Page 44 of Fake Skating

I thought she might correct him on her last name, but instead she grinned like he’d complimented her and said, “Probably not as bruised as your ego after betting against me, Vincent the Flow .”

I lost it at that, reaching out to grab the back of her shirt and pull her a little closer as I laughed my ass off.

“Funny girl,” Vin muttered, shaking his head, but he was smiling.

“Did you tell Mick you scored?” I asked, lowering my head so she could hear me while trying not to breathe because her perfume always made me drunk. “Did he lose his shit?”

“As much as my grandpa can lose his shit,” she said with a laugh. “I believe his response to ‘I scored a goal’ was ‘congratulations, but how many did you stop?’?”

“Fair point, though,” I said. “Smart man.”

“Hey, c’mere,” Dani said, grabbing my sleeve. “Let’s take a selfie.”

She stepped closer to me and held out her phone to take a picture. She was grinning as the phone captured us, her tucked in front of me with the party in our background.

“You know you can’t use this because of the beer,” I said, trying not to focus on the smell of her hair.

“Then I guess this one’s just for me,” she said, holding out the phone to show me the photo.

I really fucking likedthat picture.

I liked us in that picture.

And I liked her, right now. Whatever distance had been between us since the mall seemed to have disappeared, and she looked downright flirty at the moment. It was probably the result of whatever she had in her cup, but I wasn’t hating it.

“Are you having fun, Collins?” I asked, also liking the way she was still leaning back against me with her head under my chin.

“I am,” she said with a smile in her voice, and I swallowed hard when she turned around to look up at me.

I am in too fucking deep.

“So Alec.” She tucked her hair behind her ears and nibbled on her bottom lip, like she didn’t know what to do with herself, before she came up with, “Do you want to go watch Dumb Drink Dares?”

“Sure,” I said, knowing it was fucking stupid the way I liked how nervous she looked.

Because I felt the same way and had felt that way since she’d taken off my shirt in that bathroom at the mall.

The memory of her soft fingers on my shoulders wouldn’t go away no matter what I did, and the crackling electricity that’d been there in that tiny room had stayed with us ever since we’d left.

And for the next hour, everything was pretty fucking perfect.

I sat on a chair, soberly judging Dumb Drink Dares, and she sat on my lap because there weren’t any other chairs. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t take advantage of the opportunity, snaking an arm around her waist to pull her closer, anchoring her to me so her back was leaning against my chest.

She turned her head a little to look up at me. “You’re kind of handsy, Zeus.”

“Are you complaining?” I asked, wondering what she’d do if I kissed the side of her neck. I’d been obsessed with that particular spot since I’d been up close and personal with it in the locker room.

Her eyes roamed all over my face. “Nah, just stating a fact.”

“Fact noted,” I said with a wink, which made her laugh and pinch my thigh.

My heart might’ve stopped a couple times, but all was well.

But then her dad called.

She stared at the phone, biting her lip like she was nervous before she said, “I should probably just take this.”

“Now?” I asked, selfishly not wanting her to get up.

“I mean, it’s like five a.m. in Germany, and he’s… y’know…” she said, shrugging.

“Your dad?”

She nodded. “Yeah. I’ll be right back.”

She took the call upstairs, but she was gone for a long time. So long that I started to worry something was wrong.

But when I went up to check on her, she was off the phone and talking to Cassie and Lil in the empty kitchen.

I swear to God I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I was stunned into silence as soon as I stepped into the foyer.

“So I don’t know,” Dani said, sounding like she wanted to cry. “Like, I don’t want to move again, but maybe I should go, y’know?”

“No way,” Cassie said. “You can’t leave; it’s your senior year.”

“I mean, I probably won’t,” she said, “but there only a few months left and I just got here. A school’s a school at this point, right?”

I went back downstairs because I wasn’t some asshole who was going to creep in a corner, listening to conversations that weren’t meant for me. But I was confused as hell, wondering what her dad was up to now.

She might move again? Already?

I pretended to pay attention to the guys and the game, but every part of me was in a holding pattern as I waited for her. I needed to know what was going on.

How could he even consider doing this to her again?

She had to be freaking the fuck out.

But when she came back a few minutes later, she smiled like nothing had happened.

And she lied to me.

“Everything okay with your dad?” I asked, wanting to ditch the party so we could figure everything out.

She nodded and rolled her eyes. “He needed my Social Security number for Air Force stuff and couldn’t remember it.”

And…?

I waited, but she didn’t say anything else.

“That was it?” I asked. “At five a.m.?”

She nodded again. “Typical Dad, too impatient to wait. So what’d I miss?”

You’re seriously not going to tell me?

“Vin did a back handspring and broke the card table,” I said, but my mind was running, because what the fuck?

She wasn’t going to tell me that she might be leaving?

I mean, she didn’t owe me shit, right? This was just a fake relationship, so she didn’t have to trust me with everything going on in her life. That was what people in actual relationships did, and I needed to get my head right.

She’d tell me if she wanted to tell me, and hopefully this was just the colonel being his normal asshole self.

It was fine that she was keeping it to herself.

But when I heard her talking to Cass and Lillie over by the keg a little later,I got a whole lot less understanding.

Because Lillie asked her about us, about the history of us.

“So you guys never dated or anything before now? It was strictly platonic?”

“Yes and no,” I heard her say, but I refused to look. “We were always just friends, but he was my first kiss.”

I was a big fan of the way her voice sounded when she said that, like it’d meant something warm-and-fucking-fuzzy to her, because, well, hard same .

I focused on the hockey game playing on the TV as intently as I could— quit eavesdropping, you pathetic fuck —but then I felt gut-punched when I heard her giggle and say the most fucking ridiculous thing I’d ever heard.

“But we’re together now, which is surreal because I thought I was still mad at him for what he did back in the day,” she said with a laugh. “But how can I hold a grudge when he looks so good in a hockey jersey?”

What?

What the fucking fuck ?

She was still mad at me for what I did?

Was she serious right now?

What the hell did I do, exactly?

I wanted to confront her, to finally have that conversation, because we probably needed to discuss our “back in the day.”

But when I casually glanced her way a few minutes later, she gave me a conspiratorial grin and a motherfucking wink.

It was the smile of my partner in crime.

My fellow participant in the fake dating games.

She appeared to be having a blast, rewriting history while playing our game.

So fuck it, I thought.

Doesn’t matter.

She could rewrite history and keep secrets all she wanted.

Hell, she wasn’t my girlfriend, and I needed to remember that.