Page 10 of Save Your Breath

And I decided if I was going to be fake engaged, there was no one I’d rather pretend with than Aleks.

I pulled up his contact, glancing at a wide-eyed and hopeful Isabella when his name sliced across the screen.

Then, I sent the text that would spiral me into a new life.

How High?

Aleks

I’d called Mia as soon as I left the meeting with Kilman and Bancroft, my head still pounding from the alcohol from the night before along with their whining about my behavior.

Annoyingly, Mia had been coy about what was so goddamn important until I got my agent to join us on a video call.

Now that she’d explained her publicist’s hare-brained idea, I understood why.

The four of us sat in silence, our images reflected on my laptop screen. The bottom box was Mia and Isabella in sunny California, the two of them huddled close in her back yard that I spent time in last summer during the offseason. In the top left box was my agent, Giana Johnson, her curly hair piled into a high bun on her head and her oversized glasses slipping down her nose a bit as she scribbled something frantically in her notebook.

And then there was me in the top right, blinking slowly, lips flat and unamused.

That resting face of indifference was my armor — always had been. I had the knack for looking bored or pissed off, or a combination of the two, regardless of what was happening around me.

But inside?

I was a fucking mess.

Because my best friend, the woman I’d been sick over since I was sixteen, the one woman I knew I could never truly have…

She’d just proposed that we pretend to date each other.

No, that we pretend to beengaged.

And just the thought of her being mine, even if only for a publicity stunt, had my insides twisted into an unholy knot of anticipation.

“This sounds like a one-sided deal,” I said carefully, coolly, hoping I was masking how badly I was ready to sayyeswithout hearing another damn detail.

“Not at all,” Isabella assured me, glancing at Mia who was giving her anI told you soglare before she turned her attention back to me. “Like we explained, this works out very well for both of you. Just think how happy Dick will be when you tell him you’re engaged, getting on the straight and narrow. And with a pop star who willundoubtedlysell tickets to your games, at that.”

I smirked. I liked Isabella — had ever since I met her seven years ago. Out of all the people pulling the strings of Mia’s career, she was the only one who had my trust. She cared about our girl. She gave a shit what happened to Mia the Human, not just Mia the Musician.

Still pretending like I wasn’t sold, I nodded toward the screen at my agent. “G?”

Giana Johnson was the kind of woman who could throw you for a loop in the first hour you spent with her. On the outside, she was anything but intimidating. She wasmaybefive foot one and one-hundred-and-twenty pounds soaking wet, with big, curly hair and glasses. Combine that with her wardrobe that was some sort of mix between schoolgirl and librarian, complete with an array of plaid skirts, tights in every color, and cardigans she wore over crisp white blouses, and she was as confusing as she was intriguing.

But as soon as she opened her mouth, anyone around her was quick to realize she was a shark.

She took absolutely zero bullshit from anyone — me most of all. When companies offered me sponsorship or reached out about doing a commercial, she was quick to combat their initial offers and get me what I deserved. When I had to do interviews for the team, she was there with talking points and a reminder of everything I didn’t have to answer, no matter how the media pried.

She knew her shit, and she earned every bit of the fifteen-percent commission I paid her.

“Okay, I will take off my professional hat for only a moment to say that the bookworm inside me is absolutelyscreamingat this,” she said, and I could tell from how her little knee was bouncing in the video frame that she was trying really hard to keep her shit together. “I mean, a fake engagement between a hot hockey player and a goddess of a pop star? The fact that you two have known each other since you were teenagers? This is tropegold.”

Mia and Isabella shared knowing smiles, giggling a bit as I slow-blinked and waited for my agent to come back to reality.

“Now, putting my professional hat backon,” she continued, her mouth tugging to one side. “I can definitely see some major benefits to this arrangement. I mean, Aleks…” She shook her head, going over the notes she’d taken. “Even with the Ospreys winning the Cup, our sponsorships have run dry. Everyone wants Tanev and Brittain and the other pretty faces.”

I arched a brow.

“Not that you don’t have a pretty face,” she said. “They just…smilemore.”