“I can’t believe you woke me up so early for this,” Kai complained through pants, his chest heaving as sweat dripped down the side of his forehead. He looked like a mess — a hot one, unfortunately — but, to be honest, so did she. They were both wearing workout clothes, but it really wasn’t fair how she had started to notice his body more and more after that goddamned tux he had worn at the charity event. He was incredibly built, which she had known, but it was so clear as his shirt stuck to his skin, the sweat causing an outline of his abs to appear through the shirt.

Even though her hormones were trying to force her to jump him, Cara rolled her eyes as she let out a breath, trying to manage her breathing pattern while maintaining a steady running pace, “It’s literally 7:30, not 5AM.”

“Any time before 9:00AM should not exist.”

“We’re almost to the end of the trail, anyways,” she responded, pointing to the clearing just a few hundred meters away from them. “You did say that if we need to keep up with this ruse, we need to be seen in public more often.”

“I meant at things like parties! Not you forcing me to run at the crack of dawn! No one’s even around to see us together.”

Cara just casually pointed at another student who was stretching off to the side of the trail, in the grass, before she responded, "I thought I just explained that the crack of dawn was at 5AM, and not 20 minutes ago?"

He sent her a withering glance. "Do I need to go through expository 101 with you to explain what similes are?"

Cara chose not to respond, instead sending him a sweet and innocent smile, knowing that it would just piss him off about how nonchalant she was appearing about the entire situation. In reality, ever since that stupid picture of them started spreading everywhere last week, Cara had spent her time trying to dodge questions and trying to dodge stabbing Kai in the gut to avoid any murder charges.

She was too close to graduating to give all that up, especially for Kai of all people.

The hardest part was explaining the situation to Cian, who had chewed her head off for not telling him about the first “date” she’d been on with Kai. It certainly didn’t help that the photo of her and Kai was definitely incriminating enough that anyone who didn’t know the context would think that the two of them were dating. Cara was looking up at Kai, almost leaning into him, as he spoke. His eyes were trained solely on her with a soft smile gracing his lips mid-sentence as that picture had been taken, and Cara didn’t know if she hated it before because it was a perfect picture or because it was fake.

“By the way, Cian wants to talk to you,” she casually mentioned as they both slowed down to a walk to cool down after their run.

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched as he took a double take towards her, and his eyes were wide. “Cian? Your brother?”

“Yes, my twin brother, Cian. You’ve met him a few times, remember? Or do I need to force your brain to do some jogging as well?”

“Shut up, I know who Cian is. I’m just surprised. Why does he want to talk to me?”

“Oh I don’t know, maybe because a very incriminating photo was taken of us, and now everything thinks you are my boyfriend, and we’re fake dating?”

They stepped off the trail and went on the grass to do some final stretches, and she pulled on her leg to stretch her hamstring.

“Does he not know?” Kai asked.

Cara her lips as she thought over her words. “He knows, and I think that’s what makes it worse. If I were actually dating you, he’d just think I’d gone crazy, but now that he knows it’s fake, he’s probably going to bite your head off too.”

When she had gotten back home after that fateful day, Cian was ready to disown her as his sister. Needless to say, they had argued over everything from how she hadn’t told him about the fake date to the fact that she had agreed to

Cian, at first, was forcing her to give him the play-by-play for every “date” she and Kai planned to go on, and afterwards. Ever since then, not only has she wanted to push Kai off a cliff, but also Cian because he could not understand the fact that they were the same age, and she was an adult. It didn’t matter that he was minutes older than her, he was treating her like she couldn’t take care of herself.

It wasn’t until she had vocalized this fact for him to back off slightly and was now resigned to listen to a recap after any dates she would go on with him.

“Alright, well, I guess I’ll come over some day?” he asked as he bent over to stretch his waist out.

“Or we could go out for lunch since you’re still pressing that,” Cara offered. If Cian was out in public with Kai, he’d be less inclined to create a scene.

“Yeah, sure, does tomorrow work?” he asked, standing up straight and looking at her with a tilt to his head.

