Page 18 of Skating and Fake Dating (Love in Maple Falls #4)

CARSON

“ T here you two are,” Taffy says, either oblivious to or choosing to ignore the tension between Bailey and me. “I’ve been looking everywhere. We need you inside for the cake cutting.”

Bailey smiles, composing herself quickly. “We’ll be right there, Mom.”

When her mother whisks inside, she stares at her hands, wringing them, and says, “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

But it does matter. It matters in a way I wasn’t prepared for when I ate that blondie back at the Ice Palace, when I found out she’s traveling with me while I transition to the new team, when we got stuck together numerous times, and now.

After surviving the cutting of the cake, the bouquet toss, which Bailey avoids catching, and a nearly interminable series of goodbye hugs, we start toward the Jeep. Bailey walks like she’s stepping on glass or very cold ice.

“Do your feet hurt?” I ask.

She adjusts her dress. “I think my sister insisted I wear these heels as a mild form of torture. But she said they coordinated with the dress, so here I am with what are sure to be blisters.”

I bend down and scoop her into my arms.

She lets out a small squeak of surprise. “Carson! What are you doing?”

“Carrying you outside. If we’re going to do this, we might as well make it convincing.”

She rolls her eyes but doesn’t protest, instead wrapping her arms around my neck. “My hero,” she says dryly.

“That’s what fake boyfriends are for.” I try to keep my tone light, but something in her expression lightens.

“Thank you. Not just for this, but for today. For making it bearable.” Her voice is soft as she tucks her hair behind her ear, a habit I’ve noticed.

I want to tell her that being with her—fake relationship or not—is the most real thing I’ve felt in recent memory.

Instead, I simply say, “Anytime.”

As I carry her to the car, her head resting against my shoulder, I’m struck by how right this feels. For the first time since my high school sweetheart rejected my proposal, I’m allowing myself to imagine what it would be like to have something real again.

The problem is, it’s supposed to be pretend.

When I pull up in front of Bailey’s house, she sends a few texts. The Jeep’s dome light comes on and she’s pale after being rosy-cheeked all night—a look I rather like.

“Hey, you, okay? Tired? Hungry?”

“Yeah. Um, you?”

“I have a few more minutes in me. I should probably grab my stuff from inside.”

“Yeah, good idea,” she says haltingly as her fingers fly over the keyboard on her phone.

When we get in the house, the party continues in the Porters’ living room. Even though the women are generally catty and particularly clucky when it comes to Bailey, they seem to genuinely enjoy each other’s company. I always wanted a big family. At least, in theory .

Taffy gasps. “Sweetie pie, you look as white as a sheet. Something wrong?”

“Yeah, sheets.” Bailey’s hazel eyes dart toward me and quickly away.

“What’s up?” I ask when her aunt distracts her mother with a call for a clean glass.

“Remember how I reserved you a room at the Hawk River Lodge because the Regent’s Hotel was booked for the wedding? Well, because you were supposed to check in yesterday, but our flight was diverted, they gave away the room and I feel terrible.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll find another?—”

“There isn’t another place with openings for miles. Lots and lots of miles.”

Apparently, having overheard at least part of the conversation, Taffy plants her hand on my arm. “Carson is practically family now. He’s staying here.”

“Mom, there’s no room with Odette and Damian, Aunt Doris and?—”

“We have an extra air mattress. He can stay in your room.” She arches an eyebrow and wags a finger. “In separate beds. You know the rules.”

Bailey somehow goes paler. “You never even let me have boys in my room when I was a teenager and now you’re okay with it?”

“Sweetie pie, you never invited boys over. That was our Odette. Boy crazy that one and little Bailey here just stayed up there and read.”

They go back and forth for another minute until it’s settled by motherly ordination with her insistence that I stay in Bailey’s room.

Covering her face with her hands, she mutters, “I’m sorry about this. This is a disaster.”

“It’s just one night. We’re adults. It’ll be fine.”

She peers up at me. “You’re being very easygoing about this. ”

I lift my shoulder with a shrug. “What’s the other option?”

“Running.”

I chuckle. “Can’t say that occurred to me.”

She yawns. “Okay, but you have to keep your eyes closed.”

“While I’m sleeping, but you can’t very well blindfold me before that.”

“Fine, but no laughing.”

My lips quirk. “Why would I do that?”

“Because this is my childhood bedroom, a relic from age zero on.”

I rub my hands together. “Oh, this should be good.”

She leads me upstairs and it does indeed look like a time capsule. Care Bears line the shelves, a collection of jelly shoes in every color fills a basket, and teen heartthrob posters cover the walls.

“So this is where teenage Bailey plotted world domination?”

