Page 52 of Fake Skating
“Wait, what?”
I leaned down closer, but now her eyes were huge and her mouth was closed, like she’d startled herself.
“I’m going to need you to say that again,” I said calmly, which was hilarious because I felt like I was having a heart attack.
My chest was tight like a fist as I looked down at brown eyes and blond curls.
The way she was trying to avoid looking at me while nibbling on that full bottom lip gave me so many thoughts that my head was about to fucking explode.
I needed her to say it. My hopes were way the fuck up and if I was misunderstanding, I needed to know immediately.
“Dani, hon, you should be on this end since Cassie’s on the other side,” Oz’s wife yelled as she stood in front of the team, trying to organize a photo. “And Zeus—you need to be in the back row toward the middle.”
“Okay, one sec,” I said, my eyes still on Dani’s face, waiting.
“We should go line up,” she said, glancing nervously at the rest of the team. When she took a step and turned away from me, I couldn’t stop myself from grabbing a fistful of the cool-as-fuck custom Southview jersey she was wearing and hauling her back.
She looked up at me, startled, and I repeated, “I need to know what you’re saying, Dani.”
“We need you over here, Zeus,” Coach yelled.
Dani said, “Yeah, let’s talk later because—”
“Hang on, okay?” I yelled toward everyone who wasn’t Dani. “I just need a minute.”
I sighed and looked down at her, trying my damnedest to sound calm when I said, “Spell it out for me, Collins.”
“I want this to be real,” she said. “Us, that is.”
She gave her head a shake and quickly explained, like she was trying to hurry things along, “Everything that I’ve said is fake feels really real and I want it to be real but I’m also great with it not being real if you want it to stay fake.”
I want it to be real.
That heart-attack feeling was back as she kept babbling.
“In fact, it’s probably better to stay fake,” she continued, her cheeks flushed, “so maybe I should just—”
I cut her off with a kiss.
I couldn’t help myself; it felt like I’d collapse if I didn’t kiss her that very second.
She kissed me back like the woman she was, grabbing onto the front of my jersey right there on the ice with the team waiting for us and the entire student section still present.
I couldn’t seem to stop myself. I couldn’t bring myself to pull back.
Because we were real.
I got a little lost in it—yet again—but then I heard the applause and whistles.
I’m not sure who started laughing first, me or Dani, but that made us finally stop.
“Okay,” I said, clearing my throat and wondering how she could look so fucking beautiful, beaming up at me in a hockey jersey and glasses. “ Now I can pose for the damn picture.”
If they’d told me not to smile, it would’ve been impossible. The night was going to go down as one of the best ever. Beating Edina, making it to the tournament, having Dani tell me it was real for her, too—what the fuck else could I want?
Okay, for my shoulder to stop throbbing, but that’s starting to feel like an impossible ask.
As soon as the pictures were done, I found my way back over to where she was.
“What are you doing after this?” I asked, really wanting to celebrate with her. “Because you can’t just go home.”
“I’m not sure,” she said, a little crinkle between her eyebrows. “My dad is here, so I’m—”
“No way—the colonel’s here?” Another thing I could want: for her dad to not be there. Why the hell would he be there? “Why? Did you know he was coming?”
“Um, no,” she said, waving a hand like it was no big deal.
“Is he here just to visit you, or…” I asked, needing her to be honest.
“Yeah, I don’t really know,” she said, looking uncomfortable, like she didn’t want to talk about it. “I think—”
“Everyone’s going to the Cro,” we heard from behind us, and when we turned around, it was my parents and Hannah.
“Great game, kid,” my dad said, grinning as he pulled me in for a hug and a back slap. “Big-boy hockey right there.”
“Thanks,” I said, hugging him back.
“And you shut down Bodie,” my mom said with a smile. “I mean, you might’ve been a smidge too rough, but it was nice to see.”
A smidge too rough that sent me to the penalty box twice. I loved my mom.
“I didn’t hate that part,” I said, taking a moment to enjoy how happy they looked.
“Do you, um, know where my dad went?” Dani asked, leaning to look behind them.
“He’s meeting us at the Cro,” my mom said, which made Dani look at her mother like she was worried. She seemed to be… processing, like there was something she was trying to work through.
My dad said, “Kendall said they’ve got a band ‘on call’ for the win, so by the time everyone gets there, there’ll be live music upstairs and the usual downstairs.”
“Looks like we’re all going to the Cro, then, huh?” I said, dying to be alone with Dani for just five minutes.
I mean, I couldn’t wait to celebrate with the guys, but what she’d said to me about everything being real and the way she’d been acting with my friends and the team in general lately, suddenly she felt like an important part of my life.
Not someone occasional, not someone dropped into my world but moving kind of around it, but someone who was wholly in the middle of everything.
And I fucking loved it.
“Looks that way,” Dani said with a smile, but there was a tiny crease in her forehead that I didn’t like.