My Fake Boyfriend Had Secrets, and I Had Nothing Left

"Do you have any idea what that video did to your sister?" Dad asked. Brielle sat beside him in my gray cardigan, dabbing at perfectly dry eyes with a napkin. "It's fine, Dad," she sniffled. "I just don't want Lena to hate me." "Nobody hates you, sweetheart." Marianne squeezed her hand, then turned to me, her voice dropping ten degrees. "Though kissing a stranger in front of the entire school? Just to humiliate your sister?" "Caleb was the one who—" "Caleb made a mistake," Dad said. "You made a spectacle." I opened my mouth. Closed it. None of the speeches I'd rehearsed in the shower had prepared me for being the villain. "Apologize to your sister," Dad said. "I'm sorry, Brielle." Her smile was small, sweet, and awful. Under the table, my fists curled tightly. Brielle reached for the jam, and that was when I saw her hands. Ultramarine. A streak beneath her nails, a smudge on her knuckle, deep and bright as the blue I'd spent three weeks mixing for Still Water. Brielle didn't paint. Brielle barely tolerated my brushes. Say something, a small voice urged. But what if I was wrong? It could be nail polish. I was exhausted and humiliated; maybe I was seeing what I wanted to see. So I said nothing and ate my toast like a sentence being served. By afternoon, I'd escaped to the art studio, the only place that still felt like mine. I was rinsing brushes when the door banged open. "We need to talk." Mateo filled the doorway, hair damp, jaw tight, looking like he hadn't slept either. "How did you find me?" "You're in every video on campus. Your schedule was easy." He stepped inside. "A scout from Spain arrives next week for the semifinal. He's heard I have a girlfriend. Apparently, that makes me 'stable.' He loves it." "Okay?" "So you're going to be her." "I'm going to be what?" "My girlfriend. Fake-dating, until he leaves." He said it like a coach reading a lineup. "You started this. You kissed me in front of two thousand people." "You kissed me back." "I was being polite." A muscle ticked in his jaw. "Say yes." A week ago, I would have made a list. Pros, cons, an exit strategy. But home was a place where I apologized for existing, and the numbness had settled so deep I couldn't find its edges. "Fine," I said. He blinked. He'd clearly braced for a fight. "Fine?" "Yes. Whatever you need." Something like suspicion crossed his face. He took my phone, typed in his number, and handed it back. "Don't make me regret this." "Rules," he added at the door. "Hold my hand when people are watching. Smile. Don't fall for me." "I'll do my best to restrain myself." The corner of his mouth twitched. Almost a smile. Then he was gone, and the studio felt too quiet. Friday came faster than I wanted. The Spring Exhibition judging filled the gallery with professors, clipboards, and the smell of varnish. I stood beside Still Water, hands folded, chin up. A lake at dawn, ultramarine deepening into silver. Three months of my life in one canvas. For once, I felt proud. "Remarkable control of light," Professor Hale murmured, writing something down. "Tell me about your process." I'd barely opened my mouth when the gallery doors flew open. "That's mine!" Brielle stumbled in, tears streaming, Caleb's arm around her shoulders like a bodyguard's. Every head turned. "She stole it!" Her voice cracked on cue. "I painted that. For months. And my own sister took it and put her name on it!" "Miss—" Professor Hale began. "I have proof." She pulled photos from her bag with shaking hands, fanning them out. Sketches. A half-finished underpainting. Brielle, brush in hand, smiling beside my canvas. "I was there," Caleb said. "Brielle painted it. Lena's just jealous." Whispers rippled through the gallery, quick and hungry. Phones lifted again. "Is it true?" Professor Hale asked me. No. The word was right there. I knew where every brushstroke lived. I could have named them all. But the stares pressed in like hands. My throat closed. The room tilted, and the whispers blurred into a roar, the same roar from the stadium, swallowing me whole. "Lena?" someone said. I couldn't answer. My lungs wouldn't work. My hands were shaking, my vision narrowing to a pinprick of light. So I ran. I shoved through the doors and down the hall and into the last bathroom stall, locking it with fingers that wouldn't stop trembling. I pressed my forehead to the cold metal and counted breaths the way I counted everything. In. Out. In. Outside the stall, heels clicked past and someone laughed. Maybe at me. Maybe not. My phone buzzed in my pocket. An email from the Art Department. Subject line: Immediate Notice. I read it once. Then again, because I always check my work twice. Effective immediately, you are suspended pending an investigation into academic theft.

