“You’re terrified.” His eyes hold mine. “I can see it in the way you hold your breath when I get close. The way your pulse jumps.”
His fingers brush my wrist. Light as a thought. Light enough that I shouldn’t be able to feel it through my entire body.
“There. Like that.”
My heart is doing something irregular, and he can feel it. He can literally feel my body betraying me with every beat.
“Maybe I’m just not used to being touched by someone who looks at me like—”
I stop.
“Like what?”
Like you’re scared of something I can’t see.
“Like you’re running calculations,” I say instead. Safer. Less vulnerable. “Every time you look at me, I can see you thinking and processing me. It’s unsettling.”
Something shifts in his expression. Surprise, maybe. Or recognition. Like I’ve named something he didn’t realize was visible.
“You’re right,” he says. “I do look at you that way.”
“And?”
“And I’m sorry. It’s...” He pauses. Actually pauses, which is new. Julian usually has his answers ready before I finish asking. “It’s how I’ve learned to interact with people. If I gather enough data, I can predict responses. Protect myself from variables.”
“I’m a variable now?”
“You’re the most unpredictable variable I’ve encountered in a very long time.”
I don’t know what to do with that. It sounds like a compliment, but it also sounds like a warning. Like he’s telling me something important, something that should concern me, but he’s wrapped it in enough flattery that I’m not sure how to receive it.
“It’s fine,” I say, because I don’t know what else to say. “This is fake. You don’t have to pretend to feel something you don’t.”
The words come out more bitter than I intended. More honest. I watch him register them, process them, file them away in whatever mental filing system he maintains.
And then he says: “What if I’m not pretending?”
The question hangs between us like something breakable.
My eyes search his face. Looking for tells, for performance, for any sign that this is part of the act. He’s supposed to be playing my boyfriend. He’s supposed to make my family believe we’re in love. Maybe this is just very good method acting. Maybe he’s so committed to the bit that he’s forgotten where the character ends and he begins.
But there’s something in his expression I haven’t seen before. Vulnerability, maybe. Or fear. Something raw and unguarded that doesn’t match the polished surface he usually presents.
He leans closer. Close enough that I can see the flecks of gold in his dark eyes, like something burning at the edges. Close enough that his breath catches at the same moment mine does.
My brain screams at me to step back. To remember this is just a contract—finite, professional, ending when the wedding does. To keep protecting myself with filters and distance and the curated performance of someone whose life is together.
“Julian—”
His phone buzzes.
He steps back so fast it’s like he’s been burned. One second he’s inches away from me, the next he’s across the room, phone in hand, face transformed into something hard and cold.
I watch tension ripple across his face. His shoulders go rigid. Whatever he’s reading on that screen is bad news. Worse than bad. The kind of news that makes someone’s whole body change.
“We should go,” he says. “We’ll be late.”
“What was that?”
