He grinned. “So…I hear you have a new girlfriend.”

I should’ve known that was coming. “Does mom know yet?”

She probably would’ve called me if she’d found out. When I made the agreement with Elena, I’d dismissed a passing thought about what I would tell my family. It didn’t seem pressing in the moment when we had so many other things to worry about.

Now that I was here with them, I didn’t want to lie and tell them I was in a real relationship. But my mom would be horrified I was in a fake relationship, so I didn’t really want to tell her that either, especially when she was hurt. It was important to her that Zane and I stayed grounded in spite of our fame and she’d be disappointed to know I was misleading people.

She’d been madly in love with my dad since she was sixteen. She would find the idea of a contract relationship distasteful, upsetting, and worst of all, a waste of time I could be using to find a match of my own.

I wasn’t surprised to find it was Elena’s face that popped into my head when I considered the idea of a match. There was a connection between us that went beyond our agreement, but because of how complicated our situation was, I didn’t know if we’d ever get to explore it.

Zane pulled me out of my thoughts. “Nope. She would’ve called me if she knew. But you won’t get away with that for long. Just because she doesn’t hang out on the interwebs much and has celebrity news blocked doesn’t mean someone isn’t going to bring it up with her eventually.”

I groaned, needing to unburden myself with my brother. “I didn’t think that part through when I signed up for a contract relationship.”

He slapped the table. “I fucking knew it.”

“How?” Had we not been as convincing as I thought we had?

Zane paused like he was finding the right words. “I mean this lovingly, but you always play it safe. There’s nothing safe about your fake girlfriend, so I wondered if there was a PR stunt afoot. But then that didn’t seem like you either, so I talked myself out of it. I thought you didn’t pull shenanigans like that. What’s the deal?”

I let out a deep sigh. “I don’t even know, man. I got in over my head with that Crown of Swords part and didn’t want to blow it. I saw the video of her with the VP and thought if some minuscule fraction of her presence could rub off on me, then I might be able to pull it off. I wasn’t allowed to hire her, so I thought I could pretend to date her to give us cover and she could teach me how to be Lucas Steel.”

“Is it working?”

How could I communicate how amazing she was? “Yeah. It’s unreal how smart she is and how well she can explain that stuff. Sometimes it feels more like therapy than a lesson, like she’s opening up what’s already in there instead of teaching me how to pretend. It’s wild.”