The rain started before I reached my street. By the time I saw my house, I was soaked to the bone. But the cold water didn't matter. What mattered were the two gray suitcases sitting on the porch. Dad stood in the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest. Marianne hovered behind him, a shadow with sharp edges. "The school called," Dad said. His voice was flat. No anger, which was somehow worse. Just finality. "Dad, it's a lie. Brielle set me up." "Marianne found more of the sketches in your room, Lena. The ones you copied from Brielle." I stared at him. The sketches Brielle had stolen from my desk. She'd already used some of them as 'proof' at the exhibition. Someone had put the rest back in my room for Marianne to find. "She's fragile right now," Dad continued, looking away. "The cheating, the public scene, and now this? Marianne thinks it's best if you stay somewhere else for a while. Just until things calm down." He was choosing them. Again. But this time, he was locking the door. I didn't scream. I didn't cry. I just picked up the handles of my suitcases. They were heavy, packed with a careless, frantic rush. "Where am I supposed to go?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper. I had no car, no savings, and my phone battery was already bleeding down to twelve percent. "You're eighteen. You have friends," Marianne said from the shadows, her tone dripping with fake sympathy. I turned around and walked down the driveway. The wheels of my luggage rattled against the wet pavement, loud and hollow. I made it three blocks before my legs gave out. I sat on the bench of a covered bus stop, the rain drumming a relentless beat on the plastic roof. I didn't know the bus schedule. I didn't even have a destination. A pair of headlights cut through the gray afternoon, slowing to a crawl before stopping right in front of me. The passenger window rolled down. Mateo. He looked from me, to the suitcases, to the rain. He didn't ask what happened. He didn't offer pity. "You weren't answering your phone. I was on my way to your house." He jerked his chin at the passenger seat. "Get in." "I don't have anywhere to go." "I didn't ask for your itinerary. Get in the car, Lena." I was too cold to argue. He loaded my bags into the trunk, the water plastering his dark hair to his forehead. Ten minutes later, I was sitting on the edge of a leather sofa in his apartment, wrapped in a towel, staring at a mug of tea he'd shoved into my hands. "You can take the spare room," he said, leaning against the kitchen counter. "My little sister's at our grandmother's this week, so it's quiet." "Why are you doing this?" "Because my scout flies in for the semifinal, and my fake girlfriend dying of pneumonia doesn't look great for my stability." It was a lie. A gruff, convenient lie. But I held the warm mug tighter and let myself believe it. Three days later, I was a ghost haunting my own life. Barred from campus, suspended, and homeless. But tonight was the Spring Exhibition Gala, the biggest donor event of the year. Professor Hale would be there. If I could just get five minutes with her, away from Brielle's tears, I could explain the brushwork. I could prove Still Water was mine. I slipped through the catering entrance in a black dress Mateo had borrowed from a teammate's girlfriend. The gallery was a sea of champagne flutes, string quartets, and wealth. I stayed near the edges, scanning the room for Hale. Then I heard it. A voice ringing out over a microphone near the center of the room. "The blue isn't just a color to me," Brielle was saying. I froze. I pushed through a cluster of men in tuxedos, my heart hammering against my ribs. Brielle stood on a small raised platform in front of Still Water. Caleb was beside her, looking like a proud prince. A crowd of wealthy donors hung on her every word. "It represents the lake where my mother used to take me," Brielle said, her voice trembling with practiced emotion. "Before she got sick. Before she passed away. Painting this... it was my way of keeping her memory alive." The air left my lungs. The room spun, the crystal chandeliers blurring into streaks of harsh white light. Brielle's mother was alive and well. She was standing ten feet away in pearls, clapping. My mother was the one who died. My mother