LOGINShare
Chapter 3: Rules of a Fake Boyfriend
publish date:
2026-04-20 16:16:47On Thursday morning, Lucien sent Eli a text; ‘Café Maren on Saturday by 2pm, don’t be late’
Eli’s reply came four minutes later; ‘okay but just so you know I’ve never been late for anything in my life’
And then, thirty seconds after that;
‘also good morning’
Lucien stared at the message on his phone, put his phone face down on his desk and went back to his reading, but there was a slight smile on his lips that he didn’t know he was wearing.
Eli spent Friday trying not to think about Saturday, he failed completely.
“You’re doing the thing,” Noah said, not looking up from his laptop.
“What thing?”
“The thing where you’re very busy doing nothing.”
Eli was lying on his bed staring at the ceiling with his shoes still on.
“I’m resting.”
“You’ve been resting for forty minutes and you keep checking your phone.”
“Noah.”
“You know this is going to hurt, right?” Noah said and Eli was quiet for a moment.
He thought about the stairwell, about Lucien standing in the doorway saying you’re in my way but the meanness didn’t seem so authentic to him.
“Yeah,” Eli said. “Probably.”
“And you’re still going?”
“It’s just coffee.” Eli replied.
Noah returned to his laptop.
Café Maren was ten minutes from campus, and had been there long enough to stop caring about impressing anyone.
Lucien was already there when Eli arrived, sitting at a corner table with his blazer still on and a black coffee in front of him, reading something on his phone.
He looked up when Eli walked in.
“You’re early,” Lucien said.
“I told you.” Eli dropped into the chair across from him “Never late.”
The server came. Eli ordered a latte and a slice of whatever the cake of the day was without looking at the menu, which made Lucien glance at him.
“You’re not going to ask what it is?”
“If it’s bad I’ll know for next time.” Eli shrugged.
“I like trying things.”
Lucien looked at him for a moment, then back at his coffee.
“Harland looked at me today like I’d personally offended him,” Eli said. “I was early.”
“He looks at everyone like that.” Lucien replied.
“You know Harland?”
“I know everyone.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
Lucien said nothing, which was its own kind of answer.
Eli looked at Lucien’s cup. “Black coffee, no sugar?”
“Yes.”
“That’s sad.”
“It’s coffee.”
“It’s a punishment you’ve decided is a preference.” Eli tilted his head. “When did you last have it with milk?”
Lucien opened his mouth to reply then closed it.
Eli pointed at him. “Exactly.”
“My mother put too much milk in it,” Lucien said, it sounded flat. “I used to complain about it.”
Eli didn’t soften or look at him with pity.
“She had good taste then,” Eli said.
Then he laughed at his own terrible response, and Lucien couldn't help but notice his dark curls falling forward, the way his amber eyes squinted, and his adorable freckles suddenly more visible across his nose.
Lucien smiled before he could stop it, neither of them said anything, they just stared. Eli looked at the sharp line of Lucien’s jaw, his green eyes that contradicted his red hair. He felt the heat crawl up his cheeks, Lucien looked away first, sipping his black coffee and looking out the glass window.
They were outside the café, about to head back, when Adrian Cross appeared.
Eli saw him first, tall, dark-jacketed, he was handsome in a deliberate way, and he smiled when he saw Lucien, like he was running into an old friend.
“Vale.” He stopped right in front of them, his hands were in his pockets, gaze moving to Eli with an assessing eye.
“Didn’t know you were coming here today.”
“Adrian,” Lucien said, with his voice flat and Eli noticed.
“This must be the famous freshman,” Adrian said, turning that warm smile fully on Eli, up close it was even more convincing.
“I heard about the gates. Everyone did.” He extended a hand.
“Adrian Cross. Fencing captain.”
“Eli Thorne.” Eli shook it.
“Track, right? Scholarship?” He said it pleasantly, like a compliment.
“Impressive. Saint Aurelius doesn’t give those out easily.”
“So I’ve been told.” Eli replied with a tight smile.
Adrian looked at Lucien with a certain familiarity Eli couldn’t quite put his fingers on.
“Didn’t know you’d developed a type, Luce,” he said lightly.
“More athletic, I see.” There was a small pause.
“People change,” Lucien said, and Eli wondered what that meant.
“Do they?” Adrian’s smile didn’t change, he looked at Eli one more time, with a warm expression that was unreadable.
“Enjoy your afternoon. Both of you.” He said and walked past them.
“Old friend?” Eli asked.
“Something like that.” Lucien replied displeased.
Eli looked in the direction Adrian had gone, there was something he couldn’t quite place, something in the way Adrian had looked at him, it was unsettling..
