Keeping the Captain

Wren Bagley is the captain of Brenner State's lacrosse team, heir to a family business she doesn't want, and the only single person attending four of her mother's events this semester. Emerson Ruiz is the student paper's sports editor with one shot at a real story and a very good idea about how to get it. Six weeks of fake dating. Rules written on a notes app. Exit clause. It's a terrible plan and they both sign it anyway. The problem isn't that Emerson is bad at being Wren's girlfriend. The problem is that she's very good at it. By November, Wren isn't acting, Emerson has stopped taking notes, and Wren's mother has started doing arithmetic. At the alumni gala, she makes Emerson an offer. Emerson takes it — not for the money, but because it's the only way to make Wren say out loud what she actually wants. Wren does. It costs her a family business she never wanted anyway.