The blue light of my phone screen illuminated the dark corners of my bedroom, a stark contrast to the heavy, velvet silence of the estate. It was late, the kind of hour where thoughts usually turned toward sleep or the unfinished academic papers sitting on my desk. Instead, a message request from an unknown account stared back at me, vibrating with a quiet, digital insistence. The profile belonged to someone named Oliver Thorne.
His profile picture was striking, designed with a calculated level of charisma that felt almost predatory. He possessed the same sharp and aristocratic features as Richard, but his smile was open and inviting, lacking the guarded and brooding coldness I had come to associate with the Thorne name. He looked like the sun to Richard's shadow.
"Hello, Sadie," the message began. "I hope you do not mind a total stranger reaching out to you like this. I was browsing through some mutual connections from the Eastwood area and your profile caught my eye. You have a reputation for being unreachable, yet you seem to have an incredible taste in literature, based on your recent posts. I am going to be in town this weekend before the new term begins, and I find myself in need of a guide who actually knows where the good coffee is hidden. Would you be interested in showing a visitor around, or has my cousin already warned you about the Thorne family curiosity?"
I stared at the screen for a long moment. The name Thorne was not common, and the facial structure in the photo was far too familiar to be a coincidence. My mind immediately jumped to Richard, the person who had been the source of so much of my recent internal conflict. I typed out a reply, my thumbs hovering over the digital keyboard with a rare spark of hesitation.
"Hi, Oliver," I wrote. "That is quite the invitation. Before I say yes or no, I have to ask a question. Are you related to a Richard Thorne from Eastwood High by any chance?"
I did not have to wait long for the reply. The typing bubbles appeared almost instantly, dancing on the screen as if he had been waiting for me to make the connection all along.
"Guilty as charged," Oliver replied. "Richard is my cousin. We grew up together, though I am a few years older and perhaps a bit more seasoned. I assume if you know him, you probably have a lot of questions about how we share the same DNA. He can be a bit of a challenge to handle, to put it lightly. Does my relation to him disqualify me from getting that coffee, or does it make the prospect of meeting me more interesting?"
"It definitely makes things more complicated," I sent back.
"I promise I am the fun version of the family," Oliver joked, though the humor felt weighted with a hidden meaning. "Richard is the serious, brooding one. I am the one who actually enjoys life. Think about it, Sadie. I will be in town on Saturday. I would love to hear your perspective on my dear, difficult cousin. I have a feeling you see things he tries to hide."
I did not reply after that. I needed to process the information. Two days later, two weeks before we were set to return to Eastwood, I arranged to meet Richard at a quiet, upscale library in the city. The air felt heavy and charged with the residual tension of my final break with Brian. When I spotted Richard near the back carrels, his back was stiff and his movements were frantic as he organized his notes. He looked exhausted, the shadows under his eyes deeper than they had been during our midnight calls.
"I talked to your cousin a few nights ago," I said, skipping the pleasantries as I approached him.
Richard did not move at first. He stood perfectly still, his hand frozen on the spine of a leather bound book. When he finally turned to face me, his expression was one of pure and unadulterated dread. It was the look of a man who had seen a ghost.
"Which one?" he asked. His voice was a harsh whisper that seemed to vibrate with a sudden, sharp anxiety.
"Oliver," I said. "He messaged me. He wants to get coffee this weekend while he is visiting. He was actually very charming, Richard. He said he was the fun version of the Thorne family. He made it sound like you were a problem he was used to managing."
The change in Richard was instantaneous. His face went pale, then flushed with a deep and boiling anger that made my own breath hitch. He slammed the book shut with a force that echoed through the quiet library like a gunshot. A few patrons turned to stare, but Richard did not seem to care. He stepped into my personal space, his eyes burning with a desperate and frantic intensity.
"You are not going to see him," Richard commanded, his voice trembling. "You are going to block him, Sadie. You are going to ignore every single thing he sends you. You do not understand how he operates."
"You do not get to tell me who I talk to," I snapped back, though his reaction startled me. "He was just being friendly. Why are you so worked up about a cup of coffee?"
"Because it is never just a cup of coffee with Oliver," Richard hissed. He grabbed my arm, not painfully, but with a grip that suggested he was terrified I might vanish into thin air if he let go. He pulled me toward a private study room, dragging me inside and closing the heavy oak door behind us.
"Listen to me," Richard said, his breath coming in short and jagged bursts. "Oliver has spent his entire life taking things from me. Every achievement I have, he belittles to our parents. Every friend I make, he charms away until they are loyal only to him. He is the golden child of the Thorne legacy, the one my father constantly holds over my head as the standard I will never reach. If he is messaging you, it is because he knows I care about you."
"He said he just wanted a guide," I argued, though my confidence was wavering under the heat of his gaze.
"He wants a prize," Richard corrected, his voice cracking with a vulnerability I had never heard before. "He knows you are the only person who actually sees me for who I am. He wants to prove that even the one person I trust would prefer his polished version over me. If you go to that coffee shop, he will spend two hours being the most perfect man you have ever met, and then he will call my father to brag about how easily he replaced me. I cannot let him do it, Sadie. I cannot lose this, too."
Richard Thorne, the untouchable and arrogant 'Cool Guy' of Eastwood High, was shaking. The sight of it did something to my heart that I wasn't prepared for.
"So what do you want me to do?" I asked softly.
Richard looked at the floor, his jaw tight. He seemed to be fighting a battle within himself, struggling against a lifetime of pride. Finally, he looked up, and I saw a glimmer of a dangerous, desperate plan in his dark eyes.
"We need to give him a reason to stay away," Richard said. "Oliver follows a specific set of rules to keep the family peace. He will steal a girl I am interested in, but he will not touch a girl I am actually with. The elders consider that a breach of the family code. It would cause too much of a scandal for even him to survive."
"What are you saying, Richard?"
"Be my girlfriend," he said, the words coming out in a frantic rush. "Just for the weekend. Just while he is in town. We tell everyone. We make sure it is all over social media by tomorrow morning. If he thinks we are a committed couple, he has to back off. He has to leave you alone."
"You want us to fake a relationship just to spite your cousin?" I asked, trying to wrap my head around the cold strategy of it.
"I am asking you to help me survive him," Richard pleaded. "Please, Sadie. I will do anything. I will be whatever you need me to be. Just do not let him win this. Just let me have one thing that he cannot touch."
I looked at him, really looked at him. I saw the fear of a boy who had been second best his whole life. I saw the desperation of someone who had finally found a connection and was terrified of it being severed.
"Okay," I whispered. "I will do it. We can pretend for the weekend."
Richard closed his eyes, a long and shaky breath escaping his lips. He leaned his forehead against mine for a brief second, a gesture that felt far too real for a fake arrangement. It was the first time we had been this close since the semester began, and the air between us was electric.
"Thank you," he breathed. "You have no idea what this means to me."
As we walked out of the study room together, his hand slid into mine, his fingers locking firmly between my own. The plan was in motion. The lie had begun. And as Oliver's name sat in my inbox, I knew that the "fake" part of this relationship was going to be much harder to maintain than the truth ever was.