Fake Dating With My Brother's Best Friend

Gabrielle

“Crack—”

The glass slipped from my trembling fingers and shattered across the rental apartment floor. I stared at the jagged pieces, but my mind was already elsewhere—trapped in the words Vance had just spoken.

“What… what did you just say?”

Vance sighed, his patience visibly thinning. He repeated himself with cruel clarity: “I said—let's break up.”

My mind went blank. Five years. Five years of shared mornings, whispered promises, and late-night drives under the stars. We had met in college, and I had given him everything—my time, my energy, my savings, my heart. I had even lied about my background, telling him I lived on scholarships, because his pride couldn't handle the truth that I was the sister of Sterling Group's CEO. I wanted him to love me for me, not for my family's money. Now that lie had turned into a knife.

“No—Vance, tell me what happened. You're not serious. Maybe we just need to talk—”

“That's enough.” He raised a hand to cut me off. “There's no other reason. After all these years, I'm exhausted. I'm with Sienna now. She makes me feel alive—she makes me feel like a man.”

Something inside me cracked. The man who once blushed when I held his hand, who drove me three hours to watch a meteor shower, who showed up at my graduation with an absurdly large bouquet—that same man now stood before me, cold and detached, telling me I was replaceable.

“Gabrielle, you're twenty-three. Be realistic.” He folded his arms, and I noticed a new Cartier watch on his wrist—probably a gift from Sienna. “I've had fun with you, sure. But Sienna's father is the CEO of Crystal Peak Group. He's agreed to invest eight figures in my company. As cruel as it sounds, you and your family can't offer anything like that. Isn't that true?”

My chest tightened with bitterness. “I've been your design director for years. I handled client emails at 2 a.m., negotiated vendors, even cleaned the office. And now you say I never helped you?”

He snorted.

“That's all cheap labor. Real help means capital, connections. Sorry, but someone who scrapes by on scholarships wouldn't understand.”

Scholarships. I almost laughed. Every tuition payment had come from my brother Caleb's accounts, but I had fabricated an elaborate story to protect Vance's ego. My friends had drifted away because they couldn't understand why I hid my wealth. I had isolated myself for him—and now he was using that isolation as proof of my worthlessness.

“No, you can't do this!” Tears burned my eyes,“I didn't do anything wrong—why are you treating me like this?”

He brushed back his hair with an impatient sigh.

“Stop with the drama. Do you want compensation? I can give you some after Crystal Peak's investment clears. Fifty thousand? A hundred? Name your price.”

Money. He was offering me a severance package for a relationship. My tears dried up, replaced by a hollow, icy clarity. How had I not seen, in five years, what he truly was? A man who traded love for investment. A man who dismissed every sacrifice I made as insignificant. The boy I had fallen for was never real—he was a fiction I had written to justify my own blindness.

I shook my head calmly.

“I don't need anything.”

Vance shrugged:" Your choice.”

He turned and walked out, the door clicking shut behind him with a final, hollow sound. I listened to his footsteps fade down the hallway, and then there was only silence—and the glittering debris of my shattered illusions.

I stood among the shattered glass, but I didn't cry. I knelt, picked up the larger pieces, and threw them away. Then I packed my belongings—one suitcase, one box—and dialed a number I had ignored for a long time..

The next morning, Vance insisted on carrying my luggage downstairs—still playing the gentleman, even after everything. He chatted about the weather as if we were old friends parting amicably. I said nothing.

Then a Rolls-Royce Phantom pulled up to the curb.

Vance froze, his eyes widening. Then a sneer curled his lips.

“So you've hooked up with someone else too. I guess that makes us even. Who is he? Some old rich guy?”

I opened my mouth to tell him the truth—to finally reveal that I was Gabrielle Sterling, heiress to a fortune that dwarfed Sienna’s entire family. But I stopped. What was the point? He was no longer the man I had loved. That man had been a ghost I had created. The real Vance was a hollow ambition, and I had no interest in hollow things.

So I simply smiled—a small, sad, liberating smile—and slid into the back seat.

The man in the passenger seat spoke in a low, deep voice. In the rearview mirror, I saw those familiar light gray eyes—and their owner was now staring back at me from it, clearly displeased.

“Took you long enough to finally call me.”