Resistance

  Resistance

  Cordelia Scott

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Epilogue

  One

  Jasmine

  “Have you ever considered being a prostitute?”

  Jasmine blinked. “Erm, no?”

  Her colleague and friend, Angela, laughed and restocked the coffee machine. “I have a friend of a friend of a friend who’s looking to hire a girlfriend for a month or so.”

  “Hire a girlfriend?” Jasmine was in dire need of money, and anything that involved the word hire was looking promising these days. Her parents were unwilling to support the music degree she dreamed of, so she was going to have to pay her own way through college, and that had already meant working since it was legal.

  If this friend of a friend of a friend was paying decent money for his fake-girlfriend gig, she wasn’t going to turn that down. Because Angela knew her struggles, and so Jasmine already knew where this was going.

  “I don’t know the ins-and-outs, but he’s looking for someone to go to events with him, hang off his arm, that kind of thing. I was definitely told that it’s a no-sex-involved thing, so the prostitution comment may have been a tad pre-emptive.”

  “So, how do I get in touch with him?” Her heart had spiked with hope. She was taking all the shifts the café had been willing to give her, but it wasn’t even close to full time. She had more than enough spare time to be parading herself around as someone’s false lover.

  “I was given a phone number. I’ll warn you, though, this guy is twenty-five. I don’t know if he’ll be wanting to play around with some seventeen-year-old.”

  “I’m eighteen in literally two days, and you know it.” Her parents had been on an important business trip when the deadline for signing her up to kindergarten had passed, and because of her late July birthday, they’d found her young enough to put into the year below and follow her schooling like normal. She was only a month and a half older than the oldest person in her year. “Besides, you’re talking to Jasmine, twenty-one-year-old college student working shifts on her summer break, so I don’t know what you mean.”

  Angela shook her head with a chuckle. “I can’t really see how it would affect him either way if you lie. If you convince him, it’ll be a good thing to put on your resume of seeing how good a liar I am for when I want to trick whoever you’re showing me off in front of.”

  Jasmine smirked. “Exactly. I’ve got this job down. Give me the number, I’ll give him a call on my break.”

  Two

  Sebastian

  “Hello?” Sebastian answered his cell despite the unknown number. Maybe someone would have finally responded to his plea for help. He just wanted his dad to die happy. He deserved that, and for some reason, so much of his happiness seemed to hinge on Sebastian’s personal life.

  “Hi,” a feminine voice answered, and it wasn’t the voice of a trained cold caller, thankfully. “Is this Sebastian? I heard you were looking for someone to, erm, pretend to be your girlfriend?”

  His heart soared. “That’s right.” He hadn’t really thought about what to say when it got to this point. “Well, my dad is dying and I’m looking for someone for him to meet, to think is my girlfriend, that I’ve got my life together before he goes.”

  She laughed. It was a nice, friendly laugh. “That’s really kind of you.”

  She didn’t see it as a horrible deception to a dying man, then. That was always a good start. “I don’t know how much of this you’d like to do over the phone and how much you’d rather do in person, but I’ll just lay out some basic things and you can see if you want to take it.”

  He figured he’d get straight to the money first, then explained he just wanted someone to come and meet the family, attend a couple of family dinners before his dad passed away in about a month’s time. It wouldn’t be a hard task, he hoped. He was quite sure he wasn’t appalling company, and he’d always thought his family were friendly, too.

  She seemed to jump at the opportunity with an enthusiastic, “Sure, let’s get a coffee and talk it over.”

  They made plans, and Sebastian felt like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Now he could get back to planning a funeral; to making sure he had the finances of his father’s slowly decaying health in order; to make sure he’d managed to fit in everything his dad wanted to do before he couldn’t get out of bed anymore.

  It was just one tiny weight that had been lifted, in reality.

  Three

  Jasmine

  She’d been perfectly confident on the phone, and every moment after right up until she got to the last street before the café. Sebastian had given her a generous offer, and she needed the money desperately. If she managed to come across as something other than friendly, polite and good enough to please his family then she’d lose the job.

  She smoothed out the cashmere sweater she’d chosen and regretted her sneakers. Too informal. She should have found a pair of smarter shoes to wear, to try and impress him.

  Taking a look at her reflection in the shop window, she knew she didn’t look too young, at least. She’d easily pass for the twenty-one she was going for. She untucked her black curls from behind her ear as a final touch.

  Taking a deep breath, she turned the final corner and strode as confidently as she could towards the café. A man was waiting outside, rocking on his heels and staring out across the street. From his side profile, she could see a strong, toned body and a full head of black curls. She swallowed.

  If that was her fake boyfriend, she wasn’t going to be making any complaints whatsoever. She’d been expecting someone not so good looking, who couldn’t get a girlfriend as easily.

  If this was her man, he could have walked into the café and gotten any single woman in there hanging off his arm in a few minutes.