was the one who took me to that lake. She hadn't just stolen my painting. She had stolen my grief. She had packaged my dead mother into a tragedy to sell to rich strangers. The careful, methodical girl inside me snapped. The lists burned. The composure shattered. "Stop it!" I screamed. The string quartet faltered. Heads snapped toward me. I rushed the stage. I didn't have a plan. I just needed her to stop talking. I reached the platform, tears blurring my vision, and shoved Brielle's shoulder. "Stop lying! That's my mother! That's my painting!" Brielle gasped, stumbling backward with perfect, theatrical terror. Before I could take another step, a heavy weight slammed into me. Caleb. He grabbed my wrists, twisting my arms painfully behind my back. He was a foot taller and pure muscle. I thrashed against him, sobbing, but he held me in a vice grip. His fingers dug into my bruised skin. "Get off me!" I choked out, kicking at his shins. "Someone call security!" Caleb yelled, playing the heroic protector. Brielle cowered behind him, hands over her mouth. "Lena, please! Why are you doing this to us?" Two security guards in dark suits pushed through the crowd, grabbing my arms and pulling me away from Caleb. I struggled, my borrowed dress slipping, my hair wild. I was crying hysterically, the grief and rage making me look exactly like the monster they claimed I was. "She's obsessed," Caleb said loudly, his voice carrying over the shocked whispers of the donors. "She can't accept that I broke up with her. She's been stalking us." "I haven't!" I screamed, my voice raw. Caleb pulled out his phone and tapped the screen. A second later, a collective chime echoed through the gallery as fifty iPhones received an Airdrop. A woman near me gasped, looking at her screen. I caught a glimpse of it. A black-and-white security camera still. Me, standing outside Caleb's apartment door at 2:00 AM, looking desperate. It was from four months ago. I had accidentally left my studio keycard inside his apartment and needed it for an early session. I waited an hour for him to wake up and let me in. He never did. Later, he swore he couldn't find the card. But out of context, in the harsh grain of the security footage, I looked like a deranged stalker. "Get her out of here," Caleb said, his voice dripping with disgust. The guards dragged me backward. The last thing I saw before the gallery doors swung shut was Brielle, safe in Caleb's arms, smiling as the crowd looked at me with absolute horror.

Two days. That was how long it took for the internet to decide who I was. The stalker. The unhinged ex. A grainy photo of me outside Caleb's door at 2:00 AM, passed around campus with captions that made my stomach turn. I hadn't left Mateo's apartment since. I sat on his sofa with my knees pulled to my chest, staring at a muted television. "Are you the crazy stalker girl?" I flinched. A girl stood in the hallway with a backpack hanging off one shoulder, home from a week at her grandmother's. She had dark eyes I recognized instantly and looked about eleven. Her phone glowed in her hand. On the screen was my tear-streaked face, frozen mid-scream. My throat closed. I shrank into the cushions. Anything I said would only prove her right. "Sofi." Mateo stepped out of the kitchen with a dish towel over his shoulder. "Phone down." "But everyone's saying—" "Look up there." He pointed at the wall above the television. A massive poster of Lionel Messi hung there, arms raised, a stadium roaring behind him. "Remember what they said about him?" Mateo asked quietly. "When he was your age?" Sofi's frown wavered. "That he was too small. Too weak." "And?" "And he became the best in the world." "Don't believe everything on a screen." He tapped her nose. "Now say hello properly." Sofi studied me for a long moment. Then she slid the phone into her pocket. "Sorry. I'm Sofi." "Lena," I managed. "You can sit next to me at dinner," she said, like a queen granting a pardon. Then she disappeared down the hall. I let out a shaky breath. "Thank you." "She's a good kid." Mateo shrugged, but his eyes stayed on me. "The world's loud right now. You don't have to listen." An hour later, it got louder. My phone buzzed on the coffee table. University Administration. "Miss Davis," Dean Evans said, his voice stripped