JP turned out to be the Stone's dog. And "the house" that Ramsey has referred to, as Cammie quickly found out, was not actually the house at all but a huge dog house outside. JP was a German Shepherd to be precise, the Stone's had had him as a puppy, but Ramsey knew that his parents had bought it as a watchdog for when he and Colleen got older, so they could leave them and still have some kind of protection, a watchdog.

But having two kids raise a dog did not exactly result in security insurance.

Ramsey was not impressed that his plans for his day with Cammie were being turned upside down, but what could he do? His little sister was his controller, she held his strings and he couldn't send her away, couldn't say no to her. So instead of, well he wasn't sure what he had planned to do with Cammie, but it sure wasn't making waffles and taking his dog for a walk. Still, he beckoned Cammie to follow him as they headed outside to the massive dog house, it was white with Navy blue trim. Basically a miniature of the almost mansion that they lived in. Ramsey whistled into the doorway as Cammie waited, not sure what she was going to see.

"What type of dog is it-?" she barely had time to finish her sentence before the German Shepherd came bouncing straight at them, its eyes wide and alert, its long pink tongue flying out the side of its mouth.

"JP!" Ramsey shouted as he jumped up and knocked Ramsey to the ground. Ramsey landed with an 'uff', but started laughing while the dog licked his face. Yup, some watchdog. Cammie didn't really like dogs licking faces and found the scene both endearing and disgusting.

"Get off me, you oaf." Ramsey groaned, shoving the dog off of him and wiping his face with his shirt. Cammie smiled as Ramsey got up and walked over to her and tried to ignore the slight glimpse she had gotten of his toned abdomen as he'd used the hem of his shirt as a rag.

"JP, Cammie. Cammie, JP." She laughed as the big dog sat at her feet and looked up at her, tail thumping wildly behind him. She squatted down and began stroking his ears and face and talking to him in the voice all humans reserved for cute things.

"Ramsey, he is so cute! I didn't know you had a dog." She said not looking at the boy, as JP rolled over and allowed her to scratch his tummy. Ramsey ran a hand through his hair.

"Yeah well, it never really came up." He said watching her hands gently rub the dog's fur. She almost toppled backwards as JP, changed position and had to put her hand on the ground behind her to support herself.

"What about the fact that I never knew you had a sister either?" she said with a stern face, as she stood up, brushing her hands over her leggings. The small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth told Ramsey she wasn't really annoyed, just curious.

He shrugged and repeated, "Never came up."

"Yeah, but I've known you for a while now, how do I miss out on an entire human being?"

"Colleen was really young when we..." he hesitated, "knew each other better. She spent most of her time with a nanny and so that's probably why you never saw her." Ramsey said just as Colleen came running out the back door towards the two teenagers.

She ignored Ramsey's presence and immediately started talking to Cammie about JP and all the tricks he could do. Her voice got higher and higher as she pulled a leash out of her coat pocket and attached it to JP's collar.

Ramsey didn't know what to say, he didn't know what to think.

Colleen liked Cammie so much, way more than she ever liked Alana. Cammie and Al were so different it was hard to compare them. It was hard to compare Ramsey's feelings for the two girls since they were so different too. Alana and Ramsey's relationship had been a real one, they had dated for real, been a real couple. But his and Cammie's relationship now was all for show, to make sure that Cammie maintained her friendship with Gemma and that Knight kid. Ramsey had known the moment he saw her name at the bottom of the piece of paper he'd picked off the ground that the poor girl would be ridiculed.

It was the nastiest thing he had ever known someone to do and just the thought that person was someone he went to school with was sickening. Then, on top of everything, Cammie was getting punished by the school for it. Getting detention. He had to help her and he knew she could help him too. And then everything happened so quickly, time was flying. They had been together for weeks now. As far as he knew his plan was working for Cammie though. She and Knight were getting along fine. It was time to start getting his side of things going too.

His own friends had been giving him a hard time about the whole thing. Mike particularly found the whole thing unbelievable in the beginning. Grant was a little more accepting, he had been friends before high school and knew that Ramsey and Cammie used to be closer. Still, he knew eventually he would need to get Cammie and the guys closer and see them interact as a couple. The kiss in the hallway had helped, but there was still work to be done.

But the guys were the least of his problems in this charade. There were bigger fish to fry. To convince.

Perhaps today would be the first step towards that.

"Ramsey, are you coming on the walk or is it just going to be me and Cam?" Colleen asked, arching one of her little eyebrows and Ramsey chuckled.