“I have no idea, but I’ll text you if he is free. Are we still meeting up for lunch today, though?” she asked, pulling her phone out to text her brother. She knew he had classes today and was meeting up with friends for a group project so she wouldn’t see him till dinner, and Cara would totally forget about asking him if she waited till then.

“With your friend and my pain in the ?” Cara paused, considering his words to understand exactly who he was referring to before she understood he meant Misty and Zach.

“Yup, exactly those people.”

“Then yes.”

~~~

“So, how’s your boyfriend?”

Cara sighed as she set her head down on the cafeteria table, wishing she could disappear. Cara wished she just disappeared because the entire day was a repeat of last week: everyone staring at her as though she had grown a second head simply because she was dating Kai.

To be fair, she would also be judging whomever would actually be dating Kai.

Unfortunately that was her, so she couldn’t even be mad.

“You know that he’s not actually my boyfriend,” she replied. Misty had been there to witness the rage that Cara had been in after Kai had told her about the picture going public, and there was no point in attempting to hide the truth from her best friend. If Cara had actually liked Kai, she would’ve known. Misty seemed incredibly cheery and excited, but she was terrifying when there was

“Yeah, but that’s exactly why this is so much fun,” Misty cheerfully replied. Cara raised her head to glare at her, and before she could murder her best friend, Kai and Zach sat down, both holding two plates of food.

“Thanks for the food, Kai,” Misty happily greeted, taking her plate from Zach and eagerly digging in.

“Even though the only reason you’re getting the food is because Kai and Cara made a deal when she agreed to fake date him?” Zach spoke around a piece of lettuce from his hamburger. The three paused to look at him, and Cara shot her gaze to Kai immediately after.

“You told him?!”

“No! But you told Misty, so it shouldn’t matter!”

“Misty was the poor victim of my rage that should’ve been directed at you.”

“You kicked me in the shin, Cara.”

“That was barely a drop in the bucket of my rage that day.”

“You two aren’t subtle with the arguments, and Kai, I think I would’ve known if you had a thing for Cara,” Zach cut in.

“Anyways, are there any house parties going on for Halloween?” Kai asked Zach, passing Cara her food.

“Why?” Misty asked.

“Because we need to show our faces in public for it to be actually believable that we’re dating, according to Kai.”

“Yeah, yeah there’s a house party. It’s a costume party though,” Zach offered with a sickly sweet smile that had her wondering if asking him was such a good idea after all.

~~~

This time, instead of Kai showing up at Cara’s place, they had decided to meet up at the local bar for some pre-party shots because Lord knew the both of them would need the liquid courage to act as though they were madly in love for longer than a week, and well, that it was real love.

Kai was already there when Cara got there, and she took the chance to gaze over his costume from afar as he casually chatted with someone else in front of the bar. From that person’s costume, she assumed that it was one of his friends that went to the university with them. Kai had donned a dirty navy blue full sleeved Henley, with the sleeves rolled up his forearms, with dark gray jeans that looked like they had seen better days. There was also a brown gun holster hanging from his back, although both sides were empty. Cara didn’t know how he had managed to get the clothes into such a state, but she wouldn’t be surprised if the man had gone running around through dirt and sand to get the clothes just as they were from Uncharted. 

Thankfully, deciding on their Halloween costume didn’t take nearly as long as she had expected it to. When Kai had announced (or rather, demanded) that he was going to be Nathan Drake from Uncharted, Cara wasn’t actually all that upset by the fact that she would have to play Elena Fisher, Nathan’s wife in the game series. Not to mention the fact that the costume was fairly easy to put together, too. She was in a red tank top — not forgetting to wear the nice push up bra that she owned that did wonders for her s — with denim shorts and an empty brown gun holster around her waist. She had even dyed her blonde hair to match Elena's brown hair.

Cara stopped a few paces away from her fake boyfriend and took a deep breath to get herself into the mindset that she loved this idiot.

Good thing it was Halloween because it was terrifying how her initial reaction wasn’t to go disgusting at the thought.

“Babe!” she called as she got closer, and Kai turned to look at her with a bright smile that threatened to throw her off balance.

“Cara! Hey, meet Donghyun,” he gestured towards the man in front of him. Donghyun wasn’t d