know.

"I don't think you're crazy," he said with a sigh. "Not at all."

I knew what I had to do, and I hated it, mixed feelings swirling through my head, knotting up all my emotions. "I think we should take a break with this whole thing."

His eyes bored into me. "Is that what you really want?"

No, that's not what I want. "Yes."

He ran a hand through his hair, his lips pressed firmly together, those lips that had just given me the highest high of my life. An awkward silence rose up between us, but there was nothing more to say, at least not from my end.

His hand moved to his neck, rubbing it like I'd seen him do before in moments of pressure, the brooding expression on his face combined with the shadows making him look like a model at a fashion shoot.

After a heart-stopping beat, he finally met my eyes again and said one quiet yet forceful word. "No."

The single word echoed through the otherwise quiet office space, reverberating with intensity.

"No?" I gaped up at him. "What do you mean no?"

"Idon't want to end this thing again."

"Why not?"

This was the moment of truth, the moment where I neededsomethingfrom him, and I found myself leaning forward.

He surprised me by taking both my hands in his, moving my chair so I was between his legs, so close I could feel the intensityradiating off him, his piercing eyes staring down at me. Was that intensity for me? Or was it something else?

"Two reasons," he said.

"Okay?"

"One, what we're doing is actually working, our original goal of getting revenge. Have you ever seen Chase so unhinged?"

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