Remember when you cried in the bathroom after seeing him kiss another girl?
Remember when he promised never to leave?
My resolve had hardened as I looked him over. He wasn’t anything special. Just a famous athlete. A very sexy, dangerously gorgeous athlete who was towering over me, with perfect gray eyes and very kissable lips, but nothing special.
“You’re making me late, and I worked my ass off for this gig. Not everything is just handed to me.” I brushed past him into the boutique where the owners were waiting for Griffin and me.
The owner’s two sons and daughter fawned over Griffin like he was cooler than ice cream, but the one son kept checking me out, and I kept noting how much it seemed to piss off Griffin, which was new. He never cared before, but on the same token, none of the boys ever approached me. I still hadn’t had my first kiss.
Not that he needed to ever know that.
“First and foremost, thank you both for being here and supporting us. We’ve gone through a lot of applicants and are very excited to be working with the two best models around. We would like to launch a new couple’s collection for this upcoming season. We have ten different pieces, with matching his-and-her sets. Is that all right with you two?” I nodded because hell, ifthey asked me to go topless and just model the bottoms, I would do it. I needed not only the coverage, but the money.
Surprisingly, it was Griffin who hesitated.
“Does my agent know about this?” he asked gruffly.
“Aw, scared to be seen with me?” I couldn’t help the sarcastic little retort.
“You two know each other?” the daughter asked, already forming a whole love story in her head from the dreamy look in her gaze.
“Childhood friends.”
“Went to school together.”
We answered at the same time. You can probably guess who said what, but in case you couldn’t, he was the one who said childhood friends. Like, okay buddy, that’s the game you want to play?Liar pants on fucking fire.
Childhood friends didn’t break promises, jackass.
Griffin cleared his throat when I opened my mouth, and I shut it from the dark look in his eyes. Something was wrong. He wasn’t happy with this situation for some reason.
“If you could give us a moment, please,” he said, grabbing my elbow and yanking me to the other side of the store.
“What the hell?” I yanked my arm from him and glared up at his fucking smug grin.
“Are you sure this is a good idea, Tate? Two campaigns where we are a couple? One where we’re fucking engaged, and now this matching his-and-her line bullshit,” he whisper yelled.
“Look, I need this gig. I need the other one. I get that you may not need them, but this isn’t only about you anymore, Griff. If you don’t want to be seen with me, that’s on you. Just don’t blow this for me.”
“It’s not that I want to ruin anything. It’s that the tabloids, the fans, everyone might think something of this.”
“It’s two random shoots. There’s no way people will even notice.”
“Oh, yeah, just like how no one noticed when you screamed at me in the coffee shop this morning. You know the barista tried her luck with me not once but three times after that, but wait, you wouldn’t know because you were too busy running away. Do you know who I am in the public eye, Tatum? I’m not just the kid next door anymore. You may think you know me but newsflash. It’s not so black and white for me anymore, and the worst part is, I never asked for this.”Was he really insulting my intelligence?It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know who Griffin Silver was.
“I’m going to pretend like you didn’t just say that to me. Are you in or not?”
He sighed, rolled his eyes, and then grabbed my elbow again, yanking me back to the very confused family.
“Sorry about that. We had to make sure there wouldn’t be any conflicts of interest is all. We will do it. We just need to make sure the release date for this shoot isn’t the same as the other one we are doing. If you could coordinate the dates with my agent, that would be perfect. Are these the his-and-hers collection we’ll be modeling?”
“Are you two dating?” the daughter asked, looking all mischievous and dreamy-like.
“No.”
“Ha, please that’s ridiculous.” I pushed out from deep in my chest, and she laughed.
“Oh, I get it. It’s that whole ‘you hate each other but can’t even think about talking to someone else situation.’ Don’t they have a word for it? An enemies-to-lovers situation I think it’s called.”
