Chapter 17

17

FIA

T hree associates met me and Liv at the door of Vivaldi’s before we’d even stepped off the street and back onto the sidewalk. Charlotte cheerfully opened the door, peppering me with questions like we’d been friends since girlhood.

Liv, who I hadn’t seen in over two weeks, kept glancing at me, however, not buying the aloof, slightly bored expression I’d practiced in the mirror all morning after asking her to go with me to find a gown for Deck the Decks. She had known something was up the second she saw me when we met at a coffee shop first, but so far, she hadn’t said a word about it yet.

“Okay, so, I’m thinking—just hear me out—mermaid theme. Mermaid cut, colors.” Charlotte beamed and gestured wildly. “Glitter, sparkles, the nines.”

“I’m down for whatever.” I laughed into my gingerbread latte. “But, um, let’s do something blue again.”

“Blue, got it.” Charlotte and her minions fluttered away, while Liv and I sat down in the “viewing dock,” as I liked to call it.

“We have the whole store to ourselves,” I mused, crossing my legs.

“Yeah, we do.” Liv looked me up and down before smirking over the rim of her coffee cup. “So, how big is it?”

I almost choked. “What?”

“You’re obviously sleeping with Mr. Billionaire.”

“We are not sleeping together.”

“Then what? You’ve been blushing since I met up with you this morning. Have things taken an interesting turn, just like I warned you about?”

“We kissed.”

“Was it part of the show the two of you are putting on for the public?”

I bit down on my lip. “Um… no. Neither kiss?—”

“Twice? You’ve kissed him twice ?”

I looked away and shrugged. “In my defense, he started it.”

“Mr. Billionaire kissed you first… twice?” Her eyes brightened as she gaped at me. “Oh, no. And to think I was so worried about you falling in unrequited love with him! He’s falling in love with you , Fia! Hell yeah. That’s my girl.”

“See, this is why I wasn’t going to tell you anything,” I teased. “This isn’t some fairy tale, all right? He’s not in love with me, and I’m not in love with him.” I took a long drink from my coffee, telling myself the heat rising to my cheeks was from the hot milk and not a blush flaring to life over my skin. “We’re just friends.”

“Friends who kiss,” she said, grinning.

“Friends who make out—hey,” I hissed, leveling her with a look. I hadn’t meant to say that out loud, not in the slightest. “It’s not that serious.”

“You’re bright red, Fia.”

I huffed a breath and sank deeper into my chair. “I am not.”

“You are! Come on, tell me! What’s the deal between you two and when do I get to meet him?”

“You won’t be meeting him because this isn’t real. It’s fake. Everything about it is fake!” I did not sound convinced, and Liv saw right through me, pursing her lips. “Okay, fine. I don’t know how to feel. I’m all over the place about it. Sometimes all I want to do is just grab his face and kiss him hard enough to make him forget that we aren’t actually dating and then I remember who he really is and how I ended up in this position!” I hissed the words through gritted teeth as Charlotte started moving in our direction with a hoard of dresses for me to try on.

Liv looked at me like I was crazy. “So? So what? You like him. I haven’t seen you this worked up about anyone before.”

“I—I liked Jake?—”

She raised her brows at me. “No, you didn’t. Not like this. You settled for Jake. You tolerated him.”

Losing my patience and unsure how to get my feelings across, I said in a rushed whisper, “I can’t like Mason this much because he’s Colin’s friend. Colin would blow his top if he found out we’d been making out on my couch like a couple of teenagers!”

“Easy fix. Don’t freaking tell him!”

“Are we ready?” Charlotte squealed in a sing-song voice, dollar signs lighting behind her eyes.

Liv and I exchanged equally catty glances. This conversation wasn’t over, whether I liked it or not.

I tried on dress after dress for the next hour. For a moment, we moved away from blue, and I nearly settled on a bright fuchsia-colored dress made of sequins that did indeed make me look like I’d flopped right out of the ocean onto some billionaire’s yacht, but I ended up passing on it, my mind locked on the moment Mason had seen me in the blue dress from the Blue Winter auction. I wanted him to look at me like that again.

Standing in a bra and panties in front of Charlotte, I fought the urge to throw in the towel. But I should have known better than to think she’d let me leave without finding the perfect dress. “I have something upstairs that would be perfect but it’s one of a kind and spendy .”

I was over it at this point, starving, tired, and far too in my head about Mason to even care what dresses came next. “I’ll try it on. What’s the worst that can happen?”

I found out ten minutes later while standing on the platform outside the dressing room in the most beautiful dress I’d ever seen in my life. It was a mermaid cut and shimmered from the bust to the hem in an array of blues and teals that seemed to move when I turned my body this way and that way. Beads and sequins danced in the soft lighting, and the dress fit me like a glove without any alternations needed.

I looked incredible. I felt incredible. But then I heard the price.

“I can’t,” I growled to Liv, who was just as pale as I was as we watched Charlotte and her team discuss accessories.

“You might have to,” Liv said. “I mean, just look at yourself in that thing.”

“I could go with the pink one.”

