Novels by PD.Lib.

CORBIN.I already knew her answer before she even opened her mouth.That was the thing about knowing someone for as long as I had known Sydney Sharma.You stopped needing the words.You just read the face, the pause, the way her eyes went slightly soft when she was about to do something she knew was not good for her, and right then every single thing about her expression was telling me exactly what she was about to choose, and I was not sitting there for it.I was not giving Marcus the satisfaction of watching me be the guy whose girl walked back to her ex right in front of him at a dinner party while I sat there holding a wine glass like a prop.I stood up, looked at Sydney for a moment, and shrugged like none of this was touching me at all. "I'll leave you to figure that out."I did not wait for her response.I just walked.Not because I was angry, or at least that is what I told myself as I moved through the crowd towards the bar on the far side of the room.I was not angry that sh

SYDNEY.The car pulled up and I could already hear the music from inside.That low steady bass that moved through walls before you even opened the door.I sat in the car for just a second because this was actually happening now.Fiona had spent two hours on my face and another hour fighting me about the heels, and somehow I ended up here, outside an actual party, in an actual dress, looking like a version of myself I did not fully recognize yet.Corbin got out first, he came around and opened my door.I stepped out into the night air, looked at him, and smiled. "Look who's being a gentleman."But when I looked at his face there was nothing there.No smile, no warmth, just that flat expression he had been carrying since our last conversation.I felt my own smile fall because I already knew I had pushed him into this.He did not want it.He was still here anyway, standing outside a party in a fitted shirt looking like he belonged on a billboard, doing me a favor he never signed up for.

CORBIN.The question just sat in the air between us and I stared at her, trying to figure out if she was being serious.What she had just said did not make any logical sense to me at all, not even a little bit.Fake date.She wanted me, Corbin Stones, to fake date Sydney Sharma.I turned the sentence over in my head a few times, trying to find the angle where it made sense, and I could not find it.I genuinely did not know if I should laugh or just pretend she never said it and move the conversation somewhere else entirely.But then I looked at her and her eyes were completely steady on my face, not even blinking.I realized with a very uncomfortable feeling in my chest that she was not joking at all.I blinked. "No. Why would I want to date you?"Her eyes went wide and she straightened up immediately. "We are not dating Corbin, you are fake dating me, there is a difference."I looked at her for a long moment, trying to understand how those two things were different in any way that ac

SYDNEY.The first thing I did when Marcus sent that text was not cry, and it was not scream into my pillow either.The first thing I did was grab my keys and walk straight out of my dorm room, because the only place that ever made sense when nothing else did was Corbin's apartment.Corbin Stones stayed off campus because he had money, the kind that meant he never had to share a bathroom wall with a stranger or eat dining hall pasta on a Tuesday if he didn't want to.Trust me, he never wanted to.He was also, objectively, the most attractive man I had ever seen in my entire life.Not that I had ever once felt anything about that beyond mild acknowledgement.We grew up together.I watched this boy eat sand at age four and cry because a butterfly touched his ear at age seven.There was simply no universe where I, Sydney Sharma, looked at Corbin Stones and felt anything other than the very specific fondness you feel for someone who already knows every single one of your embarrassing stori