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“How could you think your safety isn’t a big deal?” Caleb’s incredulity came through in his tone, even if I couldn’t see the expression on his face. “I nearly lost my fucking mind at the show when I couldn’t find you, and when you didn’t answer my calls I started thinking the worst.”

“We’re not in public, so you can stop pretending.”

I tried to turn around, but Caleb sidestepped and took me with him. I drew in a harsh breath when my back hit the wall.

“I’m not pretending,” he replied between gritted teeth. His eyes caught the moonlight, his features finally illuminated by the light. His expression was heated, a mixture of vexation and something I must have been imagining.

Hunger.

Lust.

Desire.

I looked away. “Caleb…” I braced myself for what had to be done. There was no other way. “We can’t do this.”

He was silent, and then, “Look at me.”

I shook my head, no.

“Kadence.”

His voice softened, making me wince. My head lifted, ignoring the inner protest, and when our eyes met, his were seeking.

He rested his hands on each side of my head. “I’m going to give you one chance to tell me happened.”

“What makes you think anything happened? What if I’ve come to my senses and realized that this will never work between us?”

“Because,” he exhaled, leaning close. “I know you. You’re upset, and you weren’t before.”

I swallowed my apprehension, and chose to be honest with him, rip it off like a Band-Aid and all that.

“Jennifer.” I sighed. “She knows about us, about our ‘arrangement’.”

Caleb’s brows lowered. “How would she have found out?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “But she threatened to tell the press about me, and my family if I didn’t end it with you and quit my job at Callahan Industries. She knows about my father, and your mother, and she’s planning on using it.”

“You should have come to me, Kadence. Why did you wait?”

“I found Jennifer arguing about all of it with Macy, and shortly after I confronted her, Macy had a labor pain, and I called an ambulance. I didn’t have a chance to find you before we left, or call you once we got to the hospital.” It was a little white lie, but I had no intention of telling Caleb that Macy had a severe case of gas. Talk about awkward, and embarrassing.

Caleb’s gaze flicked across my face, and in my peripheral I could see his chorded forearms tense. “What aren’t you telling me?” he asked, his voice quiet, and low. “Are her threats the reason you said we can’t do this?”

Caleb took my ensuing silence as my admission, but rather than say something, he pushed away from the wall with an exasperated growl.

“I think it will be best if we call this whole thing off,” I said to his back. “If the press gets wind of our past it will only bring you bad publicity, and defeat the entire objective of this fake relationship in the first place.”

“What makes you so sure?” Caleb kept his back to me, but I couldn’t muster up enough energy to push away from the wall and go to him.

“Because Jennifer will make sure they know about our parents, and that I’m nothing more than a gold-digging whore sleeping with the C.E.O to get ahead.”

It was the oldest cliché in the book, and the most common story told by women in Jennifer’s position, but that in no way detracted from the outfall that would come from it, lie or not. I didn’t trust Jennifer as far as I could throw her, which is why I wasn’t going to disregard her threat as a meager attempt to get back at Caleb.

With a slow pivot, Caleb faced me, but made no move to close the gap between us, a gap I felt getting bigger and bigger by the second.

“And rather than talk to me about it, you decided for us both that it would be better for us to stop? Do you not trust me to protect you in a situation such this is?”

“It’s not about you protecting me, Caleb. It’s about knowing when we’re in over our heads, and right now, I think we are.”

“You’re wrong.”

Too bad I wasn’t as unwavering in my faith as what Caleb was.

“That might be true, but I’m not willing to risk finding out,” I replied, pushing myself off the wall. “Why won’t you just accept that this won’t work? That having a relationship with me, real or not, will do more harm than good?”

“Why are you giving up so easily?” Caleb threw back. “Did you think I wasn’t aware of something like this happening?”

“God,” I threw my hands up, “Why won’t you let this go? Why is it so important that I help you?”

Caleb opened his mouth to respond, but snapped it shut just as fast. We stared at each other, and when neither of spoke further, I resigned myself to the fact that calling it quits was for the best.

“I’m going to bed,” I said, making my way down the hallway. Caleb didn’t respond, and part of me was disappointed. For some fatuous reason I wanted him to have an answer, to have a valid reason for asking me of all people to be play this part in his life. Why it mattered so much to me I didn’t know, but it did, and there was little I could do to change it.