of all warmth. "The committee has reached its decision." "The investigation into my painting—" "There is nothing left to investigate. Last night, someone entered the gallery and slashed Still Water to ribbons." The floor tilted. The lake. The ultramarine. The last place my mother had ever held my hand. "No," I whispered. "The door was opened with a keycard. Yours." "I lost that card months ago. I left it at Caleb's apartment. He said he'd find it—" "It was never reported missing, Miss Davis. In light of the stalking allegations, the committee sees no reason to look further. You are expelled for vandalism, effective today. Do not return to campus." "Please, just check the cameras—" The line went dead. My phone slid from my fingers and landed on the rug with a soft thud. It was such a small sound for the end of everything. I didn't argue. I didn't call back. I'd run out of voice. "Lena?" Mateo called from the kitchen. "Could you grab my wallet from the glovebox? And your boxes are still in the trunk." "Okay," I said, to no one. The parking garage felt like a tomb. I hauled my last box of supplies out of the trunk, then walked around to the passenger door and opened the glovebox. The wallet was there. So was a thick envelope. It slid out and spilled across the seat. I should have shoved it back, but a highlighted line caught my eye. Patient: Mateo Duarte. Complete tear, anterior cruciate ligament. Surgery recommended immediately. The date was last November. The week of last fall's Westbrook game. I remembered Caleb laughing about it in his kitchen, tossing a ball from hand to hand. I sent him a message. He won't forget it. I had laughed along. God help me, I had laughed. Beneath the scan was a letter from a football academy in Spain. Pending the scout's evaluation, we are prepared to offer Mateo a place and a contract for the coming season. A contract. A home for Sofi. A way out for his whole family. My hands started to shake. Mateo wasn't just playing through pain. He was playing on a knee that could give out at any second, with a scout in the stands and everything he loved on the line. And he'd still sprinted past every defender on that pitch as if nothing hurt. He'd stolen that goal on a ruined knee. Then a stranger kissed him in front of two thousand people, and he went with it. I tucked the papers back exactly as I'd found them. I closed the glovebox gently, as if it might wake. Upstairs, the apartment was quiet. Sofi's door was shut. Mateo's voice drifted from the kitchen, low and easy as he talked to someone on the phone. He sounded like a boy with nothing to hide. I slipped into the spare room, set the box down, and didn't unpack it. Instead, I pulled out a roll of cheap butcher paper and unrolled it across the hardwood. Brown, rough, blank. I knelt in front of it with a pencil in my hand and nothing in my head. I sobbed until the paper blurred, until my chest ached, until the whole apartment seemed to hold its breath around me.

My phone buzzed against the hardwood. I was still on the floor of the spare room, my cheek pressed to the edge of the butcher paper. It was still blank. Even after an hour of crying, I hadn't drawn a single line. Marianne. I almost let it ring out. "Lena, sweetheart." Her voice was soft and warm, the way she spoke to Brielle. "Your father wants to talk. He misses you." I sat up slowly. "He does?" "Of course he does. And your mother's things are still in the attic. Come take them before Brielle's friends start using that room." My mother's things. Her sketchbooks. Her silk scarves that still smelled faintly of jasmine. The photos of the lake. It might be a trap. Marianne had never called me sweetheart in two years. But Still Water was gone. Those boxes were all I had left of her. "I'll come," I said. Mateo had gone to the team's walkthrough before the semifinal. I tore a corner off the butcher paper and wrote on it in pencil: Went home to get Mom's things. Back soon. —L. I left it on the counter beside his keys. Then I went back to the house that had thrown me out. It was quiet when I arrived. Dad's car wasn't in the driveway. "He's running late," Marianne said, opening the door before I could knock. She was smiling. "Here, let me take your things." She slid my coat off my shoulders and took my tote bag with