7

JACE

Ten minutes had passed.

A whole ten minutes of silently watching her tug on her hair, and avoid eye contact. It all feels so unnatural. Lily wasn’t awkward, she was catty. A part of me wished she’d go back to the glaring.

“Eating involves putting food in your mouth, Lily.” I winced. Immediately regretting the use of her name, but atleast I had her attention.

“I told you I wasn’t hungry.”

“Try.” Making sure Myra’s sister was fed was probably part of the terms of making sure she was fine right?

She huffed, sat up and began toying with the sunny side up eggs on her plate. At least her dumb ex didn’t change that about her. She brushed the hairs on her neck, the color the most obvious sign of her transformation.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket as a distraction for my mind, before I did something stupid like ask her why she was dating him anyway, why she changed so much for him, or why she let him treat her that way. Why he called her a screw up amd more importantly why she would believe something like that.

I knew Myra and Lily had a rough childhood, in the form of an abusive dad, but it felt like this was something else.

“If you want me to eat, maybe stop gawking at me.”

“I don’t gawk.”

“No, what you do is worse.”

And because this is better than silence, “and what do I do?”

“It doesn’t matter.” She brushed her hair from her face again and lifted the fork to her lips…

I let my eyes focus on my cell again.

“Our dating status is blowing up.”

“What are they saying?” From the corner of my eye, I watched her spare another bit of egg and pop into her mouth.

“Shock of the century, chronically single Jace Whitmore find love.”

Lily snorted. “Let me see.” She extended her hand, bracelets chiming as they knocked against each other. Those were back too, although not many.

She made a come hither motion with her fingers and my brain thought of how small her fingers would look wrapped around my-

“I’m not gonna give you cooties from touching your phone dipshit. Hand it over.”

I slid the phone across the table to her the irony of her train of thought not lost on me.

“I’m more at risk from catching it from you, anyway.” She mumbled, eyes glued to my screen.

”I’m clean.” I grunted, and fuck if that didn’t sound like an invitation. That’s what three months without a lay did to me. I had been so busy I could not spare time for some fun with Gianna. Now I was thinking about Lily’s hands and telling her how ‘clean’ I was.

“Wow. First girlfriend huh?” She said after a while, thankfully ignoring my last words. “In your entire life you’ve never had a girlfriend? Not even in highschool.”

An image of a girl in pigtails handing me a paper flower popped in my head and I forced the memory back into it perfect little box.

“No girls. You?”

”Several.”

“Girls?”

“Ha-ha. Your mum texted you.” She slid the phone back to me.

Fuck.

I read the text quickly and pocketed my phone. I had to pay a visit to my parents soon, the first in a while.

Out of everyone I knew they were most worried about my announcement and how it would affect the company. My parents tried to be subtle about it but I knew they still had reservations about me taking over from Carter.

The first reason I had trouble visiting them.

Lily glanced at me warily, but continued to chew.

“What is it?” I asked, irritated.

She eyed me from thick lashes, “nothing.”

Fine. I wasn’t going to press her for information if that’s what she was expecting.

“Since we’re officially in a relationship, we need to establish the parameters of this arrangement.” She put her fork, and gave me her full attention. “Obviously in the following weeks, we may have to get close in several ways. Touching, hugging, hand holding…that sort of thing.” I didn’t want to mention kissing, not yet atleast. We may have to stage a few kissing photos but it wasn’t a major concern right now.

Lily’s cheeks turned pink and she glanced at the exit like she wanted to bolt.

“The point of all of that is to show that we have some kind of chemistry, to please the public and sate the people that matter.” She nodded. “But, that’s ALL it will be.”

She frowned, “Obviously. I mean… wait a minute, Jace are you implying I’ll become a lovesick fool because you’ll hold my hand a few times in public?” Her brows furrowed as her annoyance grew. “You really put yourself on a pedestal. Sooo irresistible.” She said, sarcasm heavy on her tongue.

“I’m not implying anything, I’m just making sure we’re on the same page. We can’t…it’s not happening, ever.”

“I just got out of a relationship, and as you can see, it ended badly, so bad that I’m sitting across from YOU. Discussing parameters of a fake relationship. The last thing that’s going to happen, is me, falling in love with you. As a matter of fact, I think that concept is overated, so you can sleep easy cassanova.”

“You can’t blame me for having this conversation. You weren’t exactly zero on the crush scale.” I jabbed.

Lily blinked and I immediately regretted my words. This was the first time any of us had brought up that night. And to do it now. I could feel her seething across from me. Cheeks red from anger or embarrassment. Maybe both.

“I was a dumb kid, Jace.”

“What’s to show that has changed?” I countered. Like I wasn’t staring at an opposite version of the girl who had confessed that she liked me, and then tried to kiss me.

In a way, this was good. Because the woman across from me was more likely to stab me with a fork than press her lips to mine.

She breathed deep and when she breathed out a smile was on her face. “Oh nothing’s changed, Jace. You’re going to see a whole lot of old me these coming weeks, and I can’t promise to not fall at your feet, or better, crawl into your lap like a needy whore.”

Her words sent a jolt straight to my dick.

“And he’s back to eyeballing me again.” She whispered with an eyeroll.

“I never thought you were this vulgar Lilypad.”

In front of me, Lily’s body tensed, her eyes widened and her eyes darted to the man standing next to our booth.

Her ex, whatever his fucking name was, stood there, his attention on Lily as he gave her a disgusted look.

“Mr Jace whitmore. It feels nice to run into you again so soon.” He gave me a friendly smile. Like the last time we met hadn’t ended badly.

I stared at him blankly, till he shifted on his feet uncomfortably.

My threat from the party still stood, if this man irked me just enough, I would make him regret ever meeting my girlfriend.