Page 34 of Don't Date Your Nemesis

“Liam! When’s the wedding?”

“How long have you been secretly dating?”

“Are you pregnant?!”

“What about the cupcake fight?”

“Was it staged?”

Liam had kept his arm around me, steering me through the chaos with surprising gentleness, and we ended up in the back of a cab with me giving directions to my apartment because his place was forty minutes away and the paparazzi were already following us.

He looked around my studio apartment, and I use the term ‘apartment’ generously because it was basically a shoebox with a hot plate and barely concealed horror.

My bed took up most of the space. My kitchen had a mini-fridge and a microwave balanced on a wooden crate, and my entire wardrobe lived in a rack shoved against one wall because there was no closet.

Liam had sat down on my dressing table chair, which was a tiny thing I found at a garage sale, and his knees had practically hit his chest. At six-three and built like a Greek statue, he looked absurd, like a giant trying to use doll furniture.

“Cozy,” he said diplomatically, nodding around.

“Shut up.”

I answered my phone, pacing the three feet of floor space. “Blake, before you say anything⁠—”

“Do not deny it,” she practically yelled, her voice sharp and excited. “Do you have any idea what your numbers look like right now? You’re trending number one worldwide. #Deiam has sixty million tweets. And Deepika?” she paused for emphasis. “The difficult actress narrative is gone. You’re now the woman who tamed the Olympic playboy.”

I glanced at Liam, who was hunched over his phone, arguing with Xavier in harsh whispers.

“But it’s not real!” I hissed. “We hate each other! This is ridiculous!”

“Deepika. Listen to me,” Blake said, her tone shifting to serious. “Yash is going to be at Kiara’s wedding with Diya. You need to show that jerk and everyone that you’ve moved on. Plus…” She took a deep breath before continuing, “Director Ananya Mehta saw the photos.”

My heart had stopped. The Ananya Mehta? She was one of the most respected directors in the industry, known for intimate character dramas that actually won awards.

“She wants you for the lead in her new romantic drama,” Blake said excitedly. “But—and this is important—only if you’re in a stable relationship. She thinks you’re too chaotic otherwise. Her words, not mine.”

“That’s insane⁠—”

“That’s Hollywood, baby. Just for three months, play the happy couple through the wedding, then break up mutually. Easy.”

Across the room, Liam had ended his call and looked at me with an expression somewhere between panic and resignation.

We both knew, without saying it, that we were trapped.

But instead of addressing the elephant in the room, we waddled around it.

He stood up from my dressing table, nearly hitting his head on the ceiling fan, and surveyed my apartment again.

“You live in a rat hole,” he said flatly.

I shot up from where I was sitting on my bed, arms crossed. “Not everyone has huge sponsors like you, Fish Boy.”

“I’m just saying, I’ve seen pool changing rooms bigger than this.”

“Well, not all of us can afford luxury mansions. Some of us are still proving ourselves.”

“By living in a space that violates at least three safety codes?”

“It has character!” I sputtered.