“Ugh. Thanks for the heads up, banana. I need to get ready so I can go tell him.”
“Okay, yeah…and Lyse…just be careful.”
“With Seb??”
“With Mateo. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I’ll be okay, An. But thank you for looking out for me.”
“Always.”
By the time I hang up with Anna, my anxiety is through the roof. The whole damn town already thinks Mateo and I were going at it in my front yard, and Nico now believes we’re a couple. This is spiraling so far out of my control, and I can barely keep up.
Later that day, I’m pacing outside of the bakery when Mateo pulls up. The second he gets out of his truck, I throw my hands in the air.
“We are screwed,” I blurt. “Completely, utterly screwed.”
He raises a brow. “Nice to see you, too, querida.”
“Don’t.” I point a finger at him. “The entire town thinks we had sex against mycar last night.”
Mateo barks out a laugh. “Against your car? That’s creative.”
“This isn’t funny!” I snap. “Nico already believes we’re together, and now everyone else does, too. I can’t tell him it was a lie without looking insane, and I can’t tell the town it was a lie without making things worse. Oh my god, what do we do?”
He tilts his head, considering me. “We keep the lie.”
“Excuse me?”
“Think about it. Nico sticks around, he believes you moved on. Everyone else thinks we’re together, so they stop talking about him and start talking about us instead. Problem solved.” He shrugs.
“Mateo, this isn’t some simple problem! This is my life! This is Maya’s life!” I rake a hand through my hair. “We can’t just fake date. We’d have to sell it to Seb, to Mari, to literally everyone. Seb is going to lose his mind.”
“Seb can deal with it,” Mateo says firmly. His eyes lock on mine. “What matters is that you don’t have to face this alone. We pretend until Nico leaves. Until the gossip dies down. Whatever comes first.”
I open my mouth to argue, but the truth is—I don’t have a better plan. Slowly, reluctantly, I nod. “Fine. But we need ground rules.”
He smirks. “Ground rules, huh?”
“Yes, Mateo! Ground rules. No kissing, no touching, no breathing on me.”
He leans in closer, wrapping one of my curls around his finger. “Lyse, I don’t think anyone is going to believe that we’re together if we don’t touch. They know me—and if you’re my girl, there’s no way I’m going to go a second without touching you, being near you, kissing you.”
Heat creeps up my neck and face, and I clear my throat. “Right. Okay. So there will be touching…but we don’t have to kiss.”
“Okay. No kissing. Unless you ask for it.”
I roll my eyes. “Well, we don’t have to worry about that.”
He barks out a laugh. “Whatever you say, Lyse. Anything else we should go over?”
“I kinda already told Anna and Mari. But everyone else is going to want to know how this started.”
“So you already told them but you weren’t sure if we were actually going to do this?”
“I panicked, okay? Everyone else is going to wonder how this started.”
“Easy. We say it’s new. We spent a lot of time together and things just naturally progressed. The rest is nobody’s business.”
