Page 27 of In the Net (Sin Bin Stories #5)

SEBASTIAN

J amie’s trying to talk to the girl he likes. It’s painful to watch.

Felix and I are sitting at a table on the first floor of Last Word, sipping our coffees and watching the interaction.

I was on the money that day I shared a table with Harper here before we went to Paris. The short, gorgeous, but kinda mean-looking girl named Carmen who caught my eye was in fact the girl Jamie has a crush on.

She’s working behind the counter at the café right now. We just peer-pressured Jamie to go up and buy a muffin so he’d have an excuse to talk to her. We can see them exchanging some words, but we can’t hear what they’re saying.

Judging by Carmen’s face, which remains flat, forbidding, and completely devoid of anything approximating interest, I wouldn’t bet that it’s going well for our boy.

When Jamie comes back to our table, Felix leans toward him and asks eagerly, “So, how did it go?”

Jamie’s shoulders are slumped, disappointment radiating from him. “Umm … I don’t think it went great.”

“Well, what did you say to her?” Felix asks.

“I, um, asked her how she likes working here.”

“What’d she say?”

“She said, could be worse, I guess .”

“Then what’d you say?”

“I said, oh .”

I press my lips together, trying not to laugh.

Felix sighs. “Okay, then what?”

“Well … I kinda just stood there, and she asked if I needed anything else.”

“And then you said, your number , right?” Felix asks.

“Uh, no. I said, no .”

Felix looks nonplussed. “And that’s it? That was the conversation?”

Blushing, Jamie nods.

Felix nods his head slowly, like he’s realizing he has a lot of work ahead of him. “Well, at least it wasn’t an utter catastrophe. Like, you didn’t throw up on her. That’s gotta count for something.”

Jamie’s tall, good-looking, captain of the hockey team, and everyone who gets to know him loves him. It’s bizarre enough that he’s still a virgin as a college Junior. On top of that, of course the one girl I’ve seen him really interested in has a personality like she’s sculpted out of ice.

I reach over and snag Jamie’s muffin, pulling off a piece and popping it into my mouth.

“Mmm, chocolate chip,” I say through my chews.

“Hey, my muffin!”

“You didn’t even want it. Felix and I just made you get it as an excuse to talk to Carmen. Here, Felix, try some of our muffin.”

Felix munches on a piece. “Not bad.”

Jamie gives us a flat look. “This is no way to treat your captain.”

“Alright, Jamie, we don’t have a game next Saturday, so on Friday we’re hitting the club and I’m giving you more lessons on how to approach women,” Felix says.

As Jamie and Felix talk, a realization that should’ve been obvious hits me for the first time.

For the next month and a half, until after Harper’s cousin’s wedding, I’m not going to be able to be with a girl at all. No dates, no hooking up, no flirting in bars.

I can’t believe that fact didn’t even occur to me until now. It didn’t jump out as a reason why I should have never offered to be her wedding date the way I did.

But what’s really weird, is that as I think about the next fake date we’re going on tomorrow evening, I don’t even mind.

Harper’s eyebrows tug together in confusion after she pulls the door open. “Sebastian? What are you doing here?”

Wearing a teasing grin, I shrug. “Well, I remember how impatient you were for me to show up last time. Figured this time, you’d appreciate me being early.”

Her gaze narrows on me. “I was impatient because you were almost half an hour late.”

“And now I’m early, so you don’t have to sit in front of the clock and watch the seconds tick by with bated breath. You’re welcome.”

Harper is at a loss for words, so I brush right past her into her house.

With a sigh of defeat, she closes the door. “You’re, like, almost an hour early, Sebastian. You really don’t have anything better to do than inconvenience me with your presence?”

I guess I should have something better to do. But I’ve recently discovered that seeing Harper flustered is really entertaining, and I want to take advantage of it while this arrangement lasts.

“I should see your place, anyway,” I say. “What if at the wedding I make some quip about you being a clean freak when everyone knows you’re notoriously messy? I need to know how my girlfriend lives.”

Huh. It’s weird how nice it felt saying my girlfriend like that. Really weird. Liking biting into a food you’ve never had before, that doesn’t look appealing, but when you taste it, it’s immediately a new favorite.

“You might be overthinking how good our cover needs to be,” Harper responds. “This isn’t a CIA mission.”

“We shouldn’t underestimate how eager Mackenzie might be to trip us up.”

Begrudging acknowledgement shines in her eyes. “I guess you’re right about that,” she sighs. She spreads her arms toward the interior of the house. “Well, here it is.”

