Not So Fake (The Real Thing Book 1) Read online

  Not So Fake

  Emma Lyon

  Not So Fake

  The Real Thing #1

  Emma Lyon

  Not So Fake © 2021 by Emma Lyon

  Cover Design by Black Jazz Design

  Edited by Alaina Kral

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author, except where permitted by law or for the use of brief quotations in a review.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Contents

  Synopsis

  1. Lane

  2. Zach

  3. Lane

  4. Zach

  5. Lane

  6. Zach

  7. Lane

  8. Zach

  9. Lane

  10. Zach

  11. Lane

  12. Zach

  13. Lane

  14. Zach

  15. Lane

  16. Zach

  17. Lane

  18. Zach

  19. Lane

  20. Zach

  21. Lane

  22. Zach

  23. Lane

  24. Zach

  25. Lane

  26. Zach

  27. Lane

  28. Zach

  29. Lane

  30. Zach

  31. Lane

  Epilogue

  A Note from Emma

  About the Author

  Synopsis

  Wanted: One fake boyfriend.

  Lane

  All I wanted was a date to my ex-boyfriend’s wedding. What I got was a blisteringly hot fake boyfriend I can’t seem to stop thinking about. One date turns into two, until my mom’s inviting Zach to our vacation home for the weekend. Now we’re lying to everyone, but I can’t help pretending it could actually be real.

  Zach

  All I wanted was to make some money to put myself through law school. If working for a dating service helps me do that, then who cares that I’m dating guys for money? It’s not like I have time for the real thing. But the more time I spend with Lane, the more all my plans fly out the window. Our relationship might be fake, but everything about us feels real.

  But a real relationship was never part of the deal, nor was falling for each other. But the lie that brought us together might be what keeps us apart.

  1

  Lane

  April

  “I’m going to go home, drink a gallon of Chardonnay, and then sleep for a week.”

  Cassie flopped down on the uncomfortable campaign headquarters couch we’d all taken turns sleeping on the last three weeks. She’d pulled her curly brown hair back in a ponytail and wore her GARRETT FOR SENATOR t-shirt over long sleeves, because it was always cold in headquarters.

  I nudged her with my foot. “This was just the primary. Wait until November.”

  Cassie groaned and threw an arm over her face. “Don’t remind me. I suddenly remember a pressing other engagement.”

  As if. Cassie was as passionate about the congressman’s election as I was. Though as his son, I wouldn’t quite call what I felt passion. I loved my father, but I knew him too well to hero worship him.

  I returned the exhausted nod of a volunteer leaving the confetti-strewn room. I should be thrilled that all our work had paid off in one intense night, and I was, but at the same time there was always a sense of emptiness at the end of campaign. From sixty to zero in a few crazy hours.

  Sixty million to zero was more like it.

  Cassie nodded at the screen of one of the monitors set up around the room showing my father being interviewed by one of the local stations. He had his arm around my mother and they both looked tired but happy. “Shouldn’t you be out in front of the cameras with him celebrating?”

  “Nope.” I had no interest in that side of things. At least my father respected my wish to stay out of his limelight for the most part, though that was probably my mother’s intervention. She’d always been a little more attuned to what I actually wanted, instead of what my father wanted for me.

  “Lane.” I stiffened at the voice. Bryce. I’d managed to mostly avoid Bryce these last couple of months.

  He looked as tired as we were, and his usually perfect hair was a little askew. I nearly reached out to smooth it back in place, the way I once would have, before I remembered.

  “Listen, I know this is a weird time to do this, but I wasn’t sure when I’d see you again, and I wanted to give this to you in person.”

  This was a heavy, square envelope he thrust at me. I took it automatically, not out of any desire to possess it. Looking down at the black, scripted letters of my name, I knew immediately what was inside.

  “Hope and I wanted you there. I really hope you can make it. It would mean a lot to me. To us.”

  Through sheer force of will I kept myself from crushing the envelope containing the invitation to Bryce and Hope’s wedding.

  “I also wanted to say congratulations,” Bryce continued, oblivious to my reaction. “This was a tough one, huh?” Somehow I managed another nod. “A bunch of us are going to the Quill. See you there?”

  “Sure,” I said, with what I thought was admirable casualness.

  Bryce got the hint and moved off, calling out to one of the other volunteers and clapping him on the back as if this had all been Bryce’s doing—the campaign, the win, everything. It had always been Bryce’s particular superpower to shift all credit to himself.

  “What a prick,” Cassie said savagely from the couch.

  I wished I could muster up her level of anger—the fact that I wasn’t more angry about how everything had gone down with Bryce had only fueled Cassie’s own—but I was too tired to generate an emotional response. Though I was pretty sure I’d have to deal with one later.

  “You’re not actually going to go, are you?”

