The Decoy Girlfriend(77)

Freya glances up from her typewritten pages, startled to discover how difficult it is to pull herself back into the present. She’s cozily reclining, wearing a tee Hero sent that reads i fought writer’s block and won. With some surprise, she realizes it’s almost time for lunch.

That morning, she’d extricated herself from the warmth of Taft’s arms at 5:00 a.m., but even though she’d shut her office door and tried to type quietly, Taft had woken by six. Freya hadn’t realized until she’d smelled the coffee he’d started. Perhaps sensing she was in the zone, he let her work without interruption after thoughtfully bringing her the French press, a ham-and-cheese croissant, and a bowl of cut cantaloupe.

Blink, blink, blink. “Sorry, say again?”

His smile is knowing. “Reading anything good?”

“Five-star excellence,” she says with a laugh.

He starts to frown.

“No, seriously,” she hastens to tell him. “It’s good.”

It hadn’t taken him long to figure out that self-deprecating statements were part and parcel of authorhood—Freya, at least, confesses that her ego is simultaneously deeply insecure and intolerably confident. It’s cute how he makes it a point to protest whenever he thinks she’s taking a dig at herself.

“Yeah? The typewriter helped?”

It’s impossible to miss his eagerness to be helpful. He doesn’t want credit, just the contentedness of doing something for her. It’s never in a showy way, either. Despite his leading-man looks, it constantly surprises her how okay he is with being in the background.

A hasty part of Freya wants to hand over her pages and let him see for himself, but she knows that if she does, she’ll start second-guessing everything and itch to start over the way she nearly did when he caught a glimpse at her screen last week.

She grins. “I’m so close to writing ‘The End.’ I just hit seventy thou.” Or what she guesstimates is seventy thousand words—it’s hard to tell when a typewriter doesn’t come with a word counter. She riffles through the pages, still not over how much there is, or that she was so engrossed that she almost forgot it was her own writing she’d been reading.

“Freya! That’s incredible! Now we have to do something to celebrate!”

His shout brings Hen traipsing back into the living room.

Where Freya downplays her pride, Taft displays it for all to see. She smothers a smile, imagining him as the perfect supportive Instagram boyfriend, filming her doing silly promo TikToks and Instagram Reels with her books for the likes. But he’d probably be adamant about staying out of view so he didn’t steal her thunder, even though she’d tease him that the whole point of dating a superstar was to capitalize on his face. He’d roll his eyes, make some joke about how—

Taft’s hand lands on Freya’s knee. “Penny for them?” At her confused look, he smiles gently and traces shapes against her skin. “Your thoughts.”

“Just thinking about you,” she tells him. His eyes darken. “My drafting brain is still on. I lost myself for a second, fictionalizing a moment between us a little bit in the future.”

“Know me that well, do you?” He continues the soft, lazy touches, this time tickling the back of her knee. It’s a place he loves to kiss, especially after he found out it shoots meteor showers down her legs, a fact he derives great pleasure out of exploiting at every opportunity.

She grins. “Well, Google is very informative.”

“?‘Google,’ she says,” he says through a laugh, like he can’t believe it. He brings her hand to his lips, turns her wrist to face up, then kisses that shivery spot ardently. “If you have more questions for me, all you need to do is ask.”

Freya’s face burns and she brings her stack of pages up to hide her face.

Yes, she’s keenly aware of the fact that he’s seen her sweaty and shrieking his name, but mortification never crossed her mind once during any of their sexy times. But being caught allowing herself to be vulnerable, and asking that of him in return, is a different story.

“You can play with me whenever you want,” he says, the double entendre sinking into her until her feet squirm in his lap. But the next thing he says is serious. “Honestly, you have only to ask, Freya. There’s pretty much nothing I’d deny you.”

“What if I want to spend all weekend with you right here at home? I could keep working, and you could finish reading your book. I could help you run lines for that indie movie audition on Monday.”

It’s not the first time she’d referred to his place as home, but it hits different this time.

This cozy Saturday-morning domesticity allows them to be themselves—Freya and Taft. Anything else means donning a mask again. And that’s getting harder and harder to do. She can see from his face that the idea of holing up here holds a certain appeal for him, too.

“We could do that,” he agrees. “Or . . . And I know you have a deadline, and all our scheduled appearances have been taking time away from that, but how would you feel about getting out of the house for a little?”

“I thought you said we were free this weekend.”

Taft’s eyes meet hers steadily. “We are.”

“So . . . this would be, like, a date?”

“I wanna show you my world. Mine, Taft’s, regular guy. Not Taft, actor.”