Page 33 of The Romance Rivalry

Sixteen secret baby

I sit with my head down, forehead pressed against the pages of my statistics book, begging for the concepts to sink in. I’ve

been studying for hours, trying to distract myself from overthinking, overanalyzing everything that happened with Aiden today.

Thing is, he’s right. Together, we can knock out the lit extra credit easily. I have to get over the hurdle of making it so

hard on myself for no reason at all. I have to take accountability for fucking up and letting Aiden and my professor down.

And I have to take the help offered me to do the work.

But where does all of this leave me and Aiden? He must be so sick of having to help me, having to save me. All I wanted was to be the main character of my life. But the role I seem to be settling into is the damsel in distress. Maybe that’s what Aiden finds attractive in me. Maybe that’s the reason he’s interested.

I don’t want to be the girl who needs saving. I want to be the one who can save herself.

For now, I face the next item on my List of Woes—statistics. Aka, a foreign concept told in gibberish that will never make

sense to me. Which leads me back to being unmotivated. Which makes me not take the time necessary to learn it so that it does

make sense to me. And the cycle goes on and on.

I lift my head and drop it back down on the book.

“Not today, Satan,” I say, lifting and dropping.

“I will overcome your attempt to bring me down, Mr. Statistics.” Lift. Drop.

“By the power of Grayskull.” Lift. Drop. Onto a soft pillow of a hand. I look up and Jeannette is standing there, hand on

my book, cushioning my self-punishment.

“It’s gonna leave a mark,” she says.

I sigh, deeply.

“I don’t want to do this...” I whine.

“Here’s something that helps me: What do you want to do right now?” she asks.

I pucker my lips, pushing them out as far from my face as I can as I think about what I want to do in this moment. “WHAT do

I want to do? What do I WANT to do? What do I want to DO?”

“I fear you might be a lost cause.”

“I know what I want to do! I want to log in online and check my accounts and reply to comments,” I say.

“You have a twisted view of fun. But okay, now that you know what you want to do, use it as your motivator. A carrot. Study

a little statistics, and then you get to read a comment. Ten minutes of studying, ten minutes of reading. Back and forth.

The reward system.”

“Huh.” I think it over. “That could work. I’m gonna give it a try.”

Jeannette gives a satisfied nod and goes back to her own desk to study. I wonder what her carrot is.

I open up my laptop and log into the account where I posted my most recent review. Two hundred and twenty notifications? I

wonder if some of these are comments people wanted to leave about the Live Aiden and I did the other night. I’m itching to

read them all. But this is my reward. First...

I pull my open Stats book closer.

I read the book to my left. The normal curve... aka bell curve, aka normal distribution... data near the mean is more frequent than data far from

the mean...

I read the screen on my right.

@bodiceripper96: Fake dating? Ha, someone’s gonna need to tell Aiden it’s not real. He’s whooped.

Yummy carrot.

To my left. Regression... analyzing which of two variables is of interest...

To my right.

@givemeallthechilipeppers: I am LIVING for this dating-by-trope contest. My money’s on Irene. She’s got this. No one knows

tropes better than she does.

I love carrots.

Left. Confidence intervals... range around a measurement that conveys how precise that measurement is...

Right.

@maddylovesbooksandbeer: OMG, I wonder if Aiden is using all of this stuff with Irene as research for the book he told us

he was writing in his Live last month. I can’t wait to read whatever he writes. I know it’s gonna be so good.

Wait. What?

I go back and read the comment again. Aiden is writing a book? I knew he wanted to be a writer, but I didn’t know he was actually

working on something now. How does he find the time with school and dating and... me?

I don’t look back to my left at my statistics book, but stay right where I am, eyes moving on down the list of comments.

I go to the next one.

@omegaverselover999: Art imitating life or the other way around? Either way, sounds like he’s getting all the inspiration

he needs. I hope he finishes his book soon. I’m so freaking excited.

I move on to the next one after that.

@giareadsalldayallnight: Enemies-to-lovers is his favorite trope. It’s actually perfect he’s fake dating Irene for research.

And the next one.

@tamlinisabitch463: Yeah, it’s obvious it’s not real. They don’t even like each other. Aiden’s just doing this for the writing.

But it’s hilarious to watch anyways.

I freeze. A blackness starts to creep into my thoughts and emotions, covering everything until I’m narrowed down to one tiny

point— it’s not real .

What is his book about? I wonder. Is it a romance? Is it enemies to lovers? Does it feature a rivalry, a challenge, a pathetic girl who’s never known

love and a guy who swoops in to rescue her?

Has Aiden been using me, us, this contest, our relationship this whole time to get content for the book he’s writing?

He wouldn’t do that.

Would he?

I think back to the moment we first met in person. How he came to me to introduce himself and partner up.