  I shrugged. “He’s a friend of the family. He volunteered hundreds of hours to my father’s campaign.”

  “You’re hopeless, Lane,” she sighed, but without much heat. She’d resigned herself to what she called my inexplicable ability to forgive Bryce for dumping me for someone with the right anatomy to smooth his own political aspirations. “Listen, let’s go to the Quill, get hammered, and maybe if I get you drunk enough, you’ll finally tell Bryce to fuck off.”

  “Worth trying,” I said lightly. I stood and helped Cassie up off the couch. What I really wanted to do was sleep, but if I indulged her for a drink, I could slip out after, take an Uber home, and collapse into bed.

  I found my coat I’d flung over a chair earlier in the night, and slid the invitation into one of the inside pockets. Cassie was right: Bryce was a jerk, and I was crazy to even entertain going.

  But then I’d never been rational where Bryce was concerned.

  2

  Zach

  I took one look at the oblong envelope with the university’s seal in the corner and groaned. I’d known it was coming, but I’d put off thinking about it for so long I’d halfway hoped they’d forget.

  Fat chance of that happening.

  I folded the envelope and stuffed it in the back pocket of my jeans on my way out to catch the bus to work. It burned a hole in the denim all the way in, but I managed to put it out of my mind by the time I got off at my stop and walked the block and a half to the Quill.

  It was crowded for a Tuesday night in D.C. Seth threw me a thank God and get your ass back here look when I walked in. I shed my coat in the back and glanced in the mirror to make sure I was still presentable—I needed a haircut, but I managed to slick down the worst of it—before joining Seth behind the bar and sli
pping into the familiar rhythm of taking and filling drink orders.

  The steady stream of customers was a welcome distraction from the envelope weighing down the back of my jeans. It was a few hours before the crowd died down enough that I could even take a moment to breathe. Three guys were still sitting at the bar, and a group had come in a few minutes ago and grabbed a table in the back. Kayla had been taking their orders. Students, by the look of their jeans and casual shirts, but too old for undergrads. The bar was close enough to the university that we got a lot of grad students.

  One of them caught my eye, familiar enough that I wondered if I’d seen him in the bar before. Lean, a couple inches shorter than my six feet, blond hair flopping over his forehead. I checked in with my gaydar and got distinct possibility back. It had been so long since I’d had the time to be interested in someone that it was a surprise when my dick perked up and took notice, but maybe that was its way of further distracting me from the real problems in my life right now.

  “Lane Garrett.”

  “Huh?” I glanced at Seth, who’d come up to stand next to me, wiping one of the glasses clean with one of the bar towels.

  Seth nodded at the guy I had apparently been noticeably staring at. “That’s Lane Garrett.”

  “You know him?”

  “Not personally. He’s Congressman Garrett’s son.”

  I tried to stay as far from politics as possible, but it wasn’t easy in this town. It wasn’t the first time we’d had a political celebrity in here, either. On the plus side, if the gossip was true, my gaydar had been right on the money.

  Lane stood, then bent over to say something to the woman he’d been sitting next to. Nice ass, too. Before I could take the time to admire it, my attention was flagged by one of the customers at the end of the bar, and I went to get his order. By the time I’d finished, Lane had gone.

  “You just missed him,” Seth said, when I returned. “You’ll have to get his number another night. Not that you would.”

  “Hey,” I said, frowning at the insult I was sure was there.

  Seth shrugged. “Guys give you their number all the time in here. When was the last time you took up an offer to get laid? It’s a waste of all this.” He waved a hand at me and grimaced.

  I grinned. “I’d be offended if you hadn’t just admitted that I’m hot.”

  Seth rolled his eyes. “I didn’t say hot. I’m just saying, there’s more to life than work, you know?”

  Whatever. I didn’t have freaking time for anything more than occasional hookups, even if the last one had been a while. Between school and work, I had too much craziness in my life without adding dating on top of it.

  Like dealing with this fucking letter.

  I waited until we’d closed the bar and I was on the couch in the back staff room, hanging out until I could grab the late night bus, before pulling the envelope from my pocket and unfolding it.

  Stalling wasn’t going to make it any easier. I tore it open in one swift motion, like ripping off a Band-Aid.

  It was pretty much what I’d thought. Numbers swam in front of my eyes. The balance of my tuition, due in less than thirty days.

  Money I didn’t have.

  “You okay?” Seth asked as he came out of the bathroom and grabbed his coat from the hook by the door. He lived close enough to the bar he walked most nights.

  “Can I take all your shifts for the next month?”

  “Since most of my shifts are the same as yours, that would be physically impossible. Also, no. What’s up?”

  I tossed the letter on the coffee table and sagged back on the couch. “I need twenty grand in, like, a month.”

  “Is the mob after you? I didn’t know they sent letters.”

