Page 41 of Olivia’s Only Pretending (Sweet River #3)

Thirty

I t was a few days until the wedding, and the prep and excitement had kept Victor busy amid our budding new relationship. We took to finding free hours here and there, like during my lunch break. I’d brought a long Italian sub sandwich I’d made the night before for the occasion.

“Forget this,” Victor says, forgoing his attempt to scoot the big chair from the middle of my office over beside my rolling chair behind my desk.

He plopped down in my desk chair, yanked me into his lap, and said, “Let’s just share a seat.”

“Comfy.” I leaned against his chest for a second, feeling his heartbeat against my back. I had our sub spread out on our desk before us and started slicing it.

“How’s your day been?” he asked, his hands resting against my waist.

“Good, good,” I said. “We’re preparing for finals looming ahead, but it’s the quiet before the storm. Plus, things have settled down as the fall events are coming to an end. We’re all done except for the last panel seminar on Friday, but I’m thankfully not working that one.”

“Yeah, you’ve got a hot date on Friday.” Victor snuck his arms around me, hugging me from behind.

“A rehearsal dinner date, that’s serious stuff,” I said, biting my lip. My heart picked up pace. The rehearsal dinner felt like the real launch to sharing our relationship with friends and family. So many people would be there, and this would be their first time seeing us as an us.

I felt giddy.

“I’m really grateful you’ll be there. I’ll need kind eyes in the crowd,” Victor said morosely, leaning his head back against the chair. “I’m nervous about this toast.”

I twisted in my seat so we were face to face. “Victor, you’ll be amazing.” My outgoing, charming, irresistible, life-of-the-party Victor had been spiraling about the toast since his brother had asked him to be the best man.

He moaned in reply, hands over his eyes.

“You’re great at speaking. You have amazing jokes. A great balance of sentimental but hilarious.” I put my hands on both sides of his face. He looked at me. “I’ve read this thing like twenty times. It’s good.”

He swallowed. “This toast is a big deal. It’s important to Gabriel. He’s my big brother, and I want him to be proud and to be glad he picked me to be his best man.” Emma and Gabe had recently explained how they wanted their toasts shared at the rehearsal dinner instead of the reception.

“Even if you flopped up there, he’d still be glad he picked you. He picked you because he loves you, not because he thinks you’ll deliver the best performance.” I brushed back his floppy, dark hair. “Though you will.”

“At least I can look out and see you and know that at the end of it, I get to kiss these lips and nothing else will matter.” He rubbed a thumb across my bottom lip.

“I’ll be right there, waiting for the kiss at the end,” I promised right before the fire alarm started ringing.

Victor’s brows knitted in confusion.

“Not again,” I moaned. Someone had been pulling fire alarms across campus this whole fall semester. And now they’d pulled it in the history building.

We started for the door when I heard shoes pounding down the hallway, and a blur ran past us with a backpack bouncing against their back.

Victor and I exchanged a knowing glance, and then we ran after the blur like two detectives on the case. As we got closer to him, details became clearer. It was a male student with shaggy blond hair and a big red hoodie. A backpack hung loose off his shoulders.

People were crowding behind us as we hurried down the staircase, feet pounding down the steps.

The door opened up to the outside, and the shaggy-haired blond picked up his pace as we ran out into the sidewalk under the sunshine.

“Hey,” Victor shouted.

“Wait,” I said loudly in my professor voice. “I work on this campus!”

The guy skittered to a stop, glancing back at me with fear in his eyes.

I narrowed my eyes in recognition. He was a back-row kid in one of my introductory courses. “Peterson?” I said his last name.

He swallowed. “Shane Peterson.”

“Did you?” Victor interjected, pointing toward the history building.

He looked down at his white Converse shoes, with hearts drawn in Sharpie on top. I blinked, a flash of memory. Ashley from the book club had the same hearts on her Converse.

“Do you know Ashley Forde?” I felt like an investigator grasping at any pieces I could put together.

He glanced up quickly, in surprise. “Yeah?”

People were flooding around us, griping about the fire alarm stopping classes and interrupting tests and meetings, a loud murmur around us.

“She has the same hearts on her shoes.” I pointed to his shoes. “Are you friends? Does she know you’re pulling the fire alarms?” I was suddenly worried this fire alarm saga involved my book club members.

“I never said I pulled—” Shane tried to defend himself.

“You were running down those halls like you were running from the law— from the direction of the fire alarm .” Victor shrugged, like we had him caught.

