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She takes a deep breath, and her gaze slides back to mine. She’s annoyed again. Good. I can handle that. “For how long?”

“Rafe and I thought a few months would be best.” We discussed more than that. He hopes my presence will make the stalker reckless. That it’ll cause him to make a mistake, to leave a trace. Then we can get him. That we can goad him into revealing too much.

Life won’t be great for him when he’s caught.

I’m not taking any chances. Not when I’ve been the one entrusted with her safety. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s failure. And I’m not going to fail at this.

“A fewmonths?” Her voice is high. “I can’t pretend to be your girlfriend for months.”

I grit my teeth. “Stopping you from dating, is it?”

“Yes, actually. It would interfere with that, now that you mention it.” She takes a deep breath. “What would this even mean? To keep pretending in front of your mother? Yourfamily?”

My mother has already called, asking when Nora can come by for dinner. “Yes,” I admit. “It would help me.”

“Because you’re drowning in beautiful, single women, and it’ssucha problem for you.” Nora’s voice is acidic, and the heat of it makes a smile twitch at the corner of my lips. “What a problem.”

“You get tons of male attention,” I point out. “You can’t tell me you don’t. Men ask you out all the time, right? And you still want to practice dating.”

“That’s different.”

“Is it? We have the same issue, just different ways of dealing with it.”

She narrows her eyes at me. “I told you that I’m not willing to give up my practicing.”

“If you’re pretending to be my girlfriend, you’reonlydating me.” I press my hands flat against the table. “So if you want to practice? You’ll practice with me.”

CHAPTER11

NORA

His words won’t make their way through the haze of hungoverness. I blink at him. “You can’t be serious.”

“I’m always serious.”

That makes me roll my eyes. I know enough about West Calloway to know that’s not the least bit true.Practice with me.He doesn’t know what he’s suggesting. Doesn’t knowjusthow inexperienced I am, thank god. I’ll never tell him that.

“You want expensive dinners, Nora? You want flowers, and chocolates, and to flirt with no consequence?” His eyes are that amber color, the one that makes my stomach tighten. “Do it with me.”

I shake my head slowly. “You don’t mean that.”

“Why wouldn’t I?” He doesn’t look away from me, and his full focus is a terrifying thing. “Tell me, then. Why do you want to practice so badly?”

He’s too intimidating to tell this to, and yet the words tumble forth. “I’m not good at dating. I almost never do it, but I want to fall in love. I want a relationship… So I need to get comfortable with it.” This is humiliating. I want to sink through the seat, and that humiliation makes my voice testy. “I need to practice.”

“You must have men asking you out all the time,” he says. His face tightens, draws together with confusion, like what I’m saying is idiotic. Makes no sense. I know I should laugh—or giggle—and brush this away. Say the thing he wants to hear.

But I’m so tired of pretending.

“Guys ask me out sometimes. But I say no.” I curl my fingers into a fist, my nails digging into the flesh of my palm. “They want things of me, they have expectations… and I can’t relax. Can’t have fun with them when I feel like they just want a performance from me.”

He’s quiet for a long moment. Just looks at me.

Any moment now, he’s going to laugh. Give me a sneering response.

Instead, he just nods. “Right. Come, we’re going to the library.”

He stands, and I look up at him. “Why?”