  “Worse. Law school.” I buried my face in my hands. I was already maxed out on loans from undergrad. I didn’t want to ask my parents, either; they’d already helped to put three kids through college. I thought I’d saved enough from working summers, but it had only lasted a year and a half. There were only so many jobs I could take on top of classes and studying.

  I’d have to take a year off. Work my ass off, try to save enough to finish. The university would probably let me take a year’s leave, though I’d need to talk to them to find out for sure.

  Seth looked hesitant. “How badly do you need the money?”

  I dropped my hands and eyed him suspiciously. “I’m not dealing drugs or borrowing from shady loan sharks.”

  “Jesus, it’s nothing like that.” Seth sat on the other end of the couch and eyed me like he was debating whether to say anything. “A few months ago I needed extra cash, so a friend hooked me up with some work. It pays well—really fucking well—and I only do it a couple nights a week.”

  I raked my eyes over him, checking out his seriousness, but Seth looked sincere. “And what is this magical job?”

  Seth cleared his throat. “Male escort.”

  I stared at him a beat then started laughing. “You’re fucking with me, right?”

  Seth shook his head back and forth slowly.

  I’d known Seth for almost a year, ever since I had gotten this job, and he’d always seemed on the up and up. Good looking in a clean-cut way; straight, so I’d never done more than look. We weren’t close enough to share personal details of our lives, but in a million years I wouldn’t have expected that.

  “You’re a gigolo?”

  “For fuck’s sake, no.” Seth made a face. “You’re not allowed to have sex with the clients.”

  “That sounds like no escort service I’ve ever heard of.”

  Seth shrugged. “That’s how Max runs it. I guess it’s more like a dating thing. Mostly well-off women wanting an easy plus one for parties, or who are traveling for work and want someone to have dinner with. Max is always saying he needs more gay guys for the male clients.”

  “Max?”

  “The guy who owns the service.”

  “His name is Max? That doesn’t sound sordid at all.”

  “I’m serious, it’s legit. I’ll text you his cell. Tell him I referred you. The money is ridiculous.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “How ridiculous?”

  Seth told me, and I sat up straighter. At that rate, I could make up the difference in what I owed for tuition in a couple of months.

  I wasn’t actually thinking about this, was I? “And you swear this isn’t just a cover for sex?” Apparently, I was.

  “I mean, I’ve had offers,” Seth said, with a smirk. “But Max would fire me in a second if he found out I’d slept with a client.”

  “People pay that kind of money just for a date?”

  Seth shrugged again. “People pay money for all kinds of crazy things.”

  He wasn’t wrong, but still. I checked my watch. My bus would be here soon. I grabbed the letter and stuffed it back in my pocket, as much as I’d love to forget its very existence. I’d figure out what to do about it tomorrow.

  Seth headed to the door with me to lock up. “Think about it. I bet you’d be good at it.”

  I frowned as he locked the door and we headed down the street toward my stop. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. You’re easygoing. You don’t take things too seriously. Add in all the charm and flirting you lay on the customers to get better tips, I think you’d make a pretty good fake date.”

  Maybe Seth had meant it as a compliment, but he made me sound so shallow. “I don’t flirt to get better tips. I’m just naturally charming.”

  Seth rolled his eyes. “Whatever. Just think about it.”

  I thought about it the ride home after catching my bus, on the elevator ride up to my apartment, and while lying in bed, looking at the text Seth had just sent, wondering if I was prepared to date random strangers just to work my way through law school.

  To pay off the rest of my tuition this year, and maybe even save enough for next year? To stop living on pasta and wondering if I might have to go homeless this summer? To stop working my ass off ju
st to spin my wheels and go nowhere?

  Yeah, I thought I might be.

  3

  Lane

  June

  I was ninety-nine percent sure I should call the whole thing off. The other one percent was on the other end of my phone.

  “You are not calling it off,” Cassie said emphatically above the background noise of the restaurant where she waitressed. “If you insist on going to Bryce’s wedding—which I still can’t believe you accepted, but since you did, you can’t not show up—then you’re going with a hot-ass guy on your arm. I want Bryce’s dick to shrivel up with envy when he sees the two of you.”

  Glancing in my bedroom mirror, it seemed highly unlikely that Bryce was going to envy anything. I looked tired and older than my twenty-five years. Some of it was all the campaign work I’d been doing for my father, but it had only gotten worse the last two months. I didn’t have to look far for the reason why.

  “I’m paying for a date to my ex-boyfriend’s wedding. What’s there to envy?”

  Cassie’s sigh carried through the connection. “Bryce doesn’t know that. All he’ll think is that you found someone better. That you’re over his bullshit and have a new hot boyfriend. That’s what he gets for inviting you to his wedding in the first place.”