Chapter Four

Luke

My eyes widened. Fuck. I was totally screwed. My stomach tightened as nausea overwhelmed me. I swallowed hard. This was it. The end of everything. Why the hell had I gone out the other night? Sure, it’d been fun to do something un-Luke-like—but I’d ended up with a hangover and now I’d probably end up with a felony or something.

How had she caught us? No one else had been in the park. We’d made sure of it. Then I remembered the car that was parked up the road. My gaze shifted to the parking lot to find the same Volkswagen Bug sitting there. Damn.

I glanced at her, her brown eyes staring me down. “What are you going to do with this?”

“Well”—she turned the phone off and shoved it in her pocket, then smoothed down her Zelda T-shirt—“that depends on you.”

“Look, I’ll do anything. Please, just don’t show anyone.” My voice cracked. Great. I was showing weakness—which meant she’d probably pounce on me like a lion.

She nodded. “When’s your break? I—I don’t think we really want to go over all the details right here.”

No shit. I peered around the restaurant to make sure no one was within listening distance. I pulled my sleeve back to check my watch. “I get a break in about an hour.”

“Fine. I’ll wait here and eat my pizza.”

“It should be ready. I’ll bring it right out.” She glared, pinning me with her gaze. Damn, I’d really pissed her off. I wondered what would’ve happened if I’d actually shown for the interview. Would she have brought up the video? Or maybe this was about more than the video. I tried to think if I’d said or done anything else to her recently. But to be honest, she’d never really caught my eye before. I mean, I knew who she was, but we didn’t talk or anything.

As I put her food in a box for her, I thought about how much money I might have to bribe her. Crap. Was that what she wanted, money? Money I didn’t have. My last name might be Pressler, but we didn’t live in a mansion on the hill like my grandparents.

The next hour seemed to drag by. Every time I glanced up, I found Ayla watching me, and not in the adoring way that some girls did. When it was time for my break, I went to her table. “Okay, I’ve got fifteen minutes.”

“Right. Follow me.” She stood up, carrying her leftovers to the parking lot and to her car. She unlocked it, slid inside, then gestured for me to get in the passenger side.

My long legs didn’t fit very well in the small car, so I adjusted the seat back then turned to face her. “So, about the video?” I prompted. This could be the end of everything.

She cleared her throat and wrenched her hands together in her lap. She didn’t act as confident as she had when she’d shoved the phone in my face. Maybe she was having second thoughts. Which could save my ass. But then she opened her mouth.

“So did you watch the news this morning?” she asked.

“Um, no…” Where the hell was she going with this?

“According to the newscaster, the city has a no-tolerance policy for vandalism, and they’re going to investigate the ‘incident.’” She held up her fingers to make quotations. “They brought up what’d happened last year with Rick Barnhardt, who defaced school property and got expelled. He lost his wrestling scholarship to Western Michigan University, got fined, and had to do community service. And I got to thinking, you have a scholarship to a Big Ten school, don’t you?” She glanced at me.

Oh, shit. No. This couldn’t be happening. Unlike the rest of my friends, my mom couldn’t afford to put me through college. “I—I haven’t signed the letter of intent yet, but yes,” I whispered.

“You also know the Presslers, your family, are offering a reward for information regarding the vandalism. Bet they’d be pretty pissed to find out it was one of their own who defaced public property.”

Okay. I was screwed and in a big way. She had enough ammo to do some real damage.

“But here’s the thing. I could forget about this incident if you agreed to do something for me.” Her brow creased, face red.

“What would I have to do?” For all I knew she could want to use me for a sacrifice in a satanic ritual or maybe force me to do some gross chores at her house. But at this point, anything was better than going to jail or whatever.

“I—you’d have to pretend to be my boyfriend and help me win the school election,” she blurted out in a slur of words.

My mouth dropped open. “Wait, what?” Okay, not quite what I was thinking. But help her win the election? I wasn’t sure if that was even possible. “Jenna Lee always wins. No one has even dared run against her since, like, sixth grade.”

