Page 30 of Damián

“I’ll write that down.”

“You’ll write that down?” he asks, amused. “Are you always this practical?”

“You have no idea.”

“Then I’ll write that down.” He stretches his frappe toward me. “You want some?”

“No thanks. I’m not as eager to get diabetes as you are.”

“Ha! You sounded just like my sister.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Please do.” Damián looks around and slurps his frozen treat. “Are we there yet?”

“Almost, you impatient child. I just need to take a quick shortcut.” I turn down a narrow street that’s almost hidden between the trees and lower my speed.

I reach deep under the dash, flip a hidden toggle switch, and a low, nearly inaudible hum instantly fills the car.

“Signal jammer,” Damián nods, looking genuinely impressed.

“The car is bugged, but this area has terrible reception, so we have ten minutes of privacy before the ‘interference’ looks suspicious.”

Damián whistles. “Classy. So, what’s the emergency?”

“We need to tweak our plan a bit.”

“What part? The location? The timeline?” he asks.

“More like… our status.”

“Our status?”

“Yeah… We can’t be fuckbuddies.”

“We can’t be fuckbuddies?”

“Oh my God, Damián!” I glare at the man. “Are you just going to repeat every single thing I say? The jammer works for ten minutes, not ten hours.”

“Sorry, I won’t interrupt you again,” he chuckles. “Why can’t we be fuckbuddies?”

“As twisted as it is, my father is incredibly traditional. He only trusts those in his dumb inner circle to get close to his private life. So… long story short, for you to get into our house and for this plan to work out, we’ll need a bigger commitment than just casual hookups.”

He just nods, slurping his drink. Though I’m pretty sure he’s not really understanding what I mean.

So, I spell it out for him.

“As in… we’ll have to be boyfriends.”

Damián chokes on his drink and coughs. Okay, now he understands.

“Yeah… Well, I mean, being my boyfriend will grant you way more access than just being a hookup would,” I explain while trying very hard not to look as nervous as I am.

Who knew asking the hottest man I’ve seen to fake date me would be more nerve-wracking than going against my father?

“I don’t know. That sounds a lot like commitment.”

“It’s a fake commitment,” I point out.