  They’d said they’d meet outside the café at three o’clock. She checked her watch. It was three exactly, and he was the only man there.

  When he turned to her and said, “Jasmine?” she was positively taken aback.

  “That’s me. Nice to meet you.” She stuck her hand out to shake, and he took it. His hand was large and firm, and heat hummed through her body.

  Damn, he was hot.

  Sea blue eyes smiled down at her, and she smiled back. “Let’s go get a drink, I guess,” she said, taking the initiative and going into the café.

  She ordered a coffee, despite hating it. Ordering a chocolate milkshake was definitely too immature. She sipped on the too-hot drink and attempted not to flinch.

  They sat in an awkward silence for a few moments. Sebastian looked nervous. He drummed his fingers against his coffee cup and stared into the drink. “Sorry, I’ve never done anything like this before. I feel a bit sleazy.”

  “Unless you’ve left something massive out of the summary you gave me yesterday, then I don’t think you have anything to feel sleazy about,” she said. She was nervous too, but better at hiding it. “You’re doing a good thing. I’d do the same.” In you
r position. She wasn’t too keen on her parents right now. Or the past three years. Ever since they’d shit on her dreams.

  “I’m glad you think that.” He took a deep breath. “Well. My parents—they’re kind of on the edge right now, obviously. My dad has terminal stomach cancer, and he’s been given a month to live. The last week or so of that he’ll probably be bedridden, so this is really only a three-week arrangement.” He frowned. “I don’t want to put any pressure on you. I mean, spending time with someone who’ll die soon, I don’t think it’ll be a fun thing.”

  That was probably why he’d made the offer so high. Jasmine hadn’t really thought about that. She’d been putting any potentially bad things about this to the back of her mind because this would top her savings account right up.

  She could handle what he was proposing.

  “That’s okay. I’m sure I can deal with it. I’d be doing a good thing, anyway. That’ll make it easier.”

  “Okay, well, good. I don’t think there’ll be that many meetings, but they might be a bit doting on you. It’ll probably be more superficial talk than anything deep. I just need to know what you’re studying, some basic stuff, and you the same about me. Then we need a story about how we met and stuff, I guess.”

  “Sounds easy enough.”

  So they talked, long enough to need to get another drink. Jasmine had filled out one of those little character sheets before she came to the meeting with her false life laid out, then she’d memorized it.

  She’d kept to the truth as much as possible. She was a music major at Madison, playing the harp, and she was in her final year.

  “The harp?” Sebastian hummed in appreciation. “That’s impressive. I’ll admit, if you tell my parents that they might demand a concert.”

  She grinned. “Anything to impress the in-laws.”

  “So what do you want to do when you graduate?”

  “Join an orchestra. Go touring the country.” She sighed because it seemed like a such a faraway dream right now.

  “It’s an impressive dream. I’m just a teacher. Humanities teacher, too. I can’t claim to be even remotely glamorous.”

  “I don’t know; I think you make up for it with your appearance. I have no idea how you haven’t just got a real girlfriend.” It was way too forward. She’d meant it as a joke, but it was awkward flirting, and she flushed. Way to scare him off within the first five minutes. “Besides, a teacher is a reasonable dream. Attainable. I’m going to end up working in fast food, we both know it.”

  “A real girlfriend is the exact opposite of what I want right now.” He laughed, though there was a pink tinge to his cheek she admired. “This is much easier. Far less heartache.”

  She wanted desperately to press him, to find out why he had that faraway look in his eye when he spoke about heartache. She was too young to understand it, really. At least in terms of love. In terms of college, she was feeling it every day.

  “So, you’re a teacher.” Alarm bells had rung when he said it, but the chances were minimal. “What grade?”

  “I teach high school. Over at St. Catherine’s.”

  Her panic button shut off. It was a different school. On the other side of the city to her school, St. Joseph’s, even. No big deal. “Do you like it?”

  “I love it. But I want to become a principal. Get a bad school back on its feet.” St. Catherine’s wasn’t a great school, but it wasn’t bad, either. Neither was hers. They both stayed out of some of the worse areas in the city. “I’m too young for anything like that quite yet, though. I need to build up a reputation first. Get a Masters. Right now I’m just enjoying teaching.”

  “Well, I hope you get there.”

  "Yeah, me too." He cleared his throat and produced a list from his pocket. "Okay, I made a note of all the events that I'm kind of planning, so you can tell me if you're free for any of them. I don't know if you're working or anything over summer. I'm on vacation, so I'm free pretty much all the time."

  She scanned over the little calendar. A few meals out in the evenings so they wouldn't be a problem. A few meals at his parents’ house, one at lunchtime. She'd have to check her timesheet for that.

  "These all look fine," she told him. She'd rearrange her shifts or get someone to cover for her if it came down to it; this paid a hell of a lot more than the café.