it, hanging them both by the door like a perfect hostess. Then she pressed a cup of chamomile tea into my hands. "The attic's open. Take your time." The attic stairs creaked under me the way they always had. I found the boxes in the corner, where I'd stacked them after the funeral, each labeled in my careful handwriting. Mom—Sketchbooks. Mom—Scarves. Mom—Photos. I lifted the first lid. Empty. The second one was empty too. So was the third. I tore through every box, my tea going cold on the floorboards, until I was kneeling in a ring of open cardboard with nothing inside. They had taken all of it. Below me, the front door opened. Then Marianne screamed. It was a raw, bloodcurdling sound. I scrambled down the attic stairs, then the main staircase, my heart slamming against my ribs. Marianne was crumpled at the bottom of the stairs, cradling her wrist. The hallway table had been knocked over. A crystal vase lay in glittering pieces across the floor. Dad stood frozen in the doorway with his briefcase still in his hand. "She pushed me," Marianne sobbed, pointing up at me. "I only asked her to give back the money." "What money?" I said. "I just got here. I was in the attic—" "Your safe, Richard." Marianne's voice broke beautifully. "I caught her in the study." Dad turned his head. Through the open study door, I could see the safe hanging open, and it was empty. "I never touched it," I said. "Then show him." Marianne lurched to her feet and snatched my tote bag from the hook. She shoved it into my arms. "Empty it. Go on." My hands shook as I turned it over. My wallet fell out, then a pencil. Then a thick white envelope landed on the tile with a heavy slap, and bills fanned out from its torn edge. I stared at it. I had never seen it before in my life. Then I remembered Marianne's smile at the door, and her hands sliding my coat from my shoulders and taking my bag with it. She'd planted it before I'd even taken off my shoes. "Dad." My voice cracked. "Dad, look at me. You know me. You know me." He didn't look at me. He set down his briefcase, knelt, and began picking up the shards of the vase one by one. It had been Marianne's wedding gift to him. He held the pieces like something precious. He had never once held me like that since Mom died. "Get out," he said to the broken glass. "From today, you are no longer my daughter." The words didn't hurt at first. They just echoed in my head. I picked up my wallet and my pencil. I left the envelope where it lay. At the door, I turned back. "Where are my mother's things?" Marianne leaned against the banister, her injured wrist suddenly forgotten. She smiled. "Go ask her yourself." The cemetery was a forty-minute walk. The cold cut through my sweater because I'd forgotten my coat on the hook. I didn't go back for it. I hadn't been here since the funeral. I'd told myself I was too busy. The truth was that it hurt too much to see her name carved in stone. Now I had nowhere else to go. Row fourteen, near the old oak. I counted the headstones once. Then twice, because I always check twice. Her plot was gone. There was only a rectangle of fresh sod, its seams still visible, with no stone and no name. On the grave beside it lay a stranger's carnations, wilting in the wind. "No," I whispered. "No, no, no." I found the caretaker in a small brick shed by the gates. He was a stooped old man with frost on his eyebrows. "Please," I said. "Row fourteen. Elena Davis. Her headstone is gone." He pulled a heavy ledger from the shelf, ran a crooked finger down the page, and frowned. "Mr. Davis signed the request last month. His wife brought the papers in herself. Said the family was relocating the remains." He paused. "The headstone was disposed of." "Relocated where?" He looked up at me then, with eyes full of pity. He opened his mouth, closed it, and shook his head. He didn't know. I don't remember walking back to row fourteen. I only remember my knees hitting the cold, damp grass, and my fingers digging into the seams of the sod as if I could peel it back and find her underneath. "Mom," I sobbed. "Mom, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't come." Dirt packed beneath my nails. My voice tore, then thinned, then gave out completely, until all that was left was my breath fogging in the air above an empty grave.

