Caspar had never been good at blending in. Not at Stanford, not anywhere. The accent gave him away first—clipped vowels, consonants too sharp for California’s lazy drawl. The Thames was still in his bones, not the Bay. Then there was the size of him: six foot four, shoulders that could block a doorway, thighs carved by a decade of early mornings on the erg. Even when he tried for casual—hoodie, messy hair, slouching into CoHo with his laptop under his arm—people noticed.

They always did.

At first, he’d fed on it. The British rower. Henley champion. Honor Roll golden boy. He had been content to let the whispers do his introductions for him, to lean on the accent and the grin, to fall into easy flings that seemed to require nothing more than a smirk and a lazy alright, love? Bodies came and went like the tide. One night bled into the next. Same parties, same tangled sheets, same emptiness when the door clicked shut at dawn.

By now, even the shine of it had gone flat. His coach muttered about “focus” as though Caspar wasn’t already aware he was running himself ragged. He could feel it in his own chest—that hollow caricature of a man he was becoming. All shoulders and medals, the charming Brit who was good for a laugh and a night, never for breakfast.

And then she’d arrived.

Or rather, she’d rolled up to him after lecture three weeks ago, chin tipped high, eyes sharp with mischief, and delivered her proposition as if it were a business pitch. She was tired of pity stares. Tired of well-meaning relatives sending her LinkedIn profiles of “nice boys” who spoke to her like she was a project instead of a person. A quarter, she’d said. Contract basis. Fake boyfriend.

He’d said yes. Of course he had. Why the hell wouldn’t he?

It worked for her—no more charity looks, no more aunts clucking over her future. And it worked for him too. The whispers shifted overnight. Not Caspar the player, not Pullinger the heartbreaker. Now it was, her boyfriend. People saw him at her side and assumed he’d finally settled down, finally grown up. Even Coach stopped side-eying his nightlife.

But what surprised him most was how much he liked it. He liked the looks, though not the old gawking ones—Christ, he’s tall, Christ, he’s British, Christ, imagine those arms in bed. No, he liked the quieter ones now. The glances that said she’s lucky—when Caspar bloody well knew it was the other way round.

They noticed him pushing her chair up the incline by Green Library, leaning down to murmur something daft until she rolled her eyes, or standing over her desk in lecture with that half-grin that dared anyone to pity her. He liked the way it made him feel—protective, yes, but also steady. Focused. For the first time in years, he had something that mattered more than chasing a nameless warm body after practice.

And her—she never treated him like a caricature. With her, the accent bought him nothing. The shoulders, the medals, the cocky grin—all bounced off her like rain on stone. She was the only girl at Stanford who’d ever looked him square in the eye and asked if he’d actually done the bloody problem set, then laughed in his face when he admitted he hadn’t.

That, he suspected, was when he’d started falling.

White Plaza was crowded this afternoon, undergraduates threading between protest flyers and food-truck queues, sunlight throwing sharp shadows across the stone. Caspar spotted her instantly. Angled toward the fountain, laptop balanced on the armrest of her chair, hair bright in the October sun. Her eyes narrowed at the screen as though the text had personally offended her family.

The pull hit him at once, as inevitable as a boat sliding onto current.

He let his gym bag drop with a thud and sprawled onto the fountain ledge with the kind of easy, deliberate carelessness that drew eyes whether he wanted them or not. Long legs stretched out, damp shirt clinging from practice, he smelled faintly of sweat, river water, and espresso.

“You’ve got that face again, love,” he drawled, his voice lazy and low.