Trade Me (Cyclone #1)(28)

I’m trying to sort myself back into place. No more pretending. No more touching. No more acting. We got what we wanted, right?

I can’t make out anything about him. I had assumed he didn’t get along with his father; instead, they seemed to be genuinely friendly. He said he wanted to get away from Cyclone, but when he put Fernanda on my wrist, his eyes sparkled with real pride.

He told his dad he was planning on marrying me, but we spoke for the first time five days ago. I don’t know who he is or what he’s doing. I do know that today—that flirtation, those tiny touches we exchanged—came a little too easily to me.

“You said you wanted to get away from Cyclone,” I finally say. “It doesn’t look like it to me.”

“I didn’t quite say that.” He speaks so calmly, as if this afternoon—an afternoon where his father offered me a massive sum of money, and where we flirted over legal paperwork—makes sense. “I said I needed to get away.”

“What would you do if you left for good?”

“Run, apparently.” There’s a dry quality to his tone. “When I don’t feel like running anymore, I’ll go back.”

I shake my head. “I swear to God. I am never going to understand people with money.”

His fingers trace the steering wheel up and down. “That’s not money,” he finally says. “Money has nothing to do with it. Haven’t you ever loved something you hated? Or hated something you loved?”

My mind goes instantly to my mother. I love her; I do. She’s a fierce ball of need—always looking after everyone but herself and her own.

“Maybe.” I don’t want to look at him. I don’t want to feel more of a connection.

“Then you understand how I feel about Cyclone. I love interface design. If I do it well, a million people will never know how happy I’ve made them, not until they try a competitor’s product. I have to pay attention to things people don’t even know they want. I have a real gift for that.”

He’s stating this as a fact—and having his brainchild on my wrist now, I can’t disagree.

“It’s the other bullshit I can’t handle.”

I think I had a taste of that other bullshit this afternoon.

The rest of the bridge goes by in silence. He turns north, and the last of the sun spills over the windshield.

“I don’t understand what I’m doing here,” I finally say. “Are you really that good a liar, that you can tell your dad that…that thing you did without even blinking?” I still can’t make myself repeat what he said aloud.

“I said what I had to in order to get you Fernanda.” His jaw sets. “You can’t plan the launch without her. It was necessary. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you it was coming, but I didn’t trust your acting skills, and I thought your honest reaction would be more convincing.”

“It’s fine. It’s just that your acting skills are ridiculous.”

“You’ve seen the commercials?” It’s not quite a question, the way he asks it.

I don’t want to admit that I’ve watched the entire YouTube playlist at this point. “Some of them,” I lie.

“Then you know I’ve been acting since I was two. I should be good at it.”

“So that’s all fake? That buddy-buddy thing you have going on with your dad? He really is as big an * as he appears?”

“He’s actually not an *,” Blake says calmly. “And that buddy-buddy thing, as you call it, is real. My dad is my best friend. The trick to acting is to believe what you’re saying.”

I flinch away from him. “Bullshit. You said—about me—you said—”

“I used to see you in the library last semester,” he says. “You came in at eleven in the morning on Wednesdays before your shift. You would sit at a table on the third floor and work biochemistry problems. What can I say? I have a thing for women who carry heavy books and know how to use them.”

I blink. I did used to do that. But I don’t have any memory of seeing him. None at all. I only have a vague sense of being aware that there were other people around when I worked.

He smiles. “It’s not hard to act when you have good source material to draw on.”

I feel that tug of attraction pulling me in.

“But I don’t know that I’m today’s stand-out performer,” he continues. “You seemed pretty convincing yourself for a while.”

It’s not hard to act when you have good source material to draw on.

Maybe it was a little too easy to let myself get into the spirit of things. That’s the thing about playing the lottery. It lies. When you think it’s going well, it’s just getting ready to slap you down. I glance in his direction. His gaze flicks toward me, and then slides away.

No. This is just an accident. A one-off thing. A little errant chemistry, nothing big.

I shrug. “Well. I can’t let you take all the Oscars.”

“Yeah?” He can’t hold my gaze long; he’s driving. Still, it feels like an eternity before he looks away. An eternity where my pulse picks up, where my hands grow hot.

“About that source material.” His voice is low and it seems to lodge deep inside me, an insistent thrum of sensation running up and down my spine. “I think we should talk about the source material.”