Chapter 2

Guy shoved Melanie hard on his way out.

She sat on the couch, her face dark.

I came out of the kitchen and edged over carefully.

The apartment was dead quiet. She frowned and said in a low voice,

“That's the first time he's ever laid a hand on me. All over that woman.”

The truth was, I didn't really know the whole history between her and Guy Fisher.

I only knew that a year after they broke up, she still couldn't let him go.

And me, I couldn't let go of her money.

Three months ago, the same day I was crowned the campus heartthrob of Ashford University's physics department, Melanie came to find me out of nowhere.

First thing out of her mouth was fifty thousand, asking if I wanted to be her boyfriend.

I gritted my teeth and turned her down, no spine at all.

“I don't sell myself.”

She suddenly laughed.

A whole row of even white teeth flashing in the sunlight.

“I'm not asking you to sell yourself. I'm asking you out.”

Every word came down like a note from an angel.

Down onto me until I was dizzy and my heart raced.

Back then I thought Melanie wasn't as bad as the campus forums made her out to be.

She had to be a really good person.

A really good person who also happened to be rich.

So when I saw the boy on her phone who looked seventy percent like me, it took me zero seconds to accept the fact that I was a stand-in.

In fiction, the stand-in usually doesn't end well.

So I didn't try to copy Guy's clothes or his expressions. I only played her emotional crutch and her love-life bodyguard when she needed one.

And picked up a little extra cash on the side.

Melanie was the most generous person I'd ever met.

When she was in a good mood she took me out for nice meals, took me sightseeing, and tossed money my way now and then.

When she was in a bad mood, she loved throwing money around.

A course I had to retake, she'd offer ten grand as a starting price to make it go away.

Group events she didn't want to attend got dumped on me, and the cash she handed over was never less than four figures.

The moment Guy so much as stirred, she got even crazier.

Like she wanted to tell the whole world how loyal the “boyfriend” she'd bought with her money was to her.

……

In three months, I'd saved up enough for tuition to study abroad.

My academic advisor, who knew my situation, was a little surprised, and hinted, carefully, that maybe we should talk.

I knew my kept-man reputation had already spread across campus.

People said all kinds of things.

But I honestly didn't care.

Compared to growing up in an orphanage from the age of four, what was any of this?

Melanie wanted nothing from my body and nothing from my heart. She only wanted this face.

For this face, she bought me a new phone, took me to upscale restaurants, and threw in the occasional surprise.

This apartment was her gift to me last month.

I'd just come out of the lab, barely stepped outside, when she dragged me off to the county property registry office.

Two bedrooms, one living room, an excellent location, in one of the city's famously luxurious developments.

When she bent her head to sign, the sunlight through the window lit the side of her face, her long lashes casting shadows under her eyes.

For one second, my heartbeat lost its rhythm.

Something got into me, and I caught her hand while she was still signing and asked quietly,

“Melanie, what if I didn't want this apartment, and someday the two of us……”

She frowned slightly.

“You don't get to not want it. Guy's living right next door with that woman. How am I supposed to relax if you're not there keeping an eye on things?”

Only then did I understand that she'd bought me the apartment purely for Guy.

I nodded, and that stumble in my heartbeat slowly settled back into calm.

Then it clicked for her.

“Someday, what?”

My pen tip paused, and then I smiled, light as air.

“Nothing.”

After that, I threw myself into it even harder than before.

In other people's words, I had even less shame.

Mornings I spent in the lab, afternoons buried in the library.

On days with no classes, I did the coursework she couldn't be bothered with and signed in for her at the classes she didn't want to attend.

Breakfast, I'd get up half an hour earlier than anyone else, buy it, then go out of my way to deliver it to her, even though she didn't need it at all.

……

I honed my lapdog skills to perfection.

So when I heard Melanie's question just now, I answered without thinking.

“Guy definitely just can't let you go. The second I finished saying that, he got upset.”

The line between her brows did ease.

But her eyes suddenly landed on me.

“I didn't think you actually cared about me. You always look like someone whose eyes light up at the sight of money.”

Cared?

Before I could sort that out, a slender hand brushed the side of my face.

“Does it still hurt?”

I shook my head.

Her touch grew more suggestive, her voice soft.

“You did well this time.”

My eyes lit up at once, and I ventured carefully,

“Then besides the thousand for the social media post, could you throw in another thousand? I did take a slap, after all……”

Catching her face going dark again, I quickly changed my tune, lowering my voice.

“Five hundred works too.”

Her face went completely cold, and she pulled a bank card out of her pocket.

“There's a hundred thousand on this. Call it buying out your month. Enough?”

To a rich girl, a hundred thousand was nothing more than the price of an afternoon tea.

She probably meant it to humiliate me.

But I couldn't hold back the curve at the corner of my mouth even a little.

“Enough, more than enough.”

A thousand per social media post, that's a hundred posts.

Two thousand per errand, that's fifty errands.

Three thousand per time I took the blame, that's……

Before I could finish the math, she spoke again.

“Starting tomorrow, invite Guy over to eat with us every meal.”

I hesitated a little, remembering the back of Guy as he'd walked out.

“What if he won't come?”

“That's for you to figure out.”

With that, she went back to the bedroom.

I held the bank card and told myself quietly, inside,

“Just this last month left.”

“Come on, Ian.”