When I told him about my plan, he was the one to suggest we make it into a challenge, a competition.

He was the one to suggest fake dating.

He kissed me first.

He was in control of every single step of our relationship. So it would be easy for him to direct exactly what he wanted to explore, to research for his novel.

It never made sense to me why someone like Aiden would fall for someone like me. I never felt completely certain that he actually

felt the same way I did. There was always something making me wonder.

He always said just the right words. Did just the right thing. Played the part of the romance hero perfectly.

Played me so easily.

It’s not real.

I grab my sweatshirt off my bed because I can’t get my body temperature up to where I’m not freezing. I grab a coat from the

closet and put that on as well. And then I stuff my feet into my Uggs and rush out the door, barely registering Jeannette’s

voice calling out to me asking if I’m okay.

No, I’m not okay. Not at all.

I run down the lit pathway that connects all the dorm buildings to the brick facade two doors down from mine. I take the stairs

to the second floor and pound on the door to Aiden’s room. The whiteboard on his door reads Aiden is: IN and Currently Reading: Lover Awakened by J. R. Ward .

It’s not real. Even these small, seemingly sweet things are fake. No one is that attentive, that supportive, that perfect.

Aiden opens the door, his sleepy eyes registering who is behind the pounding. When he sees me, his entire disposition changes.

Relaxed. Happy.

Fake.

“Hi,” he says, his voice like butter. Like he’s relieved to see me.

Fake.

He reaches out to take hold of me, but I push past him into the room. I stare at his bed for a brief second, remembering what

happened there.

Fake.

“What’s wrong?” he asks me. “Irene? What happened? C’mere.” He reaches out for me again. And I’m so so tempted to just let

him pull me in. To forget everything and let him hold me, even if it’s not real on his side. The emotions are true on mine.

I can just pretend, too, right?

But I don’t move.

“Is it true? You’re...” I struggle to even get the words out. “...writing a book?”

He stares at me, brow furrowed, trying to figure me out. “Yeah, I told you that the first day we met. Remember?” Slick. Playing

it off like it’s no big deal. Like it’s not a betrayal. “Wait, what happened?”

“I saw the comments. Your followers.” I try to pull up in my head exactly what I read, though much of it is a ribbon swirl

with the conclusions I made because of them. “Our competition, our fake dating, everything about us sounds just like the book

that you’re writing, doesn’t it. You’re using us, me, as research.” I cringe just saying the words. I’m the fool who has to

speak the truth with her own lips. They feel like poison.

“Okay, I think you’re misunderstanding what’s happening here.” He holds his hands up as if to calm a petulant child. “Yes, I’m writing a book. I shared this with you from the beginning.”

I take a step back. He slowly takes a step forward, not allowing me to make space between us.

“And yes, our relationship, the things happening between us, what I’m feeling inspires my writing. I’ve never felt like this

about anyone before. Experiencing it now, with you, has made my writing more real, more detailed, more alive...”

I step back. Aiden steps forward.

He says all the “right” things.

Fake.

“You’re... writing about me without my permission. You’re using me. You kept this huge thing about me, from me. In fact, you seem to keep a lot of things from me. I trusted you.”

I step back. I’m not even sure why I’m so angry and so hurt. But the feelings overwhelm me like a tornado whirling inside

me, circling back again and again to remind me that Aiden’s deception confirms what I’ve been too afraid to admit... that

there’s no way he’d be with someone as unremarkable as me without a reason. And now I know.

But this time Aiden doesn’t move forward. His feet are rooted, eyes narrowed, lips tightened.

“How about how you kept the fact that you were failing lit from me? Trust is earned and it needs to go both ways. You’re not exactly an open book, Irene. Getting anything honest out of you is like pulling teeth. And don’t get me wrong, I am in it. I know this and still keep trying to make my way in even though you don’t make it easy. Because you’re worth it.”

“Stop saying all the right things. Stop talking like you’re reciting a romance novel. This is real life. I’m not fodder for

your fiction.”

Aiden lets out a frustrated sigh as he runs his fingers through his hair, pulling at the ends. “Explain to me what you think

is so wrong here. I’m not using you, I’m not pretending to have feelings for you so I can turn around and put it into my book.

I know it’s hard for you to believe something is real when it’s actually something you want...”

“Don’t act like you know me. Is this how you’ve written your main character?”

“My main character is a badass. Who cares so much about everyone around her that she often overlooks her own needs, her own

desires. But it’s exactly this quality that makes the hero fall in love with her.”

“Sounds like a nice fairy tale,” I say.

“I thought this is what you were going for here in college. This plan of yours. To find your Happily Ever After. To use tropes

written in books to direct you to your true love. How is this any different? I’m using my very real feelings about a very

real person to inspire what I’m writing.”