  "Great. You can keep the list, though I'll probably email you an updated version at some point. I need to ask my parents and Blake what they think, too."

  "No worries. Just let me know whenever."

  "Well, it's going to be a kind of quick thing, I mean the first meal I had planned will be in two days. Do you think we'll be all right to pull it off that quickly?"

  "Like you said, it'll be superficial talk. And they'll be asking me things about me, not you, so I can just tell them. We just need to get our relationship story right."

  Her confidence seemed to calm him down, and she was glad he had no idea she was bluffing. It was stressful. There was bound to be some part where they were in different rooms, asked the same question and gave a different answer.

  She'd seen enough romantic comedies to know.

  "All right," he said. "So, our never-ending love began when we were set up on a blind date by our friends." He rolled his eyes.

  "Original," I laughed.

  "Yeah, and pretty embarrassing. I couldn't think of any non-horrific ways we could have met, though."

  "Yeah, I'll admit I'm kind of stumped. The blind date seems fine enough. Probably boring enough that people won't ask too many questions, either."

  "Right. I thought that, too. I'm sorry, but we're going to have had the most generic dating life in history."

  She grinned. Jasmine wouldn't mind having a generic dating life with this guy at all: he was smart, funny, and when he gave her that genuine, nervous smile her stomach flipped.

  This was going to be a treat.

  "So, blind date, then a few more dates, then we're going steady for about three weeks now."

  "Easy peasy," she said.

  He passed her another piece of paper. "I wrote out some random stuff about me that I thought might be useful."

  Jasmine quirked an eyebrow as she took in a similar character sheet to the one she’d filled in at home. "Oh, you went to school at Berkeley? What are you doing up here in miserable Wisconsin?"

  "This is where I grew up, and it turns out I really kind of hate the heat."

  "I've never ventured anywhere that warm, but I don't think I'd like it, either."

  She laughed when she came to his favorite food. "Pizza. That's beyond unoriginal."

  "Super convenient, though. It's not exactly hard to get hold of. Why, what's your uber-special favorite food?"

  She flushed. "Risotto, probably."

  "I guess all our dates were at Italians, then."

  They worked their way through the lists, and then just chatted for a while, getting to know each other.

  Jasmine wasn't sure how this wasn't a date. Sitting over a cup of coffee talking about their lives, laughing, and occasionally slipping into the realm of flirting.

  One thing she knew for certain: she wasn't going to have to feign interest in him whatsoever.

  Four

  Sebastian

  Sebastian hadn't expected that at all. She was smart, funny, beautiful. His parents were going to love her.

  And she'd absorbed everything straight away.

  She probably knew more about him than half his family.

  He tried to shake away that fuzzy feeling you got after going on a date.

  It hadn't been a real date.

  He hadn't wanted it to be a real date. He'd meant what he said about having a real girlfriend. After Callie what he needed was some time to himself, some time to get it into his head that not every girl was going to fuck him around, and fuck half the city.

  The fact it had been a year and a half and he still had no intentions of even trying to date meant nothing.

  A year and
a half wasn't that long.

  His phone buzzed when he was walking home, and his brother’s name flashed over the caller ID. His stomach was uneasy. He’d never had a reason to lie to his brother, at least nothing bigger than a white lie to get out of doing chores in an evening when they were younger.

  Part of Sebastian was sure he was going to be seen straight through. He still wasn’t sure he could pull off being intimate with another woman without flinching, even just to hold hands.

  “Hey, Blake,” he said, burying his other hand in his pocket to ward off the chilly breeze. “What’s up?”

  “Bro,” Blake greeted. “I wondered if you wanted to meet up today, see if we can get some plans together. I want dad to go out with a bang.”

  It was the same phone call he’d been planning to make when he got home. “That’d be great. Hey, I know this is coming out of the blue, but what do you think the best way for mom and dad to meet my new girlfriend is?” He flinched even to say it, and if his brother had been stood in front of him, the lie would have been obvious. He was going to have to pull himself together before the first meeting.

  There was a beat of silence on the other end of the line. “You’ve got a new girl?”

  “Yeah, about three weeks now. I was keeping it under wraps with all this stuff with dad going off, but I really like her, and I’d like her to meet dad before he goes, you know?” Sebastian really wasn’t sure whether he was going to be able to do this. It sounded so easy in principle, but the thought of kissing someone again, holding hands and pretending to be in love.

  It terrified him.

  “Yeah, of course, man. Just bring her out for dinner with them. Low pressure that way.”

  It had been his plan, too. “Good idea,” he said. “Well, okay, am I coming to yours or are you coming to mine to discuss all this?”

  “I’ll come to you. I’m driving home from work soon anyway, and then I’ll pop in. Be ready with some ideas.”

  “Got it. Catch you later.”