The rain didn't stop. It just kept falling, steady and cold, as if the sky had decided I deserved it. I walked the whole way back from the cemetery. My dress and sweater were caked in mud, and my fingernails were black with dirt from my mother's grave. People crossed the street to avoid me. I didn't blame them. When I reached Mateo's floor, the apartment door was already open. Sofi stood in the doorway in a Westbrook jersey three sizes too big, her brother's number eleven hanging past her knees. She took one look at me, and her eyes went wide. "Lena! Where were you?" "Sofi, why are you alone?" "Mrs. Ortiz from next door was watching me, but she fell asleep on our couch." She grabbed my muddy wrist without flinching. "Mateo already left for the semifinal. He read your note and left two tickets on the counter. He said you'd come back." Something in my chest cracked open quietly. Then she held up a faded red wristband, frayed at the edges. "He forgot it," she said, her voice wobbling. "He never plays without it. Never. Our mom gave it to him." "Sofi, I can't. Look at me." "Please." She tugged harder. "He can't play without it. And there's a rumor someone famous is coming! Coach said the scout's bringing a guest." I looked down at the wristband in her small hand. I had lost my mother twice, my father in one sentence, and my art to a knife in the dark. Everyone I'd ever loved had been taken from me, or had chosen to leave. Mateo was the one thing nobody had taken yet. I left a note for Mrs. Ortiz, grabbed the tickets, and took Sofi's hand. "Okay," I said. "Let's go." The semifinal was at the city stadium downtown, miles from the campus I was banned from. It was chaos. Floodlights turned the rain into silver needles. Thousands of fans crushed against the gates, chanting, singing, and waving scarves soaked dark with water. Sofi held onto my hand so tightly my fingers went numb. Near the VIP entrance, the crowd suddenly surged. A convoy of black cars rolled up to the curb. The first door opened, and a silver-haired man in a navy coat stepped out. Sofi gasped. "That's the scout from Spain," she breathed. "Mateo showed me his picture." Then the second door opened. A man climbed out, small, bearded, and unmistakable, and the stadium lost its mind. Lionel Messi. The roar hit like a wave. Security lines buckled. Phones shot into the air, and grown men burst into tears behind the barricades. Sofi screamed, jumping up and down. "I told you! I told you!" Across the barricade, past the security guards, I saw him. Mateo stood by the players' lot in his tracksuit, his kit bag on his shoulder. He'd stopped dead twenty feet from his idol, the man from the poster above his television. Then he laughed. It was a stunned, boyish laugh, as if he couldn't believe the world had given him something good for once. It was the first real joy I'd ever seen on his face. My heart squeezed so hard it hurt. He shook his head, still grinning, pushed his headphones into his ears, and turned down the wet service road toward the tunnel. He favored his right knee, just slightly. No one else would have noticed. I did. "Mateo!" Sofi shouted, but the crowd swallowed her voice. I pulled her along the barricade, searching for a gap. That was when I saw them. Caleb and Brielle were near the VIP rope, shoving past an older couple to get closer. Brielle had her phone raised, angling for a photo, and Caleb was barking at a security guard as if the stadium belonged to him. His own team was already out of the Cup. He'd come anyway, just to be seen. Brielle's eyes found mine. She looked me up and down, at my mud-streaked dress, my soaked hair, and the grave dirt under my nails. Her glossy lips curved. Pathetic, she mouthed. I waited for it to hurt, but it didn't. I turned away. She could have the rope, the photo, and the crowd. None of it mattered anymore. Behind me, the security guards hurried Messi back into his car. The convoy pulled away from the curb, swinging around toward the players' entrance at the end of the service road. I found a break in the barricade where a guard had stepped away. "Stay here," I told Sofi, pressing her against a pillar. "Don't move." I slipped through and onto the service road. Mateo was halfway to the tunnel, his head down, nodding to whatever was playing in his ears. Then I heard an engine. It came from the side lot, a white van with no headlights, tearing out onto the road after Messi's convoy. Through the windshield, I saw the driver hunched over a camera, his lens pointed at the black cars instead of the road. He hit the curve too fast. The tires lost the asphalt. The van slid sideways on the wet road, hydroplaning in a long, screaming skid. It was heading straight for Mateo's blind side. I ran. "Mateo—"