"No, no I'm coming." He said, running inside to get a coat.

When they all got back to the Stone's house after the walk, with red noises, nipped at by the unusually chilled fall breeze, they head into the kitchen to find something to snack on. It was late in the afternoon now; it was hard to believe they had been out for hours.

"Something warm," Cammie said as Ramsey asked her and Colleen if they wanted anything.

"Something chocolaty," Colleen added, looking at Cammie and they both nodded in agreement. Ramsey thought about it for a moment.

"How about warm milk and Oreos?" he asked with a smirk and the two girls smirked back at him.

Ramsey hurried around warming milk and collecting all the Oreo packets he could find in the industrial sized cabinets. Mint Oreos, vanilla Oreos, double stuffed Oreos, birthday cake Oreos, regular Oreos, and chocolate cream Oreos. He laid all the packets out on the table and handed everyone a warm glass of milk. They all looked at the feast in front of them.

"Wow." Cammie whispered, her mouth starting to water, "You guys are an Oreo family," she said as Colleen began to take a cookie from each pack.

"Yeah, me and Ramsey have Oreos every Monday to sweeten up the sorrow." she sang. Ramsey couldn't help but blush slightly, since he knew that was his saying not his little sister's. He thanked his lucky stars that Cammie didn't notice his embarrassment.

They both reached out and grabbed an Oreo from the double stuffed packet and their fingers brushed. Cammie watched as Ramsey simply dunked his Oreo into his milk. She scrunched up her nose.

"You're a dunker?" she asked with distaste as he picked up another Oreo and dipped it into his milk again.

He looked at her, "Yeah, what's it to you?"

This time, Cammie was the one to smirk. She twisted the cookie into two pieces and licked the cream off.

He gagged, "Another flaw to add to the list." He teased her, but the way her tongue darted out to check for any remaining frosting made his insides warm. She just laughed obliviously and finished off the Oreo.

The three of them continued to eat cookies and tease each other until they were all in a sugar coma and their cheeks were sore from laughing. When Colleen started to yawn, Ramsey suggested that she take a nap to which Colleen indignantly replied she was a big girl now and she didn't need naps anymore. But when they moved to the basement to put a movie on the big screen, a new Disney movie Encanto, she fell asleep within the first fifteen minutes.

Colleen's head was resting in Ramsey's lap so he couldn't move, but he picked up the remote and offered it to Cammie, "Do you want to put something else on? She's probably gonna sleep through this whole thing."

Cammie shrugged, "I kinda want to watch it, Paisley is too old for these movies now and I never have an excuse to watch anything new like this anymore. It's nostalgic though, I kinda like it. Unless of course you want to watch baseball or something." she offered, fumbling with the last sentence because she honestly didn't know what he'd want to watch or what shows he liked. Sports seemed like a safe bet.

Ramsey laughed, but quickly tried to smother it as Colleen shifted on his lap, "Is that what you think I watch all day?"

"Well not all day," Cammie defended, "but most of the day." she amended trying to joke her way out of being embarrassed.

"Hmm, I suppose that would go along with my cliché-high-school-asshole vibe, wouldn't it?"

Now she really was embarrassed. In the beginning she hadn't felt sorry for what she'd written, even though he had read it. But after today, seeing him with Colleen and JP made him seem so normal and young. She couldn't help but feel a little bit guilty.

"Ramsey I-" she let out a breath, "I'm sorry you had to see those things. I never-"

He interrupted her, "Hey. Don't worry about it. It's not like I don't see what you mean. I supposed I could have made different choices these past few years."

Cammie didn't really have anything to say to that since she also knew that while she had written most of those things during emotional peaks, they weren't completely unwarranted. She and Ramsey had been friends once and he had ditched her for the high school popular crowd. He did ignore her for a whole year.

Dear reader,

I smiled at Ramsey in the hall today and for the first time he didn't even glance my way. He always glances my way...

And he had paraded around with the one person he knew had hurt her the most in life: Alana. Well, except for himself.

The silence stretched out between them as they both pretended to watch the movie. Cammie still felt nostalgic, but more of the bitter kind than the sweet now.

"Actually Cammie, there is something I wanted to ask you." Ramsey said, finally breaking the silence.

Her head snapped towards him, her heart skipping a beat in her chest. For some reason that sentence made her nervous. Perhaps it was because Ramsey himself seemed nervous at the thought of whatever he wanted to ask her.

"What is it?" she asked. He looked at her, his green eyes wide.

