Page 112 of The Billionaire Mismatch

“And this is Unmatched, Real Life Love stories,” she goes on. We are live and, as usual, listeners are piling in, giving me faith that this could work. I have my notes, carefully written so that I sayeverything I need to say. Hopefully without choking or throwing up or anything else that would sound off-putting in a state-of-the-art microphone. And all I can do now is hope that Luca is listening.

We did decide not to leave that totally up to fate. Kiersten tagged Luca as a suggested listener on the podcast, and Sadie may or may not have texted Matt about it. I don’t know all the details and I didn’t want to know. Writing the content for the episode was nerve-wracking enough.

“Today we have a special treat for you,” she says. “An episode that will answer a lot of questions you may have had about our last series. You know the one. Catfish, betrayal, an attempt to catch what we thought was the biggest catfish in the dating world.”

“Emphasis on thought…” I add in before Kiersten goes on.

“But don’t worry, I’m not here to string you along. Let’s dive into today’s story. A story of a dating app CEO who believes in love but not in fate. And a dating podcast host whose belief in love is rooted entirely in the concept of serendipity. Add a little revenge plot to that, some unhealthy competition, a hearty amount of tension, and a splash of attraction, and it’s the perfect combination of enemies to lovers. And who better to tell you this real-life story than the FMC herself. Olivia?”

“Hey everyone. Yep. It’s true. We are really going to talk about me and Luca Laurent,” I say.

“For those of you who don’t know, Luca Laurent is the CEO of Realr and he’s also the MMC of this story,” Kiersten adds.

“He is,” I hop back in. “But contrary to what you might believe, to what we tried to get you to believe in our last series, LucaLaurent is not the villain of this story. Or the catfish. I met Luca through a friend. A friend who had feelings for him. And then those feelings weren’t reciprocated, her heart broke. We’ve all been there. We all know how that feels. Which is why my friend is not entirely to blame for everything that went down. None of us are. But we are all responsible.”

“You see…when I saw my friend crying into a bottle of wine, I got angry. She’s my best friend, and he was the man who caused those tears, intentional or not. So…I did something very uncharacteristic of me. It went against my own morals and the integrity of what Unmatched stands for. I suggested that we get revenge. That we catfish Luca Laurent in an attempt to prove he is the biggest of all catfish. And the worst part is, we decided to base the podcast series around it, completely unbeknownst to Luca.

“Come to find out, Luca knew that Sadie and I were friends. He also knew that we were trying to get revenge. And you know what he did? He played along,” I laugh and my friends watch and listen with inspired smiles as I tell the story. And while I am still following my notes, a lot of it is coming out naturally.

“So here we were, both knowing the other person was messing with us, both knowing we were trying to out-catfish each other, all while going on one date after another. But what we didn’t plot, what we didn’t predict, was that on those dates, the connection would go from staged…to real. Somewhere in the middle of it all, we started to fall for each other. Somewhere in the middle of it all the lines blurred, and it became real. Real enough that I betrayed my friend and let myself fall for him.”

“But the betrayal wasn’t on Olivia alone,” Sadie chimes in. “Because the connection that I had with Luca, the date gone wrong, was my fault. A misunderstanding that hurt my egoenough that I wanted to hurt him. And what better way to hurt him than to set him up?”

I look down at the numbers. As we expose ourselves, part of me expects the listeners to taper off. But it’s the opposite. People are pouring into the chat, the number shooting through the roof by fives and tens at a time. People are invested. And I can only hope one of those listeners is Luca.

“Was it right?” I ask. “Sadie lying about the details of her date with Luca and me agreeing to catfish Luca in an attempt to label him the king of catfish, all while putting the whole thing on public blast? Of course not. It’s not who I am, and it’s not what Unmatched stands for. Because over time the feelings were real. And with real feelings at stake, we were bound to hurt people. I hurt Sadie by doing the one thing I promised not to do–fall in love with the man who broke her heart.”

“And I hurt Olivia by not being honest about what really happened with Luca and me,” she adds.

“And I hurt Luca by not telling him about the podcast. At the end of the day, everyone got hurt. But I don’t think it was out of competition or pride. I think…it was out of fear. It’s the one common denominator for all of us. We are afraid. Afraid of being alone. Afraid of never finding the one, no matter how many nights we go to the local bar or how many times we tweak our dating app profiles. And most of all, afraid of actually trusting someone with our hearts when we do find the real thing.”

I take in a shaky breath before going on. “Luca has built an empire on the belief that algorithms and science can help people find their soulmates. Even if he wouldn’t use that word to label it. And we, here at Unmatched, have built a smaller empire on persuading people that you can do it without an app. Withoutintervention. And yet…in the end, we’re doing the same thing. Because whether a fine-tuned app created to match you with people who might interest you is how you meet your possible happily ever after, or you run into them at a grocery store, reaching for the same carton of oat milk at the same time, it’s still not accidental. It’s still two people looking for love and finding it. It’s still…fate.”

“And that said…I believe Luca and I were meant to connect. And I believe that despite everything that happened, we are supposed to be together. That is…if he can look past the initial motives and secrets and algorithms and forgive me.”

“We have a caller,” Henry says, and all of us look up. Henry doesn’t usually talk during recordings, and it throws me a little.

My eyes dart between them, and I mute my mic before mouthing the words, “I thought we weren’t doing callers on this series.”

“We aren’t,” Henry says back. “But I think we should take this one.”

I look over at Kiersten, who looks just as lost. Then she looks at Henry’s tablet, and her eyes go wide.

“Yeah…Livv you’re gonna wanna take this one,” she agrees, making no attempt to keep her voice down.

“Trust,” Henry says with a smile.

“Alright,” I stutter. “You heard them. I guess we are taking a caller. Put them through,” I say.

“Olivia,” Luca’s voice comes through the line, and my mouth pops open.

Chapter 41

Olivia

“Holy shit…”Sadie says before covering her gaping, smiling mouth.

“Luca…” I say, utterly bewildered. “I…I didn’t know you were listening…”