Page 58 of Fake Skating

My heart almost stopped when I heard the doorbell.

My parents had taken Ashton and Cole to their eight o’clock basketball game, so I was trying to ignore the world by getting some overdue homework done in my room.

I seriously expected to see a police car when I looked out the window, so when I opened the front door and saw Dani, standing there in the bright morning sunlight, I was so fucking relieved.

Relieved it wasn’t something bad, and also relieved that she hadn’t decided to pretend she’d never met me after everything that’d happened the night before.

There she stood, bundled up in her big coat with her hair in a long, loose braid, and I’d never been so happy to see anyone in my life.

“Is this a new thing, you walking to my house?” I asked, holding the door open so she could come inside.

“Oh, your face,” she said, blinking fast and raising a hand like she was going to touch it, her eyebrows scrunched together in concern.

But then she dropped her hand and asked, “How does it feel?”

“Stings like a bitch,” I admitted, and then she gave a little nod and walked into the house.

I closed the door and followed her in, realizing as Dani stopped beside the couch but didn’t sit that we were home alone.

Interesting.

“Um, how’s your hand?” She crossed her arms over her chest and looked nervous. “Still swollen?”

I looked down at it, clenching my fist. “Not too bad.”

“Ah. Good.” She cleared her throat and nodded again. “And your shoulder?”

“Are you… nervous?” I said, stepping closer. “You seem a little jumpy.”

“N-no,” she said, taking a step back.

Out of my reach.

“You okay?” I asked, suddenly aware of the way her eyes wouldn’t meet mine and how she looked fucking sad. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” She rubbed her lips together, then said, “It’s just… here’s the thing.”

What is this?

“I, um, like, this whole thing with my dad is kind of complicated,” she said, the words bouncing out like she was working hard at stringing them together.

“And I don’t know what’s going to happen.

I might leave again, I might not, but… it seems to me that right now, while you’ve got so much going on in your hockey career and everything with me is up in the air, maybe it’s best if we take, like, a break. ”

A. break.

A break??

“What do you mean?” I said calmly, but what the fuck did that fucking mean?

A break from our less-than-twenty-four-hour-old relationship?

That couldn’t be right.

“I mean that, like,” she said, “you don’t need distractions right now.”

“No.” I said, shaking my head, needing her to understand. “You’re the opposite of a distraction—”

“The fight last night says the opposite,” she interrupted, cracking her knuckles.

I’ve never seen her do that before.

“Yeah, but—”

“Alec,” she said, cutting me off again. “It just seems like the timing is off. Maybe we should, like, wait for, like—”

“You’ve said ‘like’ like fifteen times now,” I said, not meaning to sound impatient but seriously confused. “That’s not you, Harvard. What the hell’s going on here?”

“Nothing,” she said with a shrug, her eyes moving all over the room. “Everything is just too much right now. Between my dad and school and you and hockey, I just need some time—”

“Wait. Are you breaking up with me?”

Her eyes shot to mine, finally, and—holy shit—I could see I was right.

She was.

Breaking up. With me.

She said, “I mean—”

“Cut the shit, Dani, come on,” I said, my chest burning as I watched her stammer. This couldn’t be happening. “What happened between last night and now?”

“You don’t remember?” she said quietly.

“Wait—this has to do with the fight?”

She looked away from me again and said, “I mean, it was a little jarring to see you like that, so angry—”

“Bullshit,” I said, because anyone could see she was lying. “You jumped in front of me and yelled in my face. You have never been afraid of me in your entire life, Collins, come on . Why don’t you tell the truth?”

“Well, then,” she said, blinking fast like she was looking for another reason since I’d rejected the last one. What the hell was that? She took a deep breath and then said,“You promised.”

“What?”

“You promised that I could be the one to end things, on my terms—”

“When it was fake,” I said, shaking my head. What the hell is happening?

“—and that’s what I’m doing. I’m ending it.”

I looked at those brown eyes and felt utterly fucking lost, especially when I saw a tear escape.

“But this doesn’t make sense,” I said, stepping closer, pushing back the long curl that’d fallen out of her braid.

Her eyes were filled with tears— what the hell?

—so I softened my tone and leaned in, my heart skipping a beat as I heard her take a shaky breath.

“You looked at me on the ice last night and said the words, honey. You said them. Tell me what happened between then and now.”

She swiped at her tears and shook her head. “I just—”

“Why are you crying if this is what you want?” I asked, because nothing about this made sense. She looked devastated, fucking heartbroken as she attempted to break my heart, and I couldn’t wrap my head around it.

I took her face in my hands to reassure her, but she blinked up at me and suddenly I was lowering my mouth, needy, desperate to convince her. My lips landed on hers like a dare, challenging her to show me she meant the ridiculous words she was saying.

The lyrics to “Lose Me Like You Mean It” came at me like a fist.

All I need is

For you to look me in the eyes, make me believe it

And fuck .

One taste. One taste and she was kissing me back, as frenzied and wild as me while we kissed like neither of us could bear what she was saying.

Her hands came up and covered mine, ten trembling fingers pressing my palms against her cheeks as she frantically met me sip for fucking sip, but then she choked out a sob and pushed my hands away.

“No,” she cried, shaking her head and stepping away from me. “You’re wrong, Alec. I’m only crying because you’re my friend and I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Then don’t ,” I said, struggling to get a good breath as full-on panic screamed through me. “Collins…”

I don’t want to hurt you.

I trailed off because fucking wait .

I don’t want to hurt you.

Did she feel bad for me? Was she trying to let me down easy—soft little Alec—was that what this was?

“But you promised,” she repeated, sounding like she was begging.

Like she was desperate for me to remember her out clause.

And I realized as I looked at her that I had no choice.

If she wanted to be done, we were done.

Because I wasn’t going to beg anymore.

If we’re going out, we’re going up in flames, baby

My gut burned with shame as I looked at her pretty face and realized I’d done it again. Holy shit, I’d fallen head over heels for the only girl I’d ever wanted and the only girl who knew how to fucking destroy me.

“Same old Dani, eh?” I said, grinding my teeth against the pain that was suddenly like a knife in my chest. I took a big step back from her. “Leaving me behind yet again. At least this time there aren’t any letters for you to ignore.”

“What?”

“How could you do it, by the way?” I asked, angry at the confused look on her face, done with the bullshit.

Everything hurt again, and it was because of her again, and suddenly I needed her to answer the damn question that’d haunted me for years.

“How could you walk away when I needed you? I wrote you every fucking week, breaking our stupid rules and begging you to be there for me, but you didn’t even care enough to send a screw you note in response. How—”

“What are you talking about?” she interrupted, looking at me like I was nuts.

And I realized then, as she blinked up at me with her heartbreakingly gorgeous tear-streaked face, that it actually didn’t matter.

Because Dani Collins was—and forever would be—what she’d been to me my entire life.

The one I wanted who didn’t want me back.

“Nothing, forget it,” I said, so pissed at myself for being such a chump. So pissed at her for doing this to me again. “Just realizing that the one thing I can always count on is that I can’t count on you.”

She made a noise in the back of her throat before she said, “Alec.”

“No.” I shook my head in disbelief— so fucking stupid —and looked down at the carpet. I didn’t want to see her face, couldn’t look at her, because I was in serious danger of losing my shit and begging on my knees.

Or fucking crying.

All I could manage as my chest fucking burned was “I think you need to leave now.”

I heard her sniffle. “Alec, I—”

“Just go .”

“Okay,” she said in almost a whisper, and a few seconds later she was gone.