Page 66 of Worth Every Moment
I plaster a smile on my face. “Loosen up,” I whisper, amused at how the tables have turned since the photo shoot. “You’re not convincing anyone.” She scowls at me, but I only raise a teasing brow and whisper, “You want to be an actress? You’re gonna have to do better than that. Come on Lefroy, I know you can do it.”
She tilts her face slightly in my direction, and that’s when I see it. That hint of competitiveness in her gaze. That fire I know so well.
She shimmies a little, the silk of her dress pressed right against me, her hip nestling into mine. There’s heat radiating off her, and I wish she’d stay like this all night. Fuck it, I wish she could stay like this forever, and knowing she can’t has pain hovering inmy periphery like an optic migraine. “This is my boyfriend. Seb Hawkston,” she calls.
Someone wolf-whistles.
“Seb fucking Hawkston,” someone else yells, and I can tell they know exactly who I am. I can’t decide if I’m relieved or unnerved. Somewhere between the two. “You gonna give her a night in the hotel, Seb?”
“More than one,” I yell back with a wave, and all Erica’s softness evaporates.Was that the wrong thing to say?The cameras flash like crazy, and I keep my arm around her, despite the fact that annoyance is seeping out of her skin.
She breaks away and goes inside, and I follow her at pace, my heart thumping. The doors swing closed behind us, leaving us cocooned in an entrance hall that feels unnaturally quiet, the thick doors muffling the screams from outside.
Erica glances around, and seeing that we’re alone, she snaps, “A night in the hotel?”
“More than one,” I clarify. “You’re special. You get more than one.”
“Fuck’s sake, Seb. You’re talking about me like I’m a hookup.”
I tilt my head. “What? Not at all. You told them I was your boyfriend. If you’re my woman, I’m taking you to my fucking hotel. In every city in the world. Every fucking night if I could. Why would I pretend any different?”
“I don’t want to be another woman in your hotels.” She waves her hand between us. “It’s not going to work if you’re treating me the same way you’ve treated everyone else.”
She’s upset.Fuck. And no wonder. I think of Emerald and those naked photos, and Erica throwing me out of her apartment to go back to the hotel. She probably thinks I actually went through with it. That I left her apartment and went to the Hawkston Mayfair and fucked that woman’s brains out. Maybe I should tell her I didn’t, but this point I’m not sure it wouldbe enough to convince her that she could never be just another woman to me.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Argh, I don’t know.” She turns on the spot, one way then the other, like she wants to move but doesn’t know where to go. “But it won’t help me to be seen as another one of your many women. You need… You need to look at me like I’m the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen, the most amazing human being you’ve ever met. You need to look like you want to be with me forever, that you think you’re lucky to be—”
“I do think all that.” The silence crackles, and the annoyance splinters and falls from Erica’s beautiful face like broken glass from a frame. “I do. I do feel that way—”
“What way?”
Oh, Christ.My chest is hot and tight.Did I just say I wanted to be with her forever? Do I want that? Fuck, even if I do, I can’t.“You are beautiful. It’s not even an opinion. It’s just a fact. Most of the world agrees with me. And the fact that we’re even friends, that you’ve ever given me the time of day in any capacity, blows my mind.”
She falls silent, absorbing what I’ve just said. Probably trying to work out what the fuck it actually means. I’m not even sure I know what it means.
“Tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it,” I say softly.
Her shoulders sink, the fire in her eyes dying out. “I know this is all pretend, but I want…” Her breath hitches, eyes darting to mine and away again. “I want to be the reason you’d give everyone else up. I want to be… the one.” Her voice cracks a little, and I see just how important this is to her. “It needs to look like I’m the one for you.”
The one?That’s not just fake dating. That’s fake love. It's way too fucking close to my reality, and to tell her as much whenthere’s a list in my jacket pocket of things Icannot do,feels like a mistake I can't afford to make. “Lefroy—”
She holds a hand up to cut me off. “Before you say it, I know this is all fake, and I’m not the person that you’re going to feel like that about, and this is only going to last a few months, but I need you to make me feel like it’s true. And I know it’s asking a lot for someone like you to imagine what it’s like to choose one person. And especially for it to be me, when we’ve been friends so long, and this”—her hand flits rapidly between us—“would never go anywhere. I know you aren’treallyinterested. Not to the degree I need to convince the world you are.” She sighs. “And I’m not into you, either.” A sharp sting whips across my chest and I clench a fist, gripping it hard enough to distract from the discomfort her words cause.“We’re friends, that’s all. So it’s a lot. To make this play out like love.”
The air feels loaded with invisible energy, and for a few precious seconds we’re frozen in a moment that belongs only to us.
“Have you ever been in love?” I ask, and the way she jolts reveals that she wasn’t expecting the question. I don’t even know why I asked.
Her gaze collides with mine, and the impact makes me realise she hardly looked at me during her outburst. “No. Have you?”
Numbness spreads through me, and when I drag my answer from the depths of my being it feels like a lie. “No.”
She inhales, and when she exhales, the sound trembles. “I know what a big ask this is, and I’m sorry. But you offered, and now we’re here and we’re on the posters and we’re on social media and we’ve committed to this, and when I open that door”—she points to the door to the main ballroom beyond—“everyone will be there, including my mother.” She shakes out her hands, and I want to grab them and hold her still. I want her to see that I’m here for her even when she’s spinning out anddesperate, but I hold back. I still don’t know if she wants me to touch her or not. “We have to pull this off. They have to think this is real. Everyone has to. No one caneverfind out that this isn’t real.”
“That you’re not the one?” I whisper.
She swallows and licks her lips, and I follow the motion. Her mouth is so beautiful, so wide, her lips so full, that any other time I’d be thinking about kissing her again, but her expression is so insecure, soafraid, that a hollow ache sets up in my ribcage instead. “Exactly.”
