I let out a laugh, picturing Leila wondering what the hell I was doing holding her friend. “Yeah, my mom did too. Did you tell her?” I ask. “About…” I gesture between us.
She shakes her head. “I told her the headlines were a lie, but that was before we agreed to the whole…” she drifts off, glancing around. Right. We probably shouldn’t be talking about how we’re faking a relationship in public. “But once she sees these pictures…” She shrugs, sighing. “I’ll have to lie, right?”
Well, shit. I already told my family and James, but I nod anyway. “It was stated in the NDA.”
She frowns a little, and I get it. I hate lying, especially to my family. “No,” I tell her. Her head snaps up, looking confused, and I continue. “To answer your previous question, I don’t have a passion for it. It’s just something that paid the bills, and it’s the only thing I’m good at so…”
“That can’t be true.”
I lift my shoulder. “This is all I have to offer,” I admit. “I didn’t go to college or do anything interesting other than this.” Her frown deepens, but I shake it off. “It’s fine,” I assure her. “It got me where I needed to be.”
“So you don’t have a dream? Something you’d love to do if you could?”
I don’t have time for dreams. Dreams get me nowhere, they don’t pay the bills, and they’re a complete waste of time. “Nope,” I tell her, even though I get a flash of my sketchbook in my mind. “Nothing.”
“That’s sad,” she admits.
Yeah, well. My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I pull it out, reading the text Ana sent.
Ana:
We got it.
“Is that Ana?” Madeline asks.
I nod, placing my phone back in my pocket. “Yeah, she said we got it.” I let out a sigh when I realize this is finally done. We can both leave and go our separate ways. There’s no reason for us to hang out together, not when we don’t need to.
“We make a pretty good team,” I tell her, flashing her a smirk.
She rolls her eyes. “When you don’t piss me off,” she says, but then her eyes crinkle in thought. “It wasn’t as bad as I thought, though.”
No. It really wasn’t.
Chapter 9
Stake your bet
“Pay up!”
I wake up with a thud when Gabi jumps on top of my bed, startling me. A groan escapes me when I peel an eye open, seeing her grin down at me like a puppy. “What time is it?” I reach for my phone on my nightstand and almost choke when I see it’s 6 am.
“You’re crazy,” I grumble, pulling my covers over my head. “Let me sleep.”
“Nope.” She pulls the covers off my face. “We made a deal. You lost.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I mumble into my pillow.
“We made a bet, remember?” I reluctantly open my eyes, seeing a grin spread across her face as she shakes a bottle of red hair dye in my face.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I didn’t make any bets.”
She lets out a laugh. “Oh yes, you did. You said, and I quote, ‘I will never get a boyfriend, and if I do, I’ll dye my hair red, and I’ll do anything my best friend Gabi wants for a week.’”
I narrow my eyes at her. “I definitely didn’t say that.”
She sighs. “Okay, well, I added that last part, but the rest is true. You were so confident that you would never date again,” she says with a head tilt. “And we both knew that was bullshit.” The red hair dye is shoved in front of my face again. “So it’s time to pay up.”
“Did I miss the part where I’m dating?”
