Page 17 of Fake It Till We Fall
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
“Okay.” He took my arm and led me away from the coffee shop to the relative privacy of the gazebo.
People milled about the plaza, and most certainly there were eyes on us, but at least no one was close enough to hear us. Still, I glanced around one more time, double-checking that there was no one within hearing range.
“Harper? You’re starting to worry me. Are you sure everything is okay?”
“Yes. No.” I shook my head. “Kind of.” I took a breath. Tried and failed to remember my carefully prepared speech. The words were on the tip of my tongue.
But when I opened my mouth, I said, “I need you to pretend to date me.”
Grayson’s eyebrows shot up. “You need me to…what?” He shook his head as if there were no way he could have heard me properly.
“Okay.” I held up a hand as if to ward off his protest before he could say it out loud. Heat flooded my face. “Hear me out. Last night, I was talking to Grandma, and she mentioned how happy she was to see us together again.”
“But we were?—”
“I know.” I nodded. “You were only helping me, but…well, anyway,” I continued as quickly as I could. “She said how good it felt to know that I wouldn’t be alone and that I’d be okay when she—” I choked on the words. Grayson reached for my arm and squeezed through my thick coat. His touch steadied me enough to say what I needed to. “She was just so happy thinking that we were together, that before I knew what I was saying, I kind of told her that we were going on a date today and that we’d decided to try again.”
“Try again?”
I nodded.
He was silent for a moment, trying to process what I’d just said.
“Trywhatagain?” Grayson finally said. I opened my mouth, but before I could say the words, he answered his own question. “You mean, us? You told your grandma we were going to tryusagain?”
“Sort of.” I shrugged and nodded at the same time. “Well…yes. I mean…I know I shouldn’t have said anything at all. But she’s old, Grayson, and you should have seen her face. I know how much she worries about me, and she was so happy when she thought that we were… Well, I just couldn’t let her down. And you know her health isn’t the greatest right now. She hasn’t said much, and she certainly won’t tell me the details, but if a little pretend relationship will give her something to smile about, especially at Christmas…I’d be grateful if you’d go along with it. I mean, I don’t know how much you know, but she’s not well right now, and who knows how long she?—”
“Okay.”
It took me a second to catch up with what he said. “Okay?”
Grayson nodded, a hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “Okay,” he said again. “I’ll do it.”
“You’ll pretend to date me?”
My head spun. There was no way it was that easy. We hadn’t seen each other in fifteen years. Hadn’t evenspokento each other. Not so much as a text message. And without any begging or convincing, he was just going to pretend to be my boyfriend. Just like that?
“Yes.”
“But what’s in it for you?”
The smile fell from his face, twisting instead into a tight frown. “You really have to ask me that?”
I did.
I swallowed hard against the lump in my throat. “I do. I mean, the way things ended between us and?—”
“That was a long time ago, Harper.” The smile was back on his face, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes this time. “I hardly remember all of that.”
A lie. It had to be. The air crackled with the weight of everything unsaid between us. And yet…here he was, agreeing without hesitation. My chest squeezed tight.
Grayson
Harper’s eyesstayed locked on mine, searching like she thought I’d take it back.
Hell, that was exactly what I should do. I had no business pretending to be in love with Harper Bennett, especially when I couldn’t be sure I’d ever stopped loving her in the first place.