Day three of thirty
Twenty-seven to go
Latest chapter
Loving Him For 30 Days Chapter 42: The Second Time
Eli had been in the Bee’s Hive kitchen since five forty-five, which was not a conscious decision so much as a body-knowing-before-the-brain-did situation.He had woken up in Lucien’s room in the Lion’s Den feeling restless, and that meant his head was already loud and had pulled on his clothes and left a note on the desk and gone to the one place that reliably made the loudness manageable.He made two batches of short bread. The first because he needed to and the second because the first was gone before it cooled, distributed to the small rotation of Bee’s Hive athletes who materialized in the kitchen at six thirty with the specific tragic energy of people who had seen the news alerts before they were fully awake.VALE FAMILY SCANDAL: FEDERAL MOTION FILED, PHARMACEUTICAL COVER-UP LINKED TO PERSONAL SETTLEMENT.SENATE CANDIDATE EVERETT VALE NAMED IN CONNECTION WITH HARGREAVES PHARMACEUTICAL SUPPRESSION.WHO IS THE UNNAMED MINOR IN THE VALE FAMI
Loving Him For 30 Days Chapter 42: She found it
She went back to the private legal filings she had pulled from the estate records before she left. Documents she had access to as a named party in the Vale family trust, documents she had pulled because something about the hearing, specifically the way the Hargreaves legal team had folded too quickly when she mentioned the campaign, had been sitting wrong with her since Wednesday.She found what she was looking for on the third page of a settlement document dated the sixteenth of June, eleven years ago. Two days after her mother’s journal entries changed.It was not a pharmaceutical settlement. It had nothing to do with Veranox or Dr Calloway or the trial data Elena had been requesting. It was a private agreement between Everett Vale and a legal firm that Seraphine recognized immediately as the Hargreaves family’s primary counsel, and it was structured the way private agreements were structured when both parties needed something from each other and neither wanted it documented clearl
Loving Him For 30 Days Chapter41: What Elena knew
Seraphine Vale had a system and it was not the system her firm used for standard case preparation, not the color-coded folders and the shared server and the junior associate who pre-sorted documents by date and relevance. That system was for clients. This was the system she used when something mattered enough that she needed to do it herself, alone, without anyone else’s hands on it.She had been in her office since four in the morning.The West Village apartment was dark outside the windows. She had made coffee at four fifteen and hadn’t touched it since. It was sitting on the corner of her desk going cold and she hadn’t noticed.The files from Mira’s upload were open on one screen. Her own research was open to others. Between them, printed and spread across the desk in the particular organized pattern she used when she needed to see everything at once rather than scroll through it, were documents she had been pulling since she left her father’s estate.Medical records, pharmaceutic
Loving Him For 30 Days Chapter 40: Complications of a Pattern
Noah liked things that could be counted, the precise weight of his grandfather’s silver pocket watch, and the predictable rhythm of the track team’s lap times. The exact number of minutes it took for the electric kettle on his desk to reach a boil. Patterns were safe to him and they didn’t require you to guess what came next.He was sitting on the edge of his bed at half past ten, watching the second hand of his watch sweep past the markers without registering the time, thinking about Cassian Roe, which was an incredibly inconvenient development he had been trying to file away since the Westhaven trip and failing completely.It wasn't tea. Well, it was partly the tea. But it was mostly the expression on Cassian’s face at Sunday breakfast when Noah hadn’t reacted the way Cassian expected, that brief unguarded moment where Cassian had looked at him with something that wasn’t a smirk and wasn’t a performance and Noah had no useful category for it.He closed the watch with a sharp click,
Loving Him For 30 Days Chapter 39: The Senator
Something about the hearing, especially the way the Hargreaves’ legal team had folded when she mentioned her father’s campaign, wasn't sitting right with Seraphine.They hadn't looked defeated, they had looked pre-empted, so she headed for the Vale estate, the sprawling, glass-and-steel fortress that Everett called home. It was a house built for a man who wanted to see everything coming and wanted no one to see in both literally and figuratively.She bypassed the assistant in the foyer, didn't knock on the study door and just threw it open.Everett Vale was standing by the floor-to-ceiling window, a glass of scotch in one hand and a tablet in the other. He didn't turn around nor did he flinch at the sound of the door hitting the wall."The hearing went well, I assume," Everett said, his voice was smooth, the resonance of a man who had already rehearsed the victory speech."Lucien is cleared. Eli’s scholarship is safe," Seraphine said
Loving Him For 30 Days Chapter 38: 2:51pm
Eli came in and looked at Lucien’s face and didn’t say anything immediately, which was the right call.He came in, closed the door and took off his jacket and put it over the desk chair the way he always did now, like the desk chair was already his, like this room had already made space for him, and then he sat on the edge of the bed and looked at Lucien who was still standing by the window.“You okay?” Eli said.“Yes,” Lucien said, which was partially true.Eli looked at him for a moment, reading the room the way he always did, quietly and without making a performance of it, and then he reached over and pulled Lucien’s pillow onto his lap and leaned back against the headboard and said nothing else.Lucien looked at him, at the dark curls and the amber eyes and the complete absence of pressure in his expression, and felt something in his chest loosen by a degree.He crossed the room and sat beside him, not against the headboard, just on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees.“Mira
You may also like
The bad boy craves me
Jt116.4K viewsHer Troubled Bully
D-ehis111.4K viewsTHE BAD NERD BOY
Ethan Choi85.9K viewsStalking Aaron
Angela Lynn Carver52.0K viewsThe Art Of Losing You
Temah79 views7 Years of Medical Porn
Cooper Char167 viewsOFF LIMITS: FALLING FOR THE WRONG BRENNAN
HeraWrites189 viewsCOLD STEEL, BLEEDING HEARTS
EMKAY686 views