I nod, like I’m taking everything in and silently judging. “Common areas are clean at least. But that’s not a surprise, since Maddie lives here. I’m sure your room upstairs is a disaster, and you wouldn’t want anyone seeing it on short notice. I understand.”

I don’t know why I’m goading her like this. I guess I just like the way it makes crimson seep into her cheeks and her brow furrow.

She props her hands on her hips. “If you want to see my bedroom so that you’ll have something to fill your depraved fantasies with later, just say so.”

My lips twitch, and they’re sure as hell not the only thing on my body that does. Especially since the way she has her arms propped has the fabric of her shirt pulled tighter over her pert, round tits.

“I doubt piles of your dirty, stinking clothes and stacks of your unwashed dishes up there are going to be fueling any of my fantasies. My nightmares, maybe.”

Her face twists in vexation. Without a word, she turns on her heels and marches up the stairs. I follow behind her with a smirk, because I just knew that it would be impossible for Harper to resist the urge to prove me wrong.

“I know I’m just taking the bait,” Harper says as she opens her bedroom door on the second floor, “but here you go, just to keep you from making stupid jokes for the rest of the day.”

I step into her room, and immediately a pulse of electricity shoots up my spine. My eyes go right to her bed. It’s unmade, with the blanket crumpled on top of her floral-pattern sheets. It’s a queen-sized bed. Plenty of room for both of us. Plenty of room for me to toss her around however I?—

The thickening feeling behind my pants tells me I need to jump off that train of thought.

I yank my gaze away from her bed, looking for something else to direct it to. My eyes settle on her bookshelf.

I let out a low whistle of appreciation as I approach it. It’s almost as tall as me, and every shelf is crammed full of books, most of them stacked two rows deep.

“Damn, Harper. With all this reading you do, I don’t know how you found the time to learn to be so annoying.”

From the corner of my eye, I see her fold her arms. “Some things just come naturally, I guess.”

My lips quirk as I scan her shelves. I recognize some of my favorite books, along with plenty that have been on my to-read list forever. There are even a couple romance novels interspersed. Does Harper have a soft side?

“Alright, Sebastian. Now that you’ve satisfied your fetishistic curiosity to see my room, can you get out of it so I can get changed for our … meeting?”

“Our meeting?” I repeat the words, my chest hitching with a chuckle. “And they say romance is dead.”

Harper and I are going on another fake date to a coffee place in town, mainly for the purpose of hashing out all the nuts and bolts of this arrangement: expectations, ground rules, etc.

Harper clasps her hands in front of her chest and plasters on the most ironic and insincere smile I’ve ever seen. “Please, honey, can you give me some privacy so I can get changed for our incredibly romantic and not at all fake date?”

Even though it was dripping in irony, something about her calling me honey sends a thrill shooting through my bloodstream.

I wait for her downstairs, really glad that none of her roommates are home right now. Because I can’t keep myself from imagining her getting changed in her room right above my head, and I can’t stop my cock from tenting my pants as I do.

The next day, I go to my Short Fiction class. The one I’m taking with Harper.

I don’t go to my usual seat.

Yesterday, at our meeting , as Harper so romantically referred to it, we fleshed out the details of this fake relationship.

Neither of us will see other people until after the wedding.

No dating, no hookups. Whenever we’re around Mackenzie, we’ll act lovey-dovey.

We’ll go on public dates once a week, to be seen and to get used to being around each other so we’re not stilted and awkward when all her family is paying attention to us.

She expressed skepticism that I’d be able to abide by the no hookups condition.

I don’t blame her. A couple weeks ago, I would’ve doubted it, too.

But, for whatever reason, I don’t find any girls catching my eye lately. Between the beginning of the season, the Paris trip, everything that’s happened with Bryce, this arrangement with Harper—I guess my mind has just been too occupied with other things.

Now that I’m in this frame of mind where I don’t really care about flirting and hooking up, I think it’ll be easy for me to push through and stay that way until after the wedding.

Harper’s already here, and instead of going to my usual seat across the room from her, I walk right to the seat next to her. The guy who usually sits there is just slinging off his bookbag.

“Hey, bro,” I say to him with a nod. “Mind if we switch seats for the rest of the semester?”

He shrugs, like he couldn’t care less. “Sure, no problem.”

Harper turns to me as I set my weight down into the seat next to her. “What are you doing?”

“Sitting next to my girlfriend.”

Her cheeks turn a rosy hue, and a strange feeling beats in my chest.

Maybe I should be worried about how much I enjoy saying that word.