Once I start reading all the headlines, picture captions, and posts on social media about my first public appearance with Connor, I can’t stop. It’s like trying to look away from an accident that’s piling up, car by car.

Connor Kenyon’s Pity Date? reads one photo caption on a snarky gossip site. And either they found the worst, dopey-faced picture of me available with New York’s top Prince Charming or I really do look this awkward and clueless in real life. Most of the other tabloids follow the same pattern, but a slightly more valid publication gives me hope: it has better images of us, plus a click-baiting headline that isn’t quite as offensive: Connor Kenyon’s Mystery Girl: American Royalty Steps Out with a Commoner.

Then I read the comments.

When did Connor adopt this dog from the pound? What happened to his hot dates?

He must’ve spent his entire fortune on cosmetics to cover her up, but it wasn’t enough. He can do so much better than this.

Connor, I thought you had some taste, man. If you don’t want those supermodels’ numbers anymore, hand em over!

I set my phone down on the kitchen table, tears pooling in my eyes. I never thought I was a beauty. Maybe cute or even innocently plain compared to Connor’s normal kind of woman. But this?

Am I really that awful?

A tear trickles down my cheek. Odd. I made it through Robbie cheating on me, survived my best friend’s betrayal of trust, but seeing what strangers think of me is what cuts me to the bone.

As I check social media feeds, comments are pouring in that validate my fears about never matching up to the Connor Kenyon. I’m not gorgeous enough. I’m not sexy enough. And the thing is, my worst suspicions are telling me now that maybe this is why Robbie cheated on me—because I wasn’t enough for him, either.

But I don’t care about that boyfriend. I care about…

I shake my head as a tiny sob escapes me. Connor isn’t my boyfriend, and that twists the knife in my gut even more.

“Allyson?”

He’s coming into the kitchen.

I stay faced away from the entrance while I swipe at a tear that’s fallen. I quickly flip my phone over on the table and face him with a big, fake smile.

“Morning!” I say. Because it should be a good morning. Last night was the most amazing time with a man that I’ll probably ever know, and that man is currently shirtless and mouthwatering, dressed in silken pajama bottoms. My heartbeat won’t quit hammering at me in remembrance.

At first he gives me a sexy, hungry look, and I fool myself into thinking that he cares about me, that he remembers last night and wants to build on it. Then he looks at me for another moment and frowns. As he slowly approaches, every muscle in him rippling, I see concern in his gaze.

There’s no fooling him. Ever.

He comes to me and rests his large hand against my cheek, running his thumb over a trail of dampness. Then his gaze travels to my phone.

The air goes from warm to freezing in a heartbeat.

He reaches for my phone, and I try to beat him to it, but he’s faster. He looks at the screen and begins to swipe over it, his eyes icing over with every passing second. And there are a lot of seconds that stretch into minutes as he looks at all the windows I’ve left open on my screen.

“Damn it,” he utters.

When he glances back at me, there’s devastation in him, but then it flashes away, leaving that cool blue anger.

“This is why I didn’t want to bring you into that viper’s nest last night,” he says. “This is what the New York paparazzi does, Allyson.”

It looks like he’s about to hurl my phone to the floor, but he pulls up his hand, restraining himself. He grips the device until his knuckles go white.

Is he upset because his sterling playboy reputation has taken a hit due to the “dog” he took out on the town last night?

Or is he pissed off because of what they’re saying about me?

I can only hope that’s the case, because if he were to turn on me, too, I don’t know if I could handle it.

“I’m so sorry.” My voice quivers a little. “You were right. I knew the attention might be overwhelming and intense, but I wasn’t prepared for this kind of cruelty.”

He fumes, his broad chest rising and falling with controlled breaths, and it seems he’s too worked up to say anything else.

Now I’m more than sure he’s livid because my ridiculous ultimatum put him in this position.

Another sob wells inside of me, sharp and stinging. Then my phone dings.

From another room, there’s a strident ringing sound.

It seems everyone is waking up to the news.

Connor pushes my phone onto the table so it slides right in front of me, revealing that Robbie has texted.

You need to call me right away, Ally.

As Connor stalks out of the kitchen, another dinging text pops up on my screen. Mom.

Allyson Leigh Barnes, we expect a call explaining what’s really going on with you. I’m waiting here with your dad.

I’m twenty-one, an incoming senior in college, and I feel like a stupid child who played with matches and lit a house on fire. I hear Connor’s deep voice barking at someone from a near distance, and I numbly walk from the kitchen down the hall, leaning against a wall outside Connor’s study where there’s a dedicated landline phone.