“I know. That’s why I need your help. People really like you. And if you were on board with my election, and we were a couple, then I’d get more votes. Look, if you do this for me, I’ll delete the video and pretend I never saw anything.”

I snorted. “And I’m supposed to trust that you’ll really get rid of it and not double-cross me?”

She gasped as if I’d offended her. “I wouldn’t do that. I mean, you act like I’m a criminal or something.”

“Well, you are trying to blackmail me,” I said with a shrug.

Her cheeks reddened even more, and she shoved her nerdy black glasses up on top of her head and rubbed her eyes. “Do you want to do this or not? Because if not, I really need a new story for the newspaper since you totally ditched me for the interview.”

I groaned. I didn’t really have a choice. If anyone found out about this, I’d lose a lot of stuff. There’d be court hearings, fines, and I could lose my basketball scholarship. Since the university coach could only give me a verbal offer until I signed the letter of intent in November, it’d be easy to take it back—and if I lost it, I wouldn’t be able to pay for school. Which meant I’d be stuck in this stupid-ass town, stuck in the shadow of a family name that I didn’t even want anymore. “Fine—but I need to know the terms of this—this whatever it is and when you want to start.”

Ayla smoothed a curl behind her ear and chewed her lip. She drummed her fingers against her steering wheel. At least it didn’t seem like she did this very often—she was as nervous as I was. “We start tomorrow. I need to make headway on the election front. And as far as terms, you’ll need to sit with me during some of our lunches—walk me to classes, maybe make a few public appearances. You know, like dates or something. But you have to make it believable. You can’t just stand there all mute and stuff. You also need to help me on my campaign, maybe talk to your buddies about voting for me.” She then turned her chocolate-brown eyes on me. “And I’d expect you to spread the word about our upcoming newspaper edition. It’d be nice to gain more readership. Maybe then Mr. Fairchild would let us do more meaningful stories. I promise we’ll only have to do this until after the election, which is a few weeks away. So it’s not that long.”

I ran a hand through my hair. Would I be able to pull this off? I gave her a once-over. It wasn’t like she was unattractive or anything. She just wasn’t the type of girl I normally dated. She was nerdy, kind of quiet—and didn’t care what anyone else thought. She was curvy and had long curly dark hair and a spattering of freckles across her face. She had potential. We’d had a couple of classes together over the years, but I don’t think we’d even really talked before this, or if we had, I didn’t recall. Not that I was a snob—we just didn’t run with the same crowds. But Ayla was pretty in a nonconventional way, and obviously smart. I could definitely do worse.

Jeez, was I really gonna do this? Hell, yes. Everything depended on it. So for the next few weeks, I would be Luke Pressler, Ayla Hawkins’s boyfriend.

“Luke?” She waved her hand in front of my face, and I realized she must’ve been trying to get my attention for a while.

This time I felt the blush rise on my face. “I’m in. But I’ll need more information on you if we’re going to do this.”

“Okay, tonight we can each draw up a list of our likes and dislikes—you know, get to know each other. Do you have your cell on you?” She shifted in the seat, lifting her hips enough to grab her phone from her jeans pocket.

“Yeah.” I grabbed mine from my pocket, too.

“What’s your number?”

I rattled it off and she programmed it into her phone. Then she took my cell from me and put hers into mine.

“All right, I think we’re all set then.” She sighed. “I should probably let you get back to work now. Oh, and one more thing? You still owe me an interview. If I don’t get my article in tonight, I won’t have a story to go to print tomorrow.”

“Just send along the questions and I’ll do it as soon as I’m out of work.” I sat there awkwardly for another second. “So, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said and climbed out of the car. As she drove away, I wondered what I was getting myself into.

The one thing I could say for Ayla was she knew what she wanted, and she was willing to do anything to get it. Kind of like me. And right now, I wanted to avoid a criminal record. If a few kisses and smiles got me out of that, I’d do it.