Page 25 of Fake Skating

I’d barely slept at all last night because I couldn’t stop thinking about the way Alec said people would for sure find out about what the coaches had walked in on in the locker room.

If that was true, I was screwed.

Because, since Alec was this big popular guy that half the girls in the school wanted to date, a rumor about me being with him in the locker room was going to get me a lot of hate.

So the game of pretend was absolutely necessary if I was going to stand a chance at not becoming a pariah.

But I was only going to feel safe if he did it my way.

“Here’s the thing. As much as I don’t want to do this, I feel like there’s no way for me to not do it.”

He looked surprised. “Really? You’re seriously going to help me?”

“This isn’t for you,” I said, making sure he knew I wasn’t at his fake-girlfriend beck and call. “The sad reality is that I’m going to be part of a rumor now. People are probably already gossiping about what they think was going on in the locker room.”

“Yeah, probably,” he agreed, which made my stomach drop.

I didn’t want it to be true.

“So, to your point last night, I’d much prefer them to think that we are childhood sweethearts who reconnected, as opposed to me being cast as the new girl who’s canoodling with hockey players in the locker room in her very first week.”

“Did you seriously just say ‘canoodling’?” he said with a smirk.

“Whatever—you get my point. Can you please focus here?”

“Fine,” he said. “So you’re saying the game of pretend works for you, too, then?”

“Yeah, but I’m going to need something more,” I said, nervous because there was a good chance he was going to refuse.

“What is it?” he asked, turning onto the street where the school was.

Which meant I needed to speak quickly.

“Well, we can still be super casual, but I’m going to need this fake relationship to last until I say it’s over,” I said, then quickly added, “Not as a power trip thing, but I just need—”

“You really are obsessed with me,” he said with another smart-ass half smile, and I was glad he was joking.

It was good he was feeling funny.

“No, no, but I need you to agree to this,” I said. “I want to have the final say in the breakup timeline. I want you to agree to stay with me until I say so, even if that keeps us together for a long time. Like, even… until graduation.”

He made a noise like he thought I was kidding before he slowed at the stoplight and turned his full attention to me. “You want to be my fake girlfriend for three months ?”

“I don’t want that, ew,” I said defensively, “but it might be necessary.”

“How would it b—”

“Because the girl in a breakup always gets the bad rap, okay?” I snapped, hating the truth of it.

“You’re offering me this social protection as a new person, where I get to go everywhere and be part of your magical friend group, blah blah blah, but what happens if you decide to fake dump me in a few weeks and I haven’t had a chance to make my own friends yet?

Then your friends can start trashing me, and it might end up being worse on my end than if we’d never done it. ”

“My friends aren’t assholes—they wouldn’t do that,” he said, brushing it off like I was ridiculous.

“Oh, they definitely would,” I insisted, knowing from experience just how quickly people could turn. “But the bottom line is I’m not going to do this unless I have your guarantee that it’s not over until I say it’s over.”

Could I sound like a bigger psycho?

“But.” His eyebrows were scrunched together. “What if one of us wants to go out with someone else?”

I knew this would be the problem. Zeus the party boy wasn’t going to accept the idea of potentially not being able to chase girls for the next few months.

“I know it’s not ideal, but it’s the only way.”

“We can’t just start and see how it goes?” he asked.

“This is the only option.”

“Not to play the devil’s advocate for you,” he said, sounding like he thought I was being ridiculous, “but how do you know I’m not going to agree to this and then dump your ass anyway in a month if you start annoying me?”

Nice.

“Because if you do that,” I said, digging deep for my badass bravery, “I’ll tell everyone—including my grandpa and every hockey dude he knows—that it was all a lie in order to help your image.”

“Whoa.” His head came around for a quick second, and I could tell I’d shocked him. “You’d seriously do that?”

“I mean, I wouldn’t want to,” I said with a shrug, feeling like the world’s biggest demanding jerk but knowing it was the only way.

“Mm-hmm,” he said, looking back at the road, and I wished I knew what he was thinking.

Are we doing this or not?

When we finally got to school and started walking toward the door, he still hadn’t said anything. And it was killing me. Did he agree to my demands?