Without shame—do I have any left?—I listen to whoever’s on the other end of the speakerphone line.

“You had to be the wild man of the family,” says a man with a deep voice that sounds a lot like Connor’s, except older and even angrier. “You couldn’t be like your younger sister, dating the right kind of people, running charity events, attending functions that cultivate the brand image the Kenyons have always taken such pride in—the image you’re supposed to present for your cars. The image our family needs if any of your uncles, aunts, or cousins should ever run for office. I should have put all my energies into mentoring her, even if she was never able to run a lemonade stand.”

This has to be his father, and I paste my back against the wall, unable to go anywhere, even though I should leave Connor some privacy.

Mr. Kenyon rails on. “You go ahead and fuck every sex symbol on the globe, Connor. At least they’re rich and cosmopolitan, and other men want to be you when you’re doing that. But then I wake up this morning to phone calls alerting me to something much different. It’s as if you took a wrong turn into Hicktown and picked up a souvenir wearing a dress that’s trying way too hard to make that girl into something she’s not.”

“That’s enough,” Connor says.

And I thought the online comments were devastating. This one makes another sob push through my lungs. I cover my mouth to stop it.

“Do you know your folly is going viral online?” his dad asks.

“I’ve seen,” Connor says icily. “I know.”

“Who is she and why did you think it was a good idea to be fucking her?”

A seething moment passes, then Connor’s voice gets low and dangerous.

“I think I’ll save the inquisition for the PR team when they inevitably call me in for an emergency meeting. Obviously the world is falling down because of a few innocent pictures, but it’s going to blow over. Things like this always do in New York.”

“Things like this don’t happen to the Kenyons. And you think those pictures are innocent? Connor, she’s obviously not one of us.”

This time nausea hits me in the stomach, but Mr. Kenyon isn’t done.

“I’ve already been contacted by your PR people, son, because you evidently either turned off your phone for your big night out with that girl or you ran out of juice. I highly doubt that last part is true in many ways, but journalists are asking for answers now. Oh, and your mother’s wondering who that ragamuffin is, too, so you get the privilege of explaining everything to her after I’m done with you.”

“Ragamuffin,” Connor says with sarcastic relish. “Now that’s a condescending term. She’s hardly that.”

This time, his father pauses as if he’s gathering his temper.

I clutch at a nearby table to hold me up. Is Connor defending me as aggressively as he can? Or is he only warming up?

I’m shaking inside, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. If Connor does feel anything for me, now’s the time for him to show it.

Please, show it, I think, biting my lip.

Finally, Mr. Kenyon speaks again. “Are you two an item, as the gossip pages are hinting?”

“Dad, I told you—that’s enough.”

I bend my head as my heart sinks.

“Nobody’s happy about this, Connor. Have you even read all those social media comments yet? Every time someone points out that this girl is beneath you in terms of class and breeding, that’s a nick on the shiny Kenyon brand.” He blows out a breath. “Everyone is questioning your judgment. The Kenyon scion somehow allowed himself to be seen with some rube from upstate New York.”

Rube, hick, ragamuffin? I wait for Connor to say something that will really put his father on notice, but he doesn’t utter a word. Maybe he’s still containing his rage, but even so, his silence pulls me apart. Especially after last night’s magic.

Especially after he held me all night through.

Mr. Kenyon’s voice has leveled out. “From what I can tell, she has no real career plans. She hasn’t even interned anywhere. She has no fortune, nothing to reflect well on you. Image and reputation matter, and this stunt could even affect the stock price of your company.”

“That’s absurd.”

“Is it? I thought my brilliant, ambitious son had all the angles figured out.”

“I do,” Connor says tightly. “And the last thing I need is to hear a lecture. I left those behind after I made my first billion dollars.”

A jarring crash tells me that Connor has hung up the phone. It immediately rings again but with a different tone, and I hear him curse. The ringer cuts off as if he’s silenced that, too.

I should leave, because he’ll probably come out of the study and find that I’ve been eavesdropping, but I don’t have the heart or will to move. The man I’ve somehow gotten attached to, defended me like a stranger might defend someone on the street who needs help, then he more or less walked away from me. He did the bare minimum and nothing more.

I’m his Highest Bidder girl, not his true love, because Connor Kenyon doesn’t believe in that.

It feels as if the world is pressing down on my shoulders, and I’m sure he’s experiencing the same thing, because when he walks out of the room and finds me standing there, he doesn’t react. There’s a heaviness to his own shoulders, a blank coolness in his eyes that shows me he’s already a thousand miles away.

The weight feels like it’s too much for this relationship to take.

Or maybe I should say business relationship, because it was never anything else—and never will be.