Chapter 1

Serena's POV

Cassian didn’t even wait for the waiter to leave.

“I’ve been seeing someone else,” he said across the white tablecloth. “It’s serious. We’re done.”

The champagne sat unopened between us. Conversations at the tables around us dropped. A woman two seats away lifted her phone. The flash caught my face before I could turn.

Three years of galas, family dinners, and quiet promises that this was forever. He chose a packed Friday-night restaurant to end it like canceling a meeting.

Heat flooded my face so fast my eyes burned. I stood. The chair scraped hard. Ethan reached across the table. I stepped back before his fingers could touch me.

“Don’t.”

I walked out with my shoulders locked and my expression blank. The second the night air hit my skin, my legs almost gave. My phone vibrated nonstop in my bag—messages, a photo of my face mid-breakup, laughing emojis tagging my name. I didn’t open any of them. I kept moving until the restaurant lights disappeared.

There was only one person left who had never once left me standing like that.

I called Nikolai.

He answered on the second ring.

“Serena?”

My voice cracked. “Come get me. Please.”

A short pause. Then, “Where are you?”

I told him the street. Nine minutes later his black car pulled up. He didn’t speak when I dropped into the passenger seat. He just looked at me once—really looked—and pulled into traffic.

We drove two blocks in silence before the words forced their way out.

“He did it in front of everyone. The champagne was still on the table. People took pictures.”

Nikolai’s hands stayed steady on the wheel. “Where do you want to go?”

“Anywhere that isn’t here.”

He turned toward the quieter streets near the river. I stared at the dark water and tried to keep breathing.

“I need a favor,” I said.

He glanced at me. “Name it.”

“Be my boyfriend for thirty days.”

The car didn’t swerve. He didn’t laugh. He just kept driving like the request was simple.

“Okay.”

I turned in the seat. “Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“People are already talking. There are photos. I can’t walk into another room looking like the girl who got dumped in public. I need someone next to me who makes it look like I moved on before the dust settled.”

Nikolai nodded once. “Thirty days.”

“And we’re not sleeping together.”

That was the line that made him slow the car. He pulled over along the waterfront and cut the engine. City lights painted the dashboard gold. He turned to face me fully.

His eyes stayed on mine longer than friendship allowed. The look was quiet, charged, and too ready. It held everything he wasn’t saying.

“All right,” he said. “We won’t.”

I waited for the joke. It never came. He just kept watching me, steady and intense, like the rule I’d set was the only thing that mattered.

“This is for show. When the doors close, nothing changes.”

“I heard you.”

The way he said it made my stomach tighten. I looked away first.

“Why are you agreeing so fast?”

“Because you asked.”

I pressed my fingers against my temples. The humiliation still sat under my skin like a fresh bruise. Every time I closed my eyes I saw Cassian’s calm face across that table. Nikolai had never looked at me like that. Not once in twenty years.

“I can’t do this alone,” I admitted. “Not this week. Not with everyone watching.”

“You won’t.”

He started the car again. We drove in silence, the city sliding past in streaks of light. I watched his profile—the straight line of his jaw, the small scar near his temple from the time we were sixteen and he took a fall that should have been mine.

“We’ll need a story,” I said. “Something simple. We reconnected. Timing felt right.”

“Fine.”

“No one can know it’s fake. Not even your sister.”

“I won’t tell anyone.”

“If someone asks how long—”

“Six weeks,” he said without missing a beat. “Quiet at first. Then we decided we didn’t care who knew.”

I looked at him. The air felt tighter. I looked away.

“If this gets hard—”

“It won’t.”

He met my eyes at the next red light. The look was the same one from earlier—longer, heavier. He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to.

The light turned green. He drove on. I sat with my hands clenched in my lap, trying to remember how to be the version of myself that didn’t feel cracked open.

We reached my building. He parked in the loading zone and cut the engine. The street was quiet. A single streetlamp threw a circle of light across the hood.

“I’ll walk you up,” he said.

“You don’t have to.”

“I know.”

He got out anyway. I followed. The elevator ride was silent except for the soft mechanical hum. When we reached my floor, he waited while I unlocked the door. I stepped inside and turned back to him, one hand still on the frame.

He stood in the hallway light, hands in his pockets, watching me the same way he had in the car—steady and unhurried. He didn’t speak. He simply held my gaze for one long second, and whatever was behind his eyes made the air between us shift.

I closed the door and leaned against it, listening to his footsteps fade. My phone lit up again on the counter—more messages, more photos. I turned it face down.

A minute later the phone rang. Nikolai.

“Come back down.”

I went. He was already in the car. I got in without a word. He pulled away from the curb and drove straight toward the river, the city thinning around us until black water stretched under the lights. He parked in the same quiet spot. The engine ticked as it cooled. Darkness filled the car except for the soft glow of the dashboard.

I turned toward him. “You’re really going to do this.”

“I already said yes.”

“People are going to watch us. They’re going to look for cracks.”

“They won’t find any.”

He rested his hand on the gearshift, inches from my thigh. The space between his fingers and my leg felt charged. I didn’t move. Neither did he.

His eyes stayed on mine in the dark. The look was longer than friendship, heavier than it should have been.

“Thirty days,” he said, voice low. “I won’t break the rule… unless you ask.”