Chapter 89

Kayla

The next morning, I found Nicholas in the kitchen bright and early, stirring cream into a cup of coffee. He turned when I entered, and his face was as calm and collected as ever, utterly ignorant of the butterflies in my stomach.

He’d said that there was going to be a party this weekend, conveniently the day before my birthday. Did that mean…?

I held my phone up, displaying the text he’d just sent me. “We’re meeting the wedding planner at nine? I just saw her yesterday.”

He shrugged and took a sip of his coffee. “The engagement party is this weekend,” he replied matter-of-factly.

My face paled a little. I thought the party was for my birthday, but I had thought wrong. It was an engagement party. A fake one.

“Right,” I said slowly, pocketing my phone. “I saw the comment last night. I wasn’t sure what you were referring to.”

There was a brief silence, and then he said, “I hope you don’t mind.”

Truthfully, I did mind, but I didn’t admit my actual disappointment. “It just seems sort of random,” I just said. “Why this weekend?”

Nicholas hesitated for a moment. I found it a little difficult to look him in the eye with my current disappointment, but I managed to hold his gaze.

For a moment, just a moment, I almost thought he might say something different. That he might take my hands and say that he wanted the entire pack to be there to celebrate my birthday, and he was just messing with me. That he had heard my confession last night after all and he didn’t want to play around anymore.

I wasn’t sure why a tiny shred of me hoped for that, but it did.

Which was why it hurt when he said his next words.

“I figured it might make people like us more if we held a big party. You know how people love parties,” he said as if he were simply discussing the weather. Then, after a brief pause, he added, “Besides, it’ll keep Gray thinking we’re occupied with wedding plans, and it’ll piss him off if he can tell we’re going through with the wedding. Meanwhile, I’m sending Marcus to follow him and see if he tries anything else.”

Right.

Even if it hurt just a little, I couldn’t argue with that logic. If Gray thought we were going through with the wedding despite what I had said about loving Noah—which we were—then he might try some other extreme measure to get us to cancel.

“So you want to catch him in the act,” I mused.

Nicholas nodded and took another gulp of his coffee. “I doubt he’ll try anything so soon; he’s too smart for that. But it’s worth keeping an eye on him.”

“Alright,” I finally said with a soft sigh. “But the party date is so close. I wish you had at least scheduled it for another week from now.”

“We don’t have time to waste. Besides, it’s not like it’s a real engagement party; just keep it basic with low effort, and we’ll be able to hold it this weekend with no problems.”

For reasons I wasn’t ready to admit, those words made me stiffen.

Effort.

Not real.

In other words… not worth our time. Not really.

I clenched my jaw as Nicholas turned on his heel and rinsed out his cup, my chest tightening. There were so many things I wanted to say, and yet I couldn’t seem to find a good enough reason to say them. Because at the end of the day, he was right.

This wedding was fake. This relationship was fake.

And there was no point in pretending otherwise.

We met the wedding planner in a public place, where we were sure to be seen by as many people as possible without being too over the top: a diner. Nicholas gestured for me to slide into the blue vinyl booth before he sat next to me, and the planner sat across from us.

“I didn’t even know you two were throwing an engagement party, if I’m being honest,” the planner chuckled as she slipped a binder out of her bag.

Yeah, me neither, I thought wryly.

“Or at least, I figured that you would throw one that’s a bit more… intimate,” she continued with a chuckle.

I hesitated, glancing over at Nicholas. His face was smooth and impassive, but I had a feeling that he was just as thrilled by the prospect of a public engagement party as I was, which was really not that excited at all.

But I couldn’t fault him for the idea. I would have done the same, if I had been the one to think of it first.

A public engagement party wasn’t exactly ideal, but it was a great way to make the public happy. There were bound to be tons of cameras there, plenty of chances for sweet moments and photo opportunities, and people loved free food and party favors.

Honestly, it was a foolproof plan to finally put an end to this media nonsense once and for all. And even if Isabella and Liam did decide to make more public statements about me after the party, people weren’t guaranteed to side with them like they were last time.

After all, how could anyone hate the adorable couple who threw a pack-wide party for all to celebrate their love?

Still, my heart wasn’t in it. After hearing Nicholas say those words on camera last night—I love you—followed by what he had said this morning, I was feeling more bitter than ever about the entire thing.

Of course I would be the one she-wolf who was cursed to have not one, but two men say those three little words without meaning them. Liam was the first—the dirty liar. And then there was Nicholas who, to be fair, had made it pretty clear from the start that this was all just a facade and found every reason to remind me that it still was.

But even though I knew this relationship was fake, hearing him say those words still made me bitter. It probably didn’t help any that I had chosen him during my aphrodisiac-induced stupor at the guild hall less than a week ago, and yet our relationship was still fake, unworthy of real effort. He couldn’t even be bothered to remember my birthday.

As for what had happened that day during the guild’s ‘test’, we hadn’t even talked about it yet; it was as if that moment had never even happened. I kept telling myself that it was just because we were busy, fully focused on handling a media shit-storm on top of worrying about Noah, but…

I wasn’t sure. It felt like more than that. Especially during moments like this, when a grinning wedding planner was shoving ideas for decorations for a fake engagement party in my face.

“What do you think of these?” she asked, tapping on a catalog cutout of some garish pink rose displays. “These would look so pretty as garlands hanging around the dais where you two will be sitting.”

Nicholas opened his mouth to reply, but I cut in before he could.

“Yeah, those would work.”

The wedding planner beamed and jotted down the item number, then flipped to the next page, revealing an array of tablecloth swatches. “And—”

“Let’s do the blue,” I said, pointing to one of the swatches without a second thought. The planner hesitated, but when I just sipped my tea, she shrugged and wrote that one down too. Meanwhile, Nicholas shot me a sidelong glance, but said nothing.

Throughout the course of our meeting, I felt like I was on autopilot. I didn’t really pay much attention to the pictures the planner showed us, and her words just sounded like distant echoes in my ears.

All I could hear was Nicholas saying those words.

“It’s not like it’s a real engagement party… Just keep it basic with low effort.”

And so I did just that. Even if it made me want to be sick.

By the time we were finished, we had the entire party planned and ready to go. All we needed was to give the planner the money to order the supplies, and then we could move on to the next task. Nicholas handed her his card, and she scurried off with our list of requests to make the order.

But once we were alone, Nicholas turned to me with a furrowed brow.

“Half of those decorations don’t go together,” he said. “Are you alright? I thought you loved wedding planning.”

I kept my voice neutral and my gaze fixed on the window as I replied, “I do love wedding planning. But this isn’t a real wedding. It’s supposed to be low-effort, remember?”

Nicholas stared at me incredulously for a moment; even though I wasn’t looking at him, I could feel his gaze burning into the back of my head.

But he said nothing. And neither did I.

Instead, without a word, he stood and followed the wedding planner out of the diner.