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Chapter 16: The First Step Towards Becoming A Billionaire

Chapter 16: The First Step Towards Becoming A Billionaire

Warmth hit Adrian first. Then the sweet smell of something that had clearly been cooking recently, rich enough to notice before he’d even looked around properly.

He took in the apartment while she locked the door. Cleaner than he expected. Not sterile-clean, just lived-in. His own apartment, by comparison, still looked like cleaning it had never occurred to him as an option.

"Sit." She nodded at the couch.

He did. Sank into it more than he meant to. Then. She sat beside him. Not across. Beside, close enough that he clocked it without deciding to.

He kept his eyes forward. Caught her smiling faintly out of the corner of his vision anyway, and inspected the fine texture of her walls. Very nice way. Belonging to the same girl that had told him to forget about their kiss this evening. And now he was sitting on her couch.

She didn’t say anything for a second. Then she reached down and set a covered container on the coffee table between them.

Thunk.

He looked at it. Then at her.

"What’s that?"

"Open it."

He did. Warm air escaped before his eyes had finished processing what was actually in front of him. Baked pasta, chicken, something rich hiding under a layer of cheese that had gone slightly golden at the edges.

His stomach responded before the rest of him signed off on having an opinion.

She noticed. Of course she noticed. She held out a fork.

"Have a bite."

He looked at the fork. Then at her.

"You planned this."

"I cooked it."

"That’s not what I asked."

"I know."

He took the fork anyway.

One bite turned into two, then a third without much of a decision process in between. He didn’t say anything for a while. Mostly because it was genuinely good, and partly because his dignity had apparently filed for early retirement the second real food entered the equation.

She watched him with that same small, unbothered smile the whole time. Eventually he looked up.

"So." She waited. "This wasn’t just dinner."

She didn’t answer right away. He didn’t push, either.

He already knew something was off. She’d kissed him hours ago, told him to forget it happened, then left a note on his floor and waited up past one in the morning to feed him. None of that lined up into a shape that made sense on its own.

She gave him a look he couldn’t quite place. Not offended. More like she’d already run this exact conversation in her head before he sat down.

She admitted, after a beat, that she hadn’t handled the earlier part of the night especially well and didn’t want things between them turning awkward because of it.

He wasn’t buying any of that.

"You called me down here for something else."

A pause, longer this time.

"I want to make a deal with you."

He raised an eyebrow. "A deal."

"Yes."

"That sounds dangerous."

"It isn’t."

"That’s usually what people say right before it becomes dangerous."

That earned the smallest laugh he’d gotten out of her all night, gone almost as fast as it arrived.

Daniel, she said. Still acting like the breakup hadn’t fully registered. Already telling people lies like the last however-many weeks had just been a rough patch instead of an ending.

She didn’t want a scene. Didn’t want to explain the whole thing to half the university just to make one guy understand a word he’d already heard twice tonight.

She kept it vague at first. She needed someone with her tomorrow. Someone Daniel couldn’t just talk over or dismiss.

"Someone big and strong," she added, deadpan enough that he couldn’t immediately tell if she meant it. "To protect me."

He gave her a flat look. "If you’re going to ask me for a favor, you could at least ask properly."

That got a real smile out of her this time.

"Fine." She dropped the bit. "I want you to come with me tomorrow. Not as a bodyguard." A small pause. "As my boyfriend. Just for the day."

He paused for a moment. Her boyfriend. That was definitely not something he was expecting. He took another bite shamelessly.

"Why me, though."

She could’ve asked anyone else, she admitted. Wouldn’t have looked convincing. Daniel had already seen them together. A random guy would’ve read as spite. Adrian read as something he’d actually witnessed himself.

And Adrian wasn’t remotely interested in competing with the guy. Wasn’t trying to prove anything, wasn’t intimidated. That, apparently, was what made him believable.

He considered it. Made enough sense, once he actually thought it through. So he let himself buy it.

"Hmm. Well that’s all good." He set his fork down. "But...What’s in it for me."

That caught her off guard more than the last question had. She recovered fast.

"You get to pretend you’re dating a sophomore."

"That’s the pitch?"

"Not working?"

"Still listening."

She smiled, clearly reading that as a win in progress.

He looked back down at the mostly-empty container between them, and the terms arrived without much deliberation.

"Breakfast."

"...What?"

"Every morning. For the next month, this arrangement runs."

"You want me to cook you breakfast."

"You already proved you can. At two in the morning, no less."

"That’s a lot of confidence for someone negotiating from a couch that isn’t his."

"I’m being hired." A beat. "Might as well negotiate."

She stared at him for a second, half-annoyed, mostly amused. "Five mornings."

"Every morning."

"Four."

"Seven."

"That’s not how negotiating works."

"Feels like it’s working."

She sighed, long-suffering in a way that didn’t fully commit to the suffering part. "Fine."

He held out a hand. "Deal."

She looked at it a second before taking it. Their hands separated after a beat too short to mean anything and too long to mean nothing. Something flickered across her face right after, gone before he could read it properly.

A beat later. She paused.

"Alright." She checked the time eventually. Grimaced slightly. "You should probably go."

"You kicking me out?"

"It’s almost two."

He thought about it for a moment. "...Fair enough."

He got up. She walked him to the door, unlocked it, held it open. He stepped out into the hallway and made it half a step before she said his name.

"Adrian."

He turned back.

"Tomorrow."

He waited.

"Don’t forget."

A beat.

"Breakfast."

"So the deal starts immediately. No grace period."

"Did you think you’d earned one?"

He gave her a look. She smiled, unrepentant, and said goodnight. He said it back. The door closed between them. Quiet and final.

He turned towards the stairwell.

His apartment was dark when he stepped back into it, container still in one hand. He’d almost forgotten he was carrying it.

He opened the fridge. Water, a few things from the earlier grocery run, not much else. He set the leftovers inside and shut the door.

"At least that’s something."

He headed for the bedroom, the whole apartment quiet enough that the night kept replaying itself whether he asked it to or not.

Rose. Daniel. The deal. Breakfast. And underneath all of it, the kiss, still sitting there unresolved no matter how many times they’d both agreed not to think about it.

He dropped onto the bed and stared at the ceiling.

Went downstairs for dinner. Came back with a fake girlfriend and a breakfast contract.

What a day today was.

His phone buzzed.

He reached for it without much urgency left in him. The screen lit up.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

STARTER REWARD AVAILABLE

Would you like to open the pack now, Adrian?

▶ YES ✅

▶ NO ❌

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Right on cue. Alone, apartment quiet, in a better mood than he had any right to be in twelve hours after crying over a box with her handwriting on it.

The system, apparently, thought this was a good time to make him a billionaire.

Sure. Why not.

His thumb moved. YES.

The screen lit up.