“I could’ve been running for my life. There was an alarm going off,” Shane said. His eyes snagged on something behind my shoulder. I turned to see Ashley skipping down the building steps, hand in hand with a tall, dark, and handsome type.

Shane winced, like he’d just been shoved. “It doesn’t matter, anyway.”

“Pulling the fire alarm definitely matters,” I said sternly.

“Whatever.” He kicked the ground with the top of his shoe.

“You know, she drew these hearts on my shoes to match hers. We did everything together for a while, until she met him.” He pointed toward the guy she was holding hands with.

“They’re in the same class. That’s where they just came from.

She even picked up his favorite candy on the way to class today.

” He said this last part like it was the most heartbreaking detail.

I nodded. Puzzle pieces aligned. “Did they hang out after class for the first time in September?”

I remembered the first fire alarm happened a couple of weeks into the beginning of the fall semester back in September.

He didn’t answer, just swallowed.

“Maybe another time you saw them coming home from a date late at night? Got her whole dorm running outside to interrupt the potential of a goodnight kiss?” I crossed my arms, narrowing my eyes.

“Fine, fine.” He gave up, sounding exasperated. “It’s been me. The first time was a stupid idea that came to me when I heard they were getting coffee after class. I hoped it would interrupt class and mess up their plans.”

“Then it became a habit?” Victor asked.

“Yeah,” he said, embarrassed and red-faced. “It worked okay in the beginning. Now”—he looked over at where they’d stood, wistfully—“it’s too late.”

“I get being stuck as a friend when you desperately want to be more, but ringing alarms isn’t going to help,” Victor said. “It’s not about what happens with her and that guy. It’s got to be about what happens between her and you. Talk to her.”

“But, also, stop ringing the alarms.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “I know your trademark now.”

He nodded. “I hear you, Dr. Rhodes.”

I glanced over and saw Ashley looking our way with a curious gleam in her eyes and a small smile for me and Shane, unaware of the effect she had on him. Unaware that the fall fire alarm fiasco had all been an elaborate ruse inspired by her.

“Wait until Gabby hears about this,” I whispered to Victor.

“Man, I sure do love visiting you on campus.” Victor sighed wistfully, slipping an arm around my shoulder.

A fter we were finally let back into the building, Victor was grabbing his things from my desk, slipping his wallet and phone into his pockets, while I plopped back down in my office chair.

“How late do you think you’ll be out?” I asked. Victor and I had been talking on the phone every night this week until we nearly fell asleep, but I knew tonight he had Gabriel’s bachelor party.

“Probably pretty late. All of us took off work tomorrow or at least took a half day,” he said, as I stood up from my spot. “Maybe you could text me when you’re going to bed, and I could step away from the guys and give you a call?”

I wrapped my arms around him in a tight hug. “That sounds good.”

“You know,” he said, his voice sly in the way it got when he was about to share an idea with me.

“We could go back to pretending for one night. We could pretend to run into each other …” His arms were still wrapped around me.

“Maybe I’ll give you the bachelor party agenda?

You happen to show up where we’re having dinner. ”

It was tempting. I considered it for a minute. A little extra Victor time sounded nice. But ultimately, I knew better. I scrunched my nose and shook my head. “No. I can’t. That’s a bad girlfriend look. I can’t be the girlfriend ruining guys’ night and crashing bachelor parties.”

He pressed a goodbye kiss to my forehead as I spoke. “Plus, no one even knows I’m your girlfriend yet.”

“My girlfriend,” Victor said slowly, drawing out each syllable against his tongue.

It made my stomach flutter. “Your girlfriend.” I nodded, leaning a hip against my desk. “And a good one. The kind that makes you sub sandwiches and listens to you recite your best man toast almost every night and over lunch.”

Victor laughed warmly as he walked toward the doorway. “Girlfriend of my fantasies.”

He stopped in the doorway, giving me a final grin—the kind that made me ache in a really good way, the kind that made my heart catch in my throat, and I felt the words, I love you , almost slip out.

I opened my mouth but hesitated. So close.

“See you later,” he said.

And then the door was closing behind him, and the word love was still there on my tongue.

After he left, my heart sank. I’d almost told him, and I felt so deflated for holding it back. I grabbed my phone and texted Lucy.

Me

Isn’t it karaoke night at Chauncey’s tonight? I’m free. Wanna girls’ night??