Page 60 of In the Net
“I doubt piles of your dirty, stinking clothes and stacks of your unwashed dishes up there are going to be fueling any of my fantasies. My nightmares, maybe.”
Her face twists in vexation. Without a word, she turns on her heels and marches up the stairs. I follow behind her with a smirk, because I just knew that it would be impossible for Harper to resist the urge to prove me wrong.
“I know I’m just taking the bait,” Harper says as she opens her bedroom door on the second floor, “but here you go, just to keep you from making stupid jokes for the rest of the day.”
I step into her room, and immediately a pulse of electricity shoots up my spine. My eyes go right to her bed. It’s unmade, with the blanket crumpled on top of her floral-pattern sheets. It’s a queen-sized bed. Plenty of room for both of us. Plenty of room for me to toss her around however I?—
The thickening feeling behind my pants tells me I need to jump off that train of thought.
I yank my gaze away from her bed, looking for something else to direct it to. My eyes settle on her bookshelf.
I let out a low whistle of appreciation as I approach it. It’s almost as tall as me, and every shelf is crammed full of books, most of them stacked two rows deep.
“Damn, Harper. With all this reading you do, I don’t know how you found the time to learn to be so annoying.”
From the corner of my eye, I see her fold her arms. “Some things just come naturally, I guess.”
My lips quirk as I scan her shelves. I recognize some of my favorite books, along with plenty that have been on my to-read list forever. There are even a couple romance novels interspersed. Does Harper have a soft side?
“Alright, Sebastian. Now that you’ve satisfied your fetishistic curiosity to see my room, can you get out of it so I can get changed for our … meeting?”
“Our meeting?” I repeat the words, my chest hitching with a chuckle. “And they say romance is dead.”
Harper and I are going on another fake date to a coffee place in town, mainly for the purpose of hashing out all the nuts and bolts of this arrangement: expectations, ground rules, etc.
Harper clasps her hands in front of her chest and plasters on the most ironic and insincere smile I’ve ever seen. “Please, honey, can you give me some privacy so I can get changed for our incredibly romantic and not at all fake date?”
Even though it was dripping in irony, something about her calling mehoneysends a thrill shooting through my bloodstream.
I wait for her downstairs, really glad that none of her roommates are home right now. Because I can’t keep myself from imagining her getting changed in her room right above my head, and I can’t stop my cock from tenting my pants as I do.
The next day,I go to my Short Fiction class. The one I’m taking with Harper.
I don’t go to my usual seat.
Yesterday, at ourmeeting, as Harper so romantically referred to it, we fleshed out the details of this fake relationship.
Neither of us will see other people until after the wedding. No dating, no hookups. Whenever we’re around Mackenzie, we’ll act lovey-dovey. We’ll go on public dates once a week, to be seen and to get used to being around each other so we’re not stilted and awkward when all her family is paying attention to us.
She expressed skepticism that I’d be able to abide by theno hookupscondition.
I don’t blame her. A couple weeks ago, I would’ve doubted it, too.
But, for whatever reason, I don’t find any girls catching my eye lately. Between the beginning of the season, the Paris trip, everything that’s happened with Bryce, this arrangement with Harper—I guess my mind has just been too occupied with other things.
Now that I’m in this frame of mind where I don’t really care about flirting and hooking up, I think it’ll be easy for me to push through and stay that way until after the wedding.
Harper’s already here, and instead of going to my usual seat across the room from her, I walk right to the seat next to her. The guy who usually sits there is just slinging off his bookbag.
“Hey, bro,” I say to him with a nod. “Mind if we switch seats for the rest of the semester?”
He shrugs, like he couldn’t care less. “Sure, no problem.”
Harper turns to me as I set my weight down into the seat next to her. “What are you doing?”
“Sitting next to my girlfriend.”
Her cheeks turn a rosy hue, and a strange feeling beats in my chest.
