Chapter 3 Meeting With The Stranger I'm Supposed To Date

Harper's POV,

I stood outside the Seattle Titans headquarters trying to remember how to breathe like a normal human.

Maya's office was on the fourth floor of a glass and steel building on the waterfront. It was professional and intimidating, the kind of place where people made decisions that affected millions of dollars and hundreds of careers.

Definitely not the kind of place where you showed up to negotiate fake dating a stranger for revenge purposes.

I’d showered and washed my hair. Put on actual clothes; dark jeans and a green blouse that Maya insisted brought out my eyes, plus low heels that I'd forgotten hurt after six weeks of living in slippers.

I looked almost human, almost like someone who had her shit together. The illusion wouldn't survive close inspection, but from a distance I could pass.

“You can do this,” I told myself. “It's just a meeting. You can walk away any time.”

Except I couldn't, not really. That wedding invitation was sitting on Maya's kitchen counter like a ticking bomb, and I had less than three months to decide whether I was showing up defeated or defiant.

I rode the elevator to the fourth floor. The Titans logo was everywhere, on the walls and floors and in the subtle pattern of the carpet. The receptionist smiled at me with professional warmth that didn't reach her eyes.

"Harper Sinclair for Maya Park?"

"Conference room B. Down the hall, third door on your left."

The hallway was lined with photos of players in action shots, championship moments, team celebrations. I recognized some faces from games I'd attended with Joel, back when I still thought hockey was going to be our forever.

Conference room B had glass walls that offered zero privacy. I could see Maya inside, talking with a man who had his back facing me.

He was tall with broad shoulders and dark hair that was just long enough to look intentionally messy. He was wearing jeans and a henley that probably cost more than my entire outfit, and even from behind I could tell he was athletic. The way he stood was balanced and coiled, ready to move, the stance of someone whose body was his profession.

Maya saw me and waved me in. I pushed open the door.

The man turned around.

“Oh. Who I'm I looking at?” I said, thinking to myself.

The photos hadn't done him justice at all. Crew Lawson was objectively, almost aggressively handsome.

He wasn't pretty because ‘prettiness’ was just an understatement. This guy’s got too much edge. His jawline was razor sharp, eyes were dark and intense, the kind that saw too much and gave away nothing. There was a small scar above his left eyebrow. His hands were huge with knuckles scarred in the way that said he'd thrown plenty of punches and taken plenty more.

He looked at me with absolutely zero expression… that wasn't quite hostile or friendly, just assessing, like I was a problem he was deciding whether to solve or ignore.

"Harper," Maya said brightly, in her fake professional voice. "This is Crew Lawson. Crew, this is Harper Sinclair."

"The ex-girlfriend," Crew said. His voice was lower than I'd expected and rough around the edges.

"The physical therapist," I corrected. "Who happens to have an ex-boyfriend. But my professional qualifications exist independent of my relationship status."

One corner of his mouth twitched in acknowledgement that I'd pushed back.

"Maya says you need a date for your ex's wedding," he said.

"Maya says you need someone to make you look less like a violent criminal," I shot back.

This time he DID smile, but it wasn't warm. "Touché."

"Can we all sit?" Maya gestured at the conference table. "I have contracts to review. Let's at least pretend this is a professional arrangement."

I sat down and Crew sat across from me, which felt somewhat intentional. Like he wanted distance, or maybe he just wanted to maintain eye contact while we figured out whether this was going to work or explode.

"So," I said. "Fake dating. For three months and ending the day after my ex's wedding."

"Which includes; public appearances, social media posts, basically enough believability that the media buys it," Crew added. He leaned back in his chair.

"Maya showed me your ex's stats. He's a second pairing defenseman making $6million a year. Decent plus-minus, weak on breakouts. Not exactly what I call an elite company."

"This isn't about hockey."

"Everything's about hockey when you're dating a hockey player, even fake dating." His eyes were very direct. "Your ex is going to see you with me and immediately understand you traded up. That's the whole point, right?"

