He saved me once, now I’m going to save him.
It might sound dumb but the most important person in my life is my roommate, Caleb. He did me a favor, a long time ago, and was a friend to me when I was at my very lowest point. There is little that I wouldn’t do for him.
So when he was faced with the worst humiliation of his life the choice was simple for me. I knew exactly what I had to do. I knew precisely who I had to become.
It was the wedding of the once-upon-a-time love of his life and his own brother, the two people who had hurt him more than anyone else in the world. It had been a hard road back after she’d broken his heart and having to watch the two of them walk down the aisle together while he was all alone just might have broken him once more.
What Caleb needed right now was a date. Not just any date, he needed someone that would make heads turn. He needed to win by living better and having a beautiful woman on his arm would do just that.
If that’s what it took to save him, I’d do it for him. I’d become that beautiful woman and I’d make them all watch. I’d show them all what an amazing man he was.
Handsome. Charming. Perfect.
And above all else, all mine.
Excerpt
Close. So close.
Caleb is a handsome man, even if he’s a bit of an idiot I can admit that. And we’d done the pillow fight before but it had never ended like this.
Because while he’d always looked the way that he did, I’d never looked this way before. Not for him, at least.
“Mitch,” he said warningly.
“Rachel,” I corrected him, “You should probably get used to calling me Rachel.”
And I said it because I wanted him to. I wanted him to think of me as her now. Because the whole weekend was riding on him convincingly treating me like a woman that he was in love with, not because a woman was precisely how I wanted him to see me when he was this close.
“Rachel,” he said, correcting himself and I remembered the joke about the kiss and the quip about him proving that and I thought about the one in the lobby and how it had felt so good and better than I let on.
And my eyes flickered and fluttered and I swallowed hard and blinked up at him, more than a little breathless with anticipation.
“Fuck,” he said in a panic, “Oh shit we’re late. We’ve gotta be downstairs in fifteen minutes.”
He pulled away and left me standing there wondering what the hell had and hadn’t happened for me.
“Come on,” he insisted, “If you’re going to be my girlfriend you need to look the part.”
“Girlfriend,” I mumbled, “Right. I’m your girlfriend.”
And I tried to remember that it was just a little lie.