“What are we going to do?” Rina said, with panic in her tone. A smile played on Zayn’s lips as he interestingly watched her close her eyes and take a deep breath. She opened them a second later, set in grim determination. She’d done that thing she always did when she needed to get out a fix, employing her acting skills, which Zayn was greatly relying upon to get them through the next five years of their fake marriage.
But it was way too early for her to use it, as far as Zayn was concerned, and he wasn’t going to let her go out of her way to cover up something that honestly, he was getting tired of keeping away from the world.
The smile on Zayn’s face grew wider as Joel got closer. He’d already noticed Zayn’s car and was approaching them, probably to confirm if Rina was fine. Zayn counted the seconds, and Rina put her hands on the car lock. He knew she was going to pull it open when Joel came around, offering some explanation she already thought of in her head.
But Zayn had a better solution.
The minute Joel got around to the passenger’s side of the car, he put the car in motion and backed out of the driveway, heading out into the night at the full speed of his sports car. He looked at his rearview mirror as he drove, satisfied with the stunned look on Joel’s face. If he couldn’t have an actual conversation with him about Rina, he could at least do this.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Rina whined. Zayn could hear the humor in her voice tinged with relief. She thought it was funny too, but more so, she was grateful that she hadn’t had to lie to Joel.
“You enjoyed it, didn’t you?”
“I feel bad that I did,” she answered, laughing. “You should have just listened when I told you not to come get me at the fashion house. I knew this would happen. Thankfully, it was just Joel. What if you met any of the models out there and they were wondering what you were doing at the fashion house in the night?”
“I actually did come across some of them.” Zayn offered casually, one hand on the steering and the other beside him, hovering on nothing in particular.
“Zayn!”
“They didn’t see me though,” he continued, having a good time with this. “The car is tinted and it wasn’t the same one I carried the last time I was around.”
She seemed to forget he had like a hundred cars at his disposal.
“And besides, I didn’t like the look on his face. He looks at you like he’s hungry for something.”
Rina looked up at him, uncertain if this was the right moment to remind him of one of the terms of the contract. But she needed to get this right for herself, she wouldn’t have unnecessary hopes and thoughts.
“Didn’t the contract say we could date whoever we wanted to for the next five years as long as it doesn’t affect the terms of the contract?” Her heart thumped with that question hanging in the air, afraid of what the response might be. The minute she had it out, Rina regretted asking it. She was better off living in the oblivion she had gotten so used to.
The easy smile on Zayn’s face that Rina had gotten used to seeing each time she was around him, fell immediately. He lifted his hand from his side and placed it on the steering, staring at the dark roads ahead. There was a swift shift in the air as Rina had just pulled them into a topic that should have been reserved for later.
Or never.
“I changed my mind,” Zayn muttered after what felt like a thousand years. “I’m going to take that part out of the contract. If you go out with someone else, the person is bound to ask questions, like how on earth can you date the most powerful person in the country, and still go ahead to cheat on him?”
Rina was never going to admit it, but that thought had crossed her mind a few times. She knew that if their marriage was any bit real, she would have to be out of her mind to cheat on him. And even now that it wasn’t real, it still felt like a foreign idea. It brought back memories of the accusations that had been thrown at her concerning her sleeping with younger men in the industry. It just didn’t sit well with her.
Rina looked at him softly. “That’s unfair,” she muttered, not wanting to feel any more expectant or entitled. “I didn’t give my consent to that, and the valid terms of a contract should be agreed to by both parties, right?”
“You have more to…”
“And what about you? Why aren’t you doing the same thing?”
“Who says I wouldn’t be?” He cast a side glance at her before returning his gaze to the road. “I won’t be seeing anyone else either. We have to make this as believable as possible until the very end, such that even after the divorce, no one will be able to tell that it was all a rouse.”
A rouse. Rina didn’t know how she felt about the use of that word, but that was what it was in reality. But more importantly, she didn’t know what to think of Zayn’s decision to take off the term so that they could see other people. It did exactly what Rina had been trying not to do, to get to the point where she started looking at Zayn differently, wondering if there was a tiny part of him, that somewhere, somehow, didn’t want to share her.
And that was what she did, resting her head on her palm and staring at him as he drove, wondering what was going on in his sexy head. He chose to turn at that moment and winked at her.
Rina thought she was going to faint from her sudden dizziness.