Balsa Wood and Blurring Lines

Over the next four weeks, the contract became a living, breathing entity, and the lines they had drawn began to bleed.

The fake dates on campus started as rigid performances. They would sit on the quad, Leo's arm draped over the back of her bench, reading textbooks while pretending to be engrossed in each other. But the proximity bred a dangerous familiarity. Harper learned that Leo tapped his pen twice before writing a complex equation. Leo learned that Harper chewed the inside of her cheek when she was anxious about a design flaw.

The performances shifted to the architecture studio. Leo started bringing her dinner—pad thai, burritos, black coffee—during her grueling late-night modeling sessions.

It was 1:00 AM on a Thursday. Harper was hunched over her drafting table, carefully gluing tiny balsa wood beams to a structural model. Leo was sitting on the floor nearby, leaning against a radiator, reading a heavy textbook on corporate taxation.

"I hate this," Leo suddenly announced, tossing the heavy book onto the floor. The sound echoed in the empty studio.

Harper looked up, blowing a stray curl out of her eyes. "Hate what? The chapter on capital gains?"

"All of it," Leo sighed, resting his head back against the wall, staring at the exposed pipes of the ceiling. "I hate finance. I hate the firm. I hate the fact that my entire life has been pre-determined since the day I was born. I'm just a cog in my father's machine. If I don't fit perfectly, I get replaced."

Harper set down her glue. It was the most honest he had ever been. "Then why do it? Why not walk away?"

Leo let out a bitter laugh. "Walk away to what? My father controls my trust, my tuition, my housing. If I walk, I have nothing. I don't have your talent, Harper. I don't know how to build something from scratch. I only know how to manage what's already there."

"That's not true," Harper said softly. She climbed off her stool and sat on the floor next to him, crossing her legs. The distance between them was less than a foot. "What would you do, if money and your father weren't a factor?"

Leo looked at her, his dark eyes vulnerable and unguarded. "I love to cook," he confessed, the words quiet, almost ashamed. "I spend hours watching culinary videos. I'd want to open a small, honest restaurant. Nothing corporate. Just good food, made for people who appreciate it. It's stupid."

"It's not stupid," Harper said fiercely. "It's real. You're real, Leo. The guy I saw in the penthouse... that's the fake. This is you."

Leo stared at her, the silence stretching between them, thick and heavy with unsaid things. He reached out, his fingers gently brushing a speck of dried glue from her cheek. His touch sent a violent shiver down Harper’s spine.

"Why are you so afraid to rely on anyone, Harper?" he asked softly, turning the vulnerability back onto her. "You fight the world like you're completely alone in it."

Harper swallowed hard, her throat tight. The urge to build her iron wall was overwhelming, but looking at Leo, the wall felt too heavy to lift. "Because I am. When you rely on people, they let you down. My parents proved that. If I don't need anyone, nobody can destroy me. It's safer that way."

"It's lonely that way," Leo corrected gently.

He didn't move away. He stayed right beside her on the cold studio floor, a steady, warm presence that terrified her down to her marrow. Because despite Section Four, despite the contract, Harper Quinn was falling in love with her fake boyfriend.