The restaurant is too expensive, the lighting too soft, and the wine too gaudy. You know a staged date when you’re on one — especially when there’s a camera lens poking out from behind a menu three tables down and a suspiciously talkative maître d’ gushing about the perfect table for two.

Satoru is across from you, dressed in a tailored navy suit with the top two buttons undone, platinum hair messily perfect, looking like sin wrapped in silk. His manager had pulled strings. Your agent said it would be mutually beneficial. Publicity, exposure, headlines. Ferrari’s golden boy and the rising starlet. You’d rather be anywhere else.

“So you act,” Satoru says as his eyes flick over the wine list. “Seems fun.”

You barely manage to stop yourself from rolling your eyes as you survey the menu, all French and about a thousand euros each. You should probably order the most expensive thing on there just for the way he drawls out act.

“Yes, I do,” you mutter as your nail taps against your empty wine glass. “You race?”

That earns you a twitch of his eye and tension at the corner of his mouth.

“Yes,” Satoru mutters clipped. “I do. Ferrari, 4 world championships, 67 grand prix’s.” He rattles off the list like he’s done it a hundred times before and you’re unmoved. You resist the urge to roll your eyes. Satoru studies you for a beat, something colder and more calculating beneath the smile. “You really don’t want to be here.”

You meet his gaze evenly. “Do you?”

His smile widens. “No. But I’m good at pretending.”

You believe that. You’ve seen the interviews. The winks. The boyish grin that wins sponsors and fans and hearts like clockwork. But sitting here across from you, there’s a different edge — less polished, more real. The air between you is taut, charged, not with chemistry, not yet, but with something rawer. Mutual irritation. Thinly veiled distrust.

“You should be too right? Good at pretending I mean. You’re an actress after all. Four Emmy’s, two Golden Globes, and rumoured to win an Oscar next year, no?”