"The point is that I show up to his wedding looking happy," I said carefully. "The fact that you're objectively better at your job than he is at his is just context."

"So you do think I'm better than him."

"I think you're more expensive than him. That's not the same thing."

He almost smiled again. "You always this defensive, or are you just making special effort for me?"

"I'm not defensive. I'm cautious. Again… there's a difference."

"No difference from where I'm sitting." He crossed his arms.

"Maya pitched this as mutually beneficial. You get revenge, I get image rehab, we both walk away in three months with what we wanted. But I need to know you can sell it. Can you?"

"Can you?" I shot back.

"I fight people for a living. Acting isn't my strong suit."

"And I spent ten years pretending my boyfriend's career mattered more than mine. So yeah. I can act."

We stared at each other across the table. His eyes were very dark and very direct, the kind of stare that made you feel exposed, like he could see through whatever performance you were putting on to the messy truth underneath.

Maya cleared her throat loudly. "So that's a yes from both of you?"

"I haven't agreed to anything," I said.

"Neither have I," Crew added.

"Great. So you're both lying." Maya pulled out two contracts and slid them across the table. "So, three months, a $50,000 compensation for Harper, paid in installments. Crew, your agent already approved your participation. Terms are standard. Public appearances as needed, minimum three social media posts per week, physical affection as required for believability, termination clause allows either party to exit with two weeks notice."

I picked up the contract and skimmed through it. The language was dense because lawyers had definitely written this. But the core terms were clear. Three months of pretending. Fifty thousand dollars. Freedom to leave if it became unbearable.

"What happens if people find out it's fake?" I asked.

"Then we all look like assholes and I lose my job," Maya said. "So let's not let that happen. Any other questions?"

"Yeah." Crew was reading his contract but not looking at it because his eyes were still on me. "Can you kiss on command?"

I blinked. "Excuse me?"

"C’mon, we’re talking… cameras and public events. There's got to be a kiss cam situation eventually. Maybe photographers catching us off guard. Can you kiss me without it looking like hostage negotiation?"

"I've kissed people before."

"That's not what I asked."

Heat crawled up my neck. This was supposed to be a business arrangement. Except, nothing about this conversation attests to that.

"I can kiss you," I said evenly. "Can you kiss me without making it weird?"

"Only one way to find out."

"Absolutely not," Maya interjected. "We are not doing chemistry tests in my conference room. Sign the contracts first. Then you can figure out if you're physically capable of not looking like siblings at a family reunion."

Crew picked up the pen on the table and signed his name in quick, illegible scrawl. He slid the contract back to Maya and then looked at me, waiting.

This was it. The moment where I either walked away and spent the rest of my life wondering what if, or I signed my name and committed to three months of pretending to date a stranger for revenge purposes.

Without too much thinking… I picked up the pen and signed my name. Then pushed the contract across the table to Maya.

"Excellent," Maya said as she collected both documents like she'd just closed a merger. "You're officially fake dating as of right now. First public appearance is tomorrow night. Titans game, you'll sit in Crew's section, cameras will catch you together. Wear something nice. Smile. Try not to kill each other before the third period."

Crew stood up. "I'll pick you up at six."

"You don't know where I live."

"Maya will send me the address." He headed for the door and paused with his hand on the handle. "For the record? Your ex is an idiot."

Then he was gone.

I sat there staring at the door he'd just walked through, my signature drying on a contract that was either going to save me or destroy me.

Maya grinned at me. "This is going to be amazing."

"This is going to be a disaster," I corrected.

"Same thing in my line of work." She gathered her contracts. "Go home. Find something that doesn't scream recently dumped and emotionally devastated. Tomorrow night, you're Crew Lawson's girlfriend. Act like it."

I walked out of that building with $50,000 in theoretical income, a fake boyfriend I'd known for fifteen minutes, and three months to convince the world I was over Joel Hartley.

And the crazy part?

I was starting to think I might actually pull it off.