She shook her head. “Nothing is going to compare. Mason is going drop down on one knee?—”

“Or drop dead when he sees that I spent thirty thousand dollars on a gown!”

“It’s Oscar De La Renta! When are you going to get an opportunity to wear something like this again? Just keep the tag on, okay? Return it on Monday.”

My heart was thundering in my chest as Charlotte appeared with shoes in my size and the faux-fur-trimmed cloak that went with the gown.

All in all, the total came out to thirty-five thousand and I had to fight the urge to throw up the second we left the store with several bags and a dress box. Rex was waiting on the corner for us because I didn’t have the nerve to take the subway home with what was the equivalent of my entire income for the year on my person.

Liv was eating it up, though. “He definitely knows you spent that much money by now. I’m sure his bank sends him notifications about transactions.”

“Don’t remind me. I’m going to have a panic attack if I think about it anymore.”

“He’s a billionaire, Fia. It’s fine!” But even she didn’t sound convinced.

I groaned, hanging my head in my hands. I was about to tell Rex to turn around and go back to the shop so I could return the dress when the car suddenly came to a stop. I looked up.

“Uh, Rex? This isn’t my apartment.”

“Mr. O’Leary told me you’ll need jewelry to wear with the gown you just purchased.” He switched off the engine. Instantly, I was sucked into the tension flooding the car. Liv was still as stone beside me as we stared blankly out the frosted window at the shopfront rising beside us.

“I can’t,” I whispered under my breath.

“You absolutely can,” Liv whispered back, slowly reaching toward me. Her hand brushed my chest as she popped the door handle and cold air rushed in. It was enough to break me out of my stupor.

I’d never been inside Tiffany’s before. I’d walked past it. I’d seen the Tiffany Blue shopping bags all over the city. I’d stood outside the glass and wondered what the place would smell like, what the floor would feel like beneath my feet, and how it would feel to walk confidently up to the counter and ask to see the diamonds they were known for.

Liv managed to get me out of the car. We shuffled up to the door, shocked to find that it swung open for us.

“Ms. Webster?” a young man in a fine black suit asked. His voice was kind, professional, with a hint of a French accent that only made this whole experience even more mind-numbingly unreal.

“Yeah?” I squeaked, but we were quickly ushered inside, guided through the gilded lobby and into a private room of dark blue velvet. Liv and I sat in chairs that molded to my body, oozing comfort I couldn’t afford. A crystal glass of pink champagne floated in front of me, but I shook my head as I fished my phone out of my purse.

I expected a missed call from Mason. I couldn’t believe I didn’t have a single text from him about the sheer amount of money I’d just charged to his card. Rex had seemed unruffled when he pulled in front of Tiffany’s and turned in his seat to look at me with nothing but a kind smile on his face.

This had to be a sick joke of some kind. Mason couldn’t be okay with this.

The French man hadn’t even told me his name, but he had a black phone pressed to his ear as he motioned for two nearly identical women dressed in impeccable black to come forward. They carried in several displays, set them down on the black velvet-covered table in the center of the room, and promptly left without making a single sound.

I felt like I was in an echo chamber as the man continued to speak to whomever was on the other line. Liv leaned forward to examine the jewelry, nudging me toward a set of diamond cluster earrings.

But my throat was dry. My mouth tight. My issue with this hit me with startling clarity.

I shouldn’t be guilty about this—about spending his money on something as trivial as a gown and diamonds—because this didn’t mean anything. I was an actor playing a role. I’d be dressing myself up like a pretty little doll to attend that pretty little party on a pretty big yacht. It meant nothing. None of this meant anything. It was just part of the scheme.

The version of me who would be hanging on Mason’s arm tomorrow wasn’t the same Fia who had just sat at the kitchen island at his apartment, eating sushi, my legs crossed and my feet bare while he teased me over glasses of wine.

Did I want this? This glittering, expensive life? Or did I want to still be Fia. To still sit and edit my photographs, to live in my cozy little studio with my broken Christmas tree?

Why did I feel like I couldn’t have both?

Why did my heart crunch into itself at the thought of losing Mason when I never really had him to begin with?

The push and pull of our relationship had my head spinning. I barely noted jewelry being fitted to my wrists, my fingers, my neck. I turned away when the man tucked the cluster earrings and a matching set of bracelets and a necklace in a bag. Liv accepted it for me. I wasn’t even asked for Mason’s card.

He probably had an account here.

I wondered if he’d done this before, to some other woman, to clear his conscience after taking things too far.

I kept my eyes on the cityscape as Rex drove us back to my apartment. Liv helped me carry all the bags upstairs, but she could sense something was wrong. My hands didn’t shake as I unlocked my door and opened it wide, sucking in a startled breath as the scent of pine—deep green and crisp—exploded through my head.

Liv gasped. I found it hard to breathe as I looked at the small but real Christmas tree in my living room, already painstakingly decorated, just how I would have done it myself.

There was a note on my kitchen counter, right next to a bottle of red wine identical to the one I’d shared with Mason a few days ago.

“ Colin let me in ,” the note read. “ I’m looking forward to tomorrow .”

Mason .