Page 7

7

Alana

“ S hit.” I stopped just as I walked into the arrivals lounge giving Liam no choice but to walk straight into me.

“What?” he asked as he wrapped his arm around my waist to stop me from falling forward. My hand clutched his forearm. I let go just as quickly, as if I had been burned by the thick, corded muscle there. The rest of me, however, sank back into the heat of his chest like I belonged there. It took me a moment to remember why I had stopped.

“I forgot Dad was picking me up from the airport.”

“Fail to see why that is a problem,” Liam said, his arm still wrapped around me. There was no need for him to still be holding on to me. In fact, I kind of wished that he would let me go so I could sink into the ground and avoid this particular car journey home.

My thumb ring started spinning again.

“It’s not. I just wasn’t ready to start lying to a parent so quickly. And he’s going to have all kinds of questions for you, so we really would have to hit the ground running.”

I would swear until the end of time that I was not the kind of person who was capable of swooning because frankly, I am too pessimistic to believe such a thing was possible, but when Liam used his grip on my waist to spin me around so that I was facing him, his hand splayed across my lower back, I did nearly swoon. The smug look on his face told me he knew he’d affected me.

“All kinds of questions like what?”

“Oh, so you don’t think your high school coach is going to have some thoughts on your retirement?”

“I don’t think Rob is going to have any more to say than he already has to me.”

My eyebrows scrunched together.

“I spoke to Rob when I was trying to decide what to do with my career. I wanted to know what made him decide to call it quits. I knew he would have a perspective on it that I needed to hear while everything was still so up in the air for me.”

Robert Fitzpatrick was going to be the next best thing in ice hockey. That’s what everyone told him. Heck, it was what he told himself. He had to believe it to make all the hard work worth it.

On the day of the last game of the regular season in his senior year of college, two things happened. One, my mom peed on a stick, and it came up positive, and two, he got body slammed into the boards in the second quarter. Except his knee didn’t get the memo to go with the rest of his body and he ended up with major damage to the joint.

He could have played again. Every doctor, physio, therapist, and coach told him that if he didn’t try to push himself too quickly, and put in the work, he could get back on the ice. He could still have been the next big thing everyone had said he would be. He could have had it all.

But during the really shitty parts of the rehab process, I was born, and Dad didn’t know if he wanted it all. His career might have ended up costing him too much—always being out on the road, and having to return to the higher standards of excellence he was expected to maintain because he knew just how quickly things could turn nasty and abusive. It would keep him from what had become the most important to him—his wife excelling in her chosen career, his daughter, and then two years later, his son.

He found his way back to ice hockey on his own terms when Aaron started school and coached the team at my old high school. He is one of the best junior varsity coaches in the country. Not that you would know that to speak to him. He would rather wax lyrical about how great the rest of his family are than what he’s managed to achieve on a coaching level.

Dad was the reason Liam pursued hockey in the first place, so Liam speaking to him about his retirement did make sense. What didn’t make sense was the feeling that settled over me at the idea of Liam and Dad talking. It almost felt like jealousy.

“You spoke to my dad about your retirement decision?”

“Yeah…?”

“How often do you talk to my dad?”

“Not that much, really. Only when I needed an outside perspective from someone who also understood the sport. Don’t worry, it was only ever about hockey. My mom was the person who gave me all my secondhand info about you.”

“Oh, that makes sense,” I said quietly, noticing the brief flash of sadness in his eyes. I shuffled out of his grip only to step backwards into someone else.

“Careful, sweetie.”

I breathed a sigh of relief that it was just Dad I was stumbling into and turned around so I wasn’t looking at Liam anymore. Even if it was only for a few moments.

“Sorry Dad, I didn’t realise you were right behind me.”

A knowing smile broke out on his face, and he cast his eyes between me and the man behind me.

“You did look like you were in your own little world. How long has this been going on?”

I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. The arrivals lounge suddenly felt too small, and I couldn’t hear anything but the sound of my own blood rushing through my body. Now that the time to pretend was here, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t lie. Not to my parents. Not to his parents.

But most of all, I couldn’t lie to myself. I couldn’t tell this dangerous lie that once upon a time, I wanted desperately to be the truth. I wouldn’t be able to keep the line clear between fact and fiction. I’d break my own heart all over again, only this time I didn’t know if I could mend the broken pieces.

Amid my panic, I felt a hand settle on the middle of my back, and that one point of contact brought me back into my body. I still couldn’t bring myself to say the lie out loud, though.

In the end, I didn’t need to. It takes two people to be in a fake relationship.

“Not too long, sir. We reconnected about six weeks ago,” Liam said it with such confidence that even I believed him.

Dad looked at us both, me still leaning into Liam’s touch. He simply nodded, slipped the backpack off my shoulder and onto his, and grabbed the handle of my suitcase. He turned with a mutter that sounded a bit like “finally” and started to leave the airport.

Liam removed his hand, grabbed his stuff, and followed.

As I watched the retreating back of my fake boyfriend, I realised that even though I had made Sweet Nothing’s birthday party the start of this thing, I hadn’t specified when it was. Yet Liam knew anyway.