"Um, there is this charity gala that my parents attend every year. Mostly just so they can write it off on their taxes, but it's really fancy. Black tie, you know? And this year they bought me a ticket." He picked up a piece of Colleen's hair and twirled it around his finger the way she always asked him to do after she had a nightmare.

Cammie's heart clenched at the sight. Her mother used to do the same thing when she sang to Cammie each night before bed. Still, she was hooked on what Ramsey was trying to say to her. This was not the cool, confident Ramsey that she knew from school and that had been around her since the start of their fake relationship. This was a Ramsey who was not in control. One who... needed something from her? Maybe the reason he was doing all this in the first place?

"And?" she prompted.

He swallowed, "Well, I was wondering if you would go with me? As my date."

"Your what?!" Cammie squeaked. Was he asking her on a real date? Was that why he was so nervous? Oh god, oh god this was a disaster this was- this was how all fake dating tropes ended!

"Oh! Not as my," he paused and glanced down at Colleen before continuing in a whisper, "real date." he clarified, "Just as what we are now, obviously. I just, I need you to come with me as a plus one."

Cammie's palms ceased their spontaneous nervous sweating that Ramsey always complained about when he held her hand. Crisis averted, she thought, but her heart also sank a little bit. Why did she keep thinking he liked her for real? She had thought the same thing when he first proposed for her to be his girlfriend. It was humiliating. This was Ramsey Stone she was talking about. The guy who, as much as she hated to inflate his ego, could get any girl he wanted.

"Obviously." Cammie repeated in a whisper to herself, "Um I'm not sure if a gala is really my scene."

Ramsey frowned immediately at her attempt to reject his request, his eyes hardening in a way she had never seen before. Gone was the nervous, embarrassed boy from a moment before and in his place was pure determination, "I'm afraid that I may have phrased that wrong. I'm more like telling you than asking you."

Cammie didn't even try to hide the absolute shock she felt at his words. It wasn't the crazy, frazzled, butterfly shock she had felt when she thought he was asking her out for real either. No, this shock was pure offense. How dare he tell her what to do.

"Excuse me? I don't think that's how these things usually work." she snapped defensively, the movie and their nice day completely forgotten. She rescinded her guilt and her apology for that matter. Ramsey was a jerk, especially as his lips hardened further.

She knew exactly what she would write in her diary if she still had it: Dear Reader, Ramsey Stone has done it again. This time barrelling into my life like a bat-out-of-Hell and presuming to control it like he did before. Well, I'd like to tell him to fly right back to where he came from...

"It does when this is my end of the arrangement."

Actually maybe it was more: Dear Reader, Shit.

So this was his reasoning for agreeing to this whole thing. Or at least, it was the tip of the iceberg. Why he wanted her to go to a fancy gala with him was beyond her reckoning abilities. Was it just the gala? Or was there more to it?

Why did he seem so angry at the thought that she wouldn't go? Or was she reading him completely wrong?

Was it not anger that was causing him to seem so agitated, but desperation? She couldn't tell.

Cammie pursed her lips reluctantly. She knew she couldn't say no to him if this really was him cashing in. He had done more than his fair share so far.

"Well if that's the case then I don't really have much of a choice do I." she admitted and looked away from him.

Ugh, she immediately hated herself for looking away. It made her feel weak, defeated. That somehow he had won something over her even though that was silly. What was there to win? She had thought he was asking her out for real and she should be relieved to find out that wasn't the case.

So why did she feel so... hurt?

She heard Ramsey sigh.

"No- I'm sorry. Of course you have a choice. You don't have to come, I just... I really need you to." already Cammie could hear the hardness leech out of his voice as he spoke and her own tense figure relaxed in symphony with him.

Taking a chance she glanced at him, but he was gazing down at Colleen. She turned to face him again fully, "Why?"

He didn't look at her, "So my parents will know that we're dating."

Confusion flooded her, "Why would they care?"

At first she didn't think he was gonna answer, he finally looked up at her, "They just will. Please."

The please was tacked at the end and pitiful even to her own ears. She thought of the note he had left in her locker, of his face as he dunked an Oreo into the glass of milk, of his finger wrapped in Colleen's hair. All the things that pointed to Ramsey being a good guy. Clearly something was wrong to get him to snap at her like that. Clearly this was important to him.

God damn it I'm a sucker, she thought but said out loud, "I'll go."

***

A/N: I hope you enjoyed this chapter! If you like Fake Dating Ramey far, please consider voting, I would be so grateful!