Page 58 of Faking the Heat

“I’m going to come,” I scream, my voice echoing through the empty warehouse. “Sterling, oh God!”

I shatter. It’s an explosion of sensation that leaves me blind and breathless, my entire body convulsing as wave after wave of orgasm tears through me. I can feel him follow me a second later, his body stiffening, his head buried in the crook of my neck as he groans my name. He thrusts one last time, deep and hard, and I can feel the hot spurts of his cum filling me, a warm, heavy release that makes me feel anchored for the first time in years.

We stay like that for a long time, the only sound the hum of the refrigerator and our ragged, synchronized breathing. He doesn't pull away. He stays buried inside me, his forehead resting against mine, his arms wrapped around me like he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he lets go.

Eventually, he pulls back, his eyes searching mine. The professional firefighter is gone. The hero is gone. There is only Sterling. He looks down at where we’re still joined, at the way my auburn hair is tangled in his white shirt, at the discarded Disco Sparkle Earrings on the granite counter.

“Mandy,” he says, his voice rough and low. “About what you said at the station...”

I look away, the reality of the evening crashing back down on me. I slide off the counter, my legs feeling like jelly, my skin still tingling from his touch.

“I told you, Sterling,” I say, my voice sounding thin and fragile in the vast space of the loft. “I was just selling the relationship. We have to be convincing, right? Especially with Priya watching.”

I walk away before he can respond, heading for the bathroom, for the safety of the door I can lock. But as I stand in the dark, the word ‘selling’ tastes like ash in my mouth, and I know that the person I’m really lying to isn't Priya or my parents. It’s myself.

Chapter twenty-five

Truth or Consequences

Mandy

The silver fork in my hand feels unusually heavy, a polished anchor dragging against the white linen of the tablecloth. We're at an upscale bistro downtown, the kind of place where the lighting is calibrated for secrets and the menus don't list prices. The air smells like expensive red wine, seared scallops, and the faint, floral trail of my mother's perfume, a scent that has always signaled a looming scrutiny of my life's choices.

Tonight is the grand finale. The final 'anniversary' dinner before my parents head back home. For two weeks, I've been living in a curated reality, a high-stakes performance where Sterling Hayes is the lead and I am his devoted co-star. We've sold the lie with such precision that I've started to forget where the script ends.

“The sea bass is excellent, Mandy,” my mother says, her eyes sweeping over the table with the precision of a high-stakes auditor. She's wearing her 'good' pearls, the ones she only brings out for occasions she deems significant. “You've barely touched yours. Is everything alright?”

“It's great, Mom,” I say, forcing a smile that feels like it might crack my face. My skin feels too tight, the silk of my dress suddenly itchy against my collarbone. “Just enjoying the company. And the wine. Mostly the company.”

I take a bite of the fish. It tastes like cardboard and guilt. Beside me, Sterling's thigh brushes mine, a steady, warm pressure that should be grounding but currently feels like a live wire. He's wearing a charcoal blazer that makes his eyes look like a storm, and he's been playing his part with terrifying ease. He laughs at my father's jokes, actually laughs, not that polite, strained thing Derek used to do. He remembers the name of my mother's favorite gardenia. He is the perfect man, and I am the perfect liar.

“I have to say, Sterling,” my father says, setting his wine glass down with a deliberate click against the wood. Robert Peterson is a man of spreadsheets and risk assessments; he views life through the lens of liability. But tonight, he looks more relaxed than I've seen him in years, the tension in his shoulders finally surrendering to the expensive Cabernet. “I was skeptical at first. You know how I am with... sudden developments. But seeing the two of you these last two weeks... it's clear. I'm grateful for the man you've become in my daughter's life.”

The words hit me like a physical blow to the sternum. My father doesn't do gratitude. He doesn't do 'grateful.' To hear him hand over his blessing so freely feels like I've broken into a bank and found the vault already open. I look down at my plate, the peas suddenly blurred by a prickling heat behind my eyelids. I'm not just lying about a boyfriend; I'm lying about my father's peace of mind. I'm building his happiness out of something I invented three weeks ago.

“Thank you, Robert,” Sterling says, his voice low and sincere. He doesn't look at me, but his hand finds mine under the table, his fingers interlacing with mine. It's a practiced move, one we've done a dozen times in front of them, but tonight his palm is damp. “That means a lot coming from you. Truly.”

His calluses graze my knuckles, reminders of the fire, the hoses, the heavy lifting of his actual life. For a second, I let myself believe it. I let the performance bleed into the truth until the edges are gone. This is what it would be like if we weren't a project or a charade. This is the version of my life where I don't have to hold my breath every time the phone rings, waiting for the facade to crumble.

My phone buzzes against my thigh.

It’s face down on the seat beside me, because my mother has opinions about phones at dinner, and I turn it over under the lip of the tablecloth the way I have turned it over roughly four hundred times in three weeks, in the reflexive half-second hope that it is the landlord.

It is the landlord.

Unit 3C. Available Monday. Please confirm receipt.

Not my apartment. My apartment has plywood over the windows and a red notice on the door and a question mark where the kitchen used to be, and it is not going to be anyone’s apartment for a long time. But he owns four buildings in that neighborhood, and one of them has a one-bedroom on the third floor that somebody vacated at exactly the right moment, and as of Monday it is mine.

Monday. My parents fly home Sunday.

The timing is so tidy it feels arranged.

I put the phone face down on the seat and I don’t say anything.

There is a sentence available to me. It is an extremely ordinary sentence. Good news, my place is ready. That’s the whole thing. People say it at dinner tables every day of the year, between the entree and the dessert menu, and nobody’s life changes.

But my father has just told Sterling that he is grateful for the man he has become in my daughter’s life, and he said it with his shoulders down for the first time in about four years. And if I say my sentence out loud, somebody at this table starts doing arithmetic. If her place is ready, why is she still there. And then Monday stops being information and starts being a date, and the whole thing gets a clock bolted to it, and my mother will want to discuss what happens next in a tone that will require me to have answers.