I shake my head. I don’t know what to believe. It’s not so much that he’s writing about me, though that does sting. It’s that I can’t believe his feelings were ever real, not when there’s another motivation attached to it.

“You’re so determined to sabotage this thing between us because you’ve decided for some reason that you’re not good enough

for me. Or that you’re too afraid to disappoint me for one reason or another. You know this. You’re the romance expert. You

know how this works—the main character’s wound is as clear as day to every single person except herself.”

“That’s not true,” I protest. “That’s not what I’m doing. I just don’t think it’s a good time for us right now. I’ve got stuff

to focus on. It’s why I couldn’t match with any of the other guys either. It’s not you...”

“Oh no, you don’t get to pull the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ card. It didn’t work out with any of the other guys you dated because

you weren’t invested, you weren’t interested. They were part of a plan, but you never believed the endgame was to fall in

love. You know it’s different between us.”

He throws around words like “endgame” and “love” so easily when there’s nothing easy about this at all. I shake my head, denying

what he’s saying but unable to formulate words that will convince him he’s wrong.

He closes his eyes, gathering his composure, going for one more attack. But when he opens them, he looks at me with a sadness I’ve never seen from him. He’s giving up. “Irene, if I’m willing to put everything on the line, my entire online presence, because I believed from the very beginning that you were the one, my HEA, why can’t you meet me even a fraction of the way there? I know you care about me. But you’re too afraid.

“I don’t know how to make you believe me when I say my feelings for you are real.” Aiden speaks as if reading my mind, as

if sensing exactly my hesitation. “I don’t know what lies you’re telling yourself in your head. I think you’re so engrossed

in trying not to disappoint others, you often forget what the truth is. And this has spread to your own self. You don’t want

to be disappointed, so you lie to yourself. And I’m sorry if this hurts to hear. But I need you to work through those untruths

you’re telling yourself and hear me. I need you to hear me and believe. I love you, Irene.”

My eyes fill with tears, and I can no longer see Aiden clearly. I always believed the first time someone said those words

to me, it would feel like heaven. So why does the reality of them actually hurt so badly? I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve

to be loved by Aiden. He’s wrong.

“No,” I say. “I’m not good enough. I can’t pass lit. I can’t be the best online. I can’t be anyone’s girlfriend. I’m lost.

I’m stuck. I’m broken. I’m not good enough. I’m a fraud. I’m unable to love or be loved.”

“You’re wrong. You’re not just good enough, you’re better than you’ve ever imagined. But if I have to be certain of this enough for the both of us, I will. Until I show you exactly who you are, until you see and realize exactly how incredible you are.”

He reaches out and grabs my arms, giving me a gentle shake. “Stop lying to yourself,” he pleads.

“I don’t deserve your love,” I say.

“Hurt/comfort,” he responds.

“What?”

“I’m trying to make you understand by putting it into the tropes you know better than anyone. You think you’re not good enough

for me? Too broken? Then we can be hurt/comfort.”

I shake my head. “I don’t want to play this game with you,” I say.

“He falls first, he falls harder,” he says.

“Stop it, Aiden.” I turn toward the door, ready to make my escape, to get out of here and not have to face this right now.

“Runaway bride,” he says.

I close my eyes, squeezing them shut, willing him to leave me alone.

“Ugly duckling turns into a swan,” he says. “Though you have got to know you haven’t been ugly a day in your life.”

“You haven’t seen pictures of me on my tenth birthday after I cut my own hair,” I say.

He chuckles, and the sound tries to soothe me, tries to be a balm to my tender heart. “I wish you’d show me.”

I drop my shoulders, lay down my shields, put down my armor. I’m so tired. “Got any more of those tropes at the ready to attack

me with?”

He purses his lips, looking up at the ceiling in thought. “Love triangle?”

I raise an eyebrow.

“Me, you, and the impostor you think you are.”

“Har har.”

It’s quiet. It’s quiet in my head, too.

My fight-or-flight response has always been to run. I hate confrontation. But somehow, when it comes to Aiden, I never leave.

I always put my dukes up ready to be challenged. And he’s stepped up and taken me on every time.

“I appreciate you fighting for me. But I don’t know if that makes a healthy foundation for a relationship. I think I just

need to step back for now. I have a lot to figure out. You’re right, you know? I have been so absorbed with pleasing others,

I’ve lost my grip on the truth, even for myself. I need to work through that. Before I ruin every bit of what’s good in my

life. Including you.”

He nods, but he can’t hide the hurt in his eyes. “Okay,” he says. “But, Irene?”

“Yeah?”

“I’ll be here when you need me.”

“You always have been Aiden. But for once, I don’t want to be someone who needs saving. I want... to be able to save myself.”

I step close to him and give him a kiss on the cheek.

“I want to be worthy of you,” I whisper into his ear. “And I want to be worthy of me, too.”