But when he grabbed the handle to the front door, I got my answer.

“Let me ask you this,” he said quietly, looking over his shoulder to make sure no one was close. “Do you want to soft launch this thing or go hard?”

“So we’re doing it?” I asked, the cold wind sending a shiver up my spine.

“Yeah,” he said, those dark eyes on mine. “So how do you want to play it?”

I had no idea exactly what he was asking, because we were walking into a public school building—it wasn’t like “hard launch” could mean much, right?

“I guess that’s your call.”

“All right.” His jaw did a little flex thing as he looked at me, and then he pulled open the door and gestured for me to walk in front of him.

“So…?” I said quietly, glancing over at him as I walked through the door he was holding. “What do you want to do?”

“What I always want to do,” he said. “Go hard.”

I looked down when his hand grabbed mine, when he linked all five of his fingers in all five of mine. My eyes moved up to his face, and he was watching me like he was waiting for my next move. Somehow I sensed that if I didn’t like this, he would totally back off, and I didn’t know what to do.

Because something about him holding my hand scared me.

The school was already noisy, with everybody arriving and hanging out in the halls, and my heart started beating a little bit faster. What were people going to think? What was going to happen? Did I really want to do this?

The panic started rising again.

But then his fingers flexed, squeezing mine, and it felt like a reassurance.

I gave him a tiny nod, my wordless attempt at letting him know I was all in on going hard.

“Let’s do this, Collins,” he murmured, and then he started walking, pulling me alongside him. I nervously let him tug me along, hyperaware of people looking in our direction.

Because he was holding my hand like my boyfriend.

This was a statement.

And then—then he went harder.

“By the way,” he said, yanking me a little closer as we walked. It was playful—flirtatious, even—as he gave me a teasing look and said, “I like this coat. It’s cute.”

“You like this coat?” I asked, looking down at it.

“I do. It reminds me of the one you were wearing in your Utah Christmas photo.”

“The sheep jacket from third grade, are you kidding?” I asked around a laugh. “I forgot all about that. I loved that coat.”

“It’s got the same kind of fluffiness,” he said, releasing my hand long enough to grab my sleeve and sort of yank me in his direction. “But what’s really ridiculous is that scarf.” He nodded his head toward the huge knit scarf around my neck. “You dress like you’re in Antarctica.”

“Because it feels like Antarctica here,” I said. “I think I’ve been frozen since the second we rolled into town.”

“So soft,” he said, shaking his head like I was ridiculous.

“What’s so soft?” I heard as Vinny and Richie came out of nowhere.

Alec slowed and turned in their direction, which meant I slowed too.

“She is,” he said, bumping his shoulder against mine and smiling. “Dani dresses like it’s fifty below all the time and runs for the doors whenever she’s outside. Soft as hell.” He whispered the last words, slowly, teasingly, his breath tickling my ear.

Jesus.

“You’ll get used to it,” Vinny said to me, his eyebrow lifting as Richie bit his lip to keep from smirking at this obvious display of flirtation.

Alec gave me a look that was so laced with… something that I felt my cheeks get hot. Even as I knew this was all for show, butterflies went wild in my stomach because of the way he was watching me.

Holy God, Alec at full power is a lot to handle.

“Listen,” I said abruptly (and a little too loudly), “I need to go to my locker because I don’t want to be late, so I’ll see you later.” I wasn’t sure if I was talking to Alec or all three of them.

“Lunch in the library?” he asked, his eyes on mine as he reached out a big hand and grabbed the end of my scarf. Our gazes stayed locked as he slowly unlooped the yarn, his knuckles grazing my skin as he casually unwrapped my neck.

What is he doing?

A shiver slid down my spine, a shiver that was either from the cool air suddenly touching my throat or from the way he was audaciously peeling away one of my layers while looking at me that way; I couldn’t be sure which.

But he was daring me with his eyes, wordlessly challenging me to respond; I’d have recognized that expression anywhere. He might be Zeus now, but my little friend Alec had given me that look a hundred times.

Usually in the context of you won’t while waiting to see if I would.

So I raised my chin, snatched the scarf from his fingers, and said, “It’s a date, Zeus .”