Page 114 of The Fake Date Agreement

“I am. And I’m wondering what I did to deserve this.”

He laughs. “Is that a good thing?”

No one has ever done anything like this for me before.

When we started dating in high school, Marc gave me flowers for Valentine’s Day. He was never romantic in the way I’d swoon over when I’d curl up in bed with a book. I thought it was okay, and at the time, itwas. But ever since Javier, Reid, and Caleb entered my life, my relationship with Marc has felt hollow, as if something was missing.

“Why would you do this?”

“Because you deserve it. How does it make you feel?”

Loved.

Cared for.

Wanted.

“You didn’t have to do this, Javier. Marc won’t know about this.”

“Yes, we have a deal, but that doesn’t mean I can’t make you feel special while you’re mine.”

“Oh.”

That is sweet.

The back of my eyelids burn as I touch a satiny rose petal.

“Once you’ve waded through that flower market…” he says with a smile in his voice, “…you should find a meal I had delivered for you as well. I planned on taking you out, but you sounded busy, and Reid has no food in his room other than granola bars, so I can’t imagine he fed you.”

“Uh, no.” I grimace, biting my lip as guilt rears its head at being so secretive about Reid’s paper, even though I promised I wouldn’t say anything.

I go wading, and sure enough, I find a large white paper takeout bag on my desk.

Lorrimers. I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard all about the fancy downtown restaurant.

“I let them know you have Hashimoto’s and to create something that wouldn’t cause a flare. You’ll have to let me know how they do.”

“You did that?” I whisper, the prickling behind my eyes growing more intense.

Opening up about it hadn’t been easy, especially to three guys who were literally strangers I’d agreed to fake date. But I couldn’t keep my thyroid disease a secret when I’ve had flare-ups so bad in the past that I could barely get out of bed.

I have more good days than bad days, but there’s no way I could keep my side of this deal on my bad days, which wouldn’t be fair to them.

“There’s a selection of different salads and dips. Nothing heavily processed. Minimal gluten. They’ve had requests like that before, so this wasn’t anything out of the ordinary when I told them what I wanted.”

He listened so well to the things that could trigger a flare and hurt me.

“You didn’t have to do that,” I say, clutching my phone a little tighter.

“I wanted to.”

That is insanely sweet. Maybe even sweeter than the thousands of dollars he spent filling my room with flowers.

“Javier?”

“Tobie?”

“Where are you right now?”

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