Chapter 5: The deal

Avery’s pov

My head was still trying to kill me.

The morning light felt personal, like it had specifically chosen my skull as its target. I sat up slowly, tasting last night’s bad decisions on my tongue and stared at Luca like he’d just spoken a different language.

“You want me to keep pretending to be your girlfriend?”

He leaned against the window frame, phone still in his hand, looking far too awake for someone who’d watched me fall apart last night. “That’s the idea.”

I laughed once, short and dry. “We barely know each other. Our first interaction involved me nearly drowning and calling you a pervert. Remember that part?”

“Hard to forget.” His mouth twitched. “You also announced to half the campus that I was your boyfriend. We’re already halfway into the lie.”

I hated that he had a point.

I rubbed my temples and squinted at him. “I’m not agreeing to anything until I know exactly what you expect from me.”

Luca pushed off the window and sat on the edge of the desk, arms crossed. “My father wants me engaged by the end of the week. The woman he picked is a cheat. I already told him I’m not marrying her so he told me to bring home someone better, or the engagement goes through.”

He said it flatly, like he’d already practiced the words.

“I need a girlfriend long enough to get him off my back. I’m not asking you to fall in love with me. I’m not asking you to sleep with me. When this stops being useful, we end it.”

I studied him. “Why me? You could walk downstairs and find ten girls who would jump at the chance to date Luca Kingston.”

“You already claimed me in front of everyone. Starting over with someone else means inventing a whole new story. And…” He paused, eyes steady on mine. “I’ve seen how you stand up for yourself even when you’re hurting. You don’t look easy to intimidate.”

I looked away.

The last thing I wanted was another man’s complicated family drama. 

I’d just spent two years believing a lie and Lucille—my best friend—had been laughing with him the entire time.

Even though I efused to let that define the rest of me I wasn’t about to become anyone’s convenient prop.

“I won’t be your toy,” I said, voice low. “I won’t let myself get humiliated again. If this turns into another joke at my expense, I’m done.”

Luca nodded once. “I have no intention of treating you that way.”

The straightforward answer caught me off guard. 

I took a breath. “If this is happening, then we need rules.”

“Go ahead.”

“Neither of us demands physical intimacy just because we’re pretending. What happened last night during Truth or Dare doesn’t create any obligation. You don’t get to pressure me.”

“Agreed,” he said immediately. “I would never expect you to do something you don’t want to do.”

“We stay honest about anything that could blow this up. If your family starts asking hard questions, or if someone figures it out, we talk about it. No one makes decisions for both of us.”

“Fine. And neither of us deliberately sabotages the arrangement out of anger or jealousy.”

I nodded. That one mattered more than I wanted to admit.

Silence stretched for a second, then something lighter settled between us.

“We’re going to look ridiculous if anyone asks questions,” I said. “We know nothing about each other.”

Luca tilted his head. “Then we learn the obvious things. Favorite foods, habits, interests and others.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You’re turning a fake relationship into a school assignment?”

“We need to be prepared.”

“So I’m supposed to memorize your entire life story?”

“You only need to know enough so you don’t look like a stranger standing next to me.”

I crossed my arms. “Then answer the same questions about me. You don’t get to make me do all the work.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it. For once, neither of us had a clever comeback. He really didn’t know a single thing about me beyond the fact that I’d nearly drowned and then publicly claimed him.

I almost laughed.

“What about public affection?” I asked. “People are going to expect us to kiss, or at least look like we want to.”

Luca’s expression stayed calm. “We decide what we’re comfortable with as situations come up. I’m not making physical affection a requirement of this deal.”

Something tight in my chest loosened.

Ethan had never given me choices. He’d decided what I was worth, what I was for, and how long the joke could last. Luca—this man I’d known for less than a day—was already handing the control back to me.

I didn’t trust him completely, not yet but the arrangement suddenly felt less dangerous.

He watched me for a moment. “Are you ready to agree?”

I hesitated.

“What happens when this ends? Do you expect me to disappear like none of it happened?”

Luca’s voice stayed even. “Neither of us can predict how this turns out. The point is to solve the problems we have right now, not create new ones. I’m not going to pretend I know what we’ll look like on the other side of this.”

It wasn’t the soft reassurance some part of me wanted, but at the very least it was honest.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll do it, as long as we both remember this is an arrangement and nothing more.”

Luca held out his hand.

I stared at it for half a second, then shook it. 

Deal sealed.

He released my hand and straightened. “We need to make this believable before I introduce you to my family.”

My stomach dropped. “I’m meeting your father?”

“They’ll expect to meet the woman I’m supposedly dating.”

I swallowed. Parties were one thing, walking into Luca Kingston’s family world—with all their expectations about the kind of girl who should stand beside him—was something else entirely.

I refused to let him see how much the idea unsettled me.

“I can handle it,” I said. “As long as you don’t leave me alone to face their questions.”

“I won’t abandon you in an uncomfortable situation.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

A small smile touched his mouth. “I expected nothing less.”

I pulled my knees up, resting my chin on them. “When do we start preparing for our first appearance as a couple?”

“We need a story, how we met and how long we’ve been together. We could say a few months.”

“We’re not saying we’ve been dating for months,” I said immediately. “We know too little about each other. That lie would fall apart the second someone asked a question.”

Luca nodded. “Then we keep it simple, we met recently, fell for each other and we decided to see where it goes.”

It was a good idea. It gave us room to actually learn each other without having to invent a fake story that would collapse under pressure.

As the conversation wound down, I noticed something. Every time Luca mentioned his family, the easy humor drained from his face. His shoulders tightened.

The carefree hockey captain the rest of the world saw wasn’t the man sitting across from me right now.

I was curious about the woman he’d called a cheat. The one his father still wanted him to marry but I didn’t ask. We’d made a deal, not opened a confession booth. Trust if it ever formed—would have to happen on its own.

Luca studied me in return. “What about Ethan? Do you think he’ll cause problems?”

“I don’t know what he’ll do,” I admitted. “But I’m done letting him control my decisions. The betrayal still hurts. I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t. I’m just not going to give him another chance to make me feel worthless.”

Luca nodded once like he understood what I was talking about on a more personal level.

I looked at him, his sharp jaw and dark eyes that didn’t flinch. The same man who’d pulled me out of a pool yesterday and then publicly claimed me without hesitation when I needed an exit.

I had officially agreed to become the fake girlfriend of a man I barely knew.

Part of it was helping him escape his family’s expectations, part of it was refusing to let Ethan and Lucille have the last word on who I was.

I told myself I would keep my emotions out of it.

Pretending to be in love with someone I already found too attractive was going to be a lot more dangerous than I was willing to admit out loud.

And somewhere in the back of my mind, a quiet warning settled in.

Convincing Ethan and Lucille had been easy.

Convincing Luca’s family was going to be something else entirely.