“More like where I hid from family gatherings,” she says with a small smile, sitting on the edge of the bed. Since returning to her house, she has changed into leggings and an oversized sweatshirt, her face scrubbed clean of makeup. She looks younger, softer.

“I like it,” I say, flipping through a sticker collection book. “It suits you.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Childish and disorganized?”

“Colorful. Cute. Unapologetically unique.”

Bailey looks away, but not before I catch her smile. “You can stop the boyfriend act now. No one’s watching.”

I sit beside her on the bed, careful to maintain some distance in case we get any surprise visitors. “Who says it’s an act?”

She gives me a look and once more says, “Carson ...”

“I’m just saying,” I continue like a freight train that’s lost its brakes, “maybe we should talk about what you said earlier. About not entirely acting.”

“You’re the one who said that.”

It’s true .

Her jaw lowers as if calculating what this means.

I’m not sure either, but it calls into question everything I said on the car ride here. I’m afraid I’m not ready to let go of the lifeline I clung to after everything that happened with Charlene—convincing myself that true love isn’t real.

“Me, you, what’s the difference?” I realize this blurs the lines. What if I like that Bailey has brought the real me back by degrees?

She says, “We had an agreement.”

“What if I don’t want to?”

She studies me for a long moment. “Then we don’t have to. We can tell them the truth in the morning.”

Either she’s purposely pretending she doesn’t know what I mean or she’s not interested. Okay. Message received. Her sister is probably right about potential human resource issues anyway, since we’re both affiliated with the NHL.

She asks, “Why did you stick up for me to begin with when my sister was picking apart my failed business venture?”

It’s a fair question, one I’ve been asking myself all evening. “Honestly? Based on what you told me, I instantly saw how your family looks at you, how they compare you to your sister, how they talk about your ex like you lost some prize. And I wanted to show them they’re wrong.”

“So it was pity?”

“No,” I say firmly. “Admiration. You’re building something from scratch—your career, your life. That takes courage. More courage than following someone else’s five-year plan.”

She looks at me with those wide eyes that first caught my attention when she made me laugh in the galley at the Ice Palace. “You really believe that?”

“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t.”

She’s quiet for a moment, then says, “This wasn’t supposed to get complicated.”

“I know. ”

“My family thinks we’re serious,” she says, belaboring the point.

“I know that, too.”

“If we—if this ends badly ...” She trails off, vulnerability like speed bumps in her voice.

I contemplate taking her hand, but I’m afraid she’s going to pull away. “Bailey, I don’t know what this is between us. But I do know that pretending to be with you today felt more real than anything has in a long time.”

“The team expects you to have a stable personal life now. That’s what your agent wanted,” she says as if not just keeping physical distance between us but emotional too.

“Yeah, but—” I shrug.

“But—?” she asks as if seeking clarity, but I don’t have words for that.

“What if we just see how things go?”

Her gaze tips toward mine. The space between us shrinks, and for a moment, I think I might kiss her again.

I want to. But instead, I stand, knowing we’re both running on a sleep deficit and will have a fresh take on what happened between Nebraska and Washington and every moment since in the morning.

After freshening up and saying goodnight, instead of crashing like I should, I stare at the ceiling, trying to listen to the particular settling noises the house makes rather than the racket in my head and the keen awareness that a beautiful woman is a few feet away.

After I’ve rewound and relived the same scenes with Bailey, instead of counting sheep, I try counting otters, but then I catch the shine of her eyes in the darkness.

“Are you awake?” she whispers.

“Yeah.”

“Want to sneak out?”

“We’re adults, do we have to sneak out?”

The air mattress makes a dull squeaking sound as she shifts her weight. “I always wanted to sneak out to meet a boy when I lived at home. Odette had it down to a science.”

“Not so perfect after all.”

She laughs through her nose. “The porch roof is right out that window. Then we can shinny down the post and onto the railing.”

“How about I use the door and you sneak out to meet me?”

She sits up and bobs her shoulders. “That sounds fun.”

Glancing out the window, I say, “But you have to wait until I get outside.”

“Why?”

“In case you lose your footing, I’ll catch you.”

I don’t so much see as feel her smile gleam. “Okay, but you said you play the guitar, right?”

“Yeah, but the movers would’ve packed it.” Hopefully, taking great care since it belonged to Grandaddy.

“When you go out this door, walk to the opposite end of the hall from the stairs. My brother’s guitar is next to the bookshelf. Meet me down there with it.”

“I might wake everyone up.”

We’re standing in the small square of space not taken up by furniture or the air mattress and the oxygen seems to leave the small bedroom.

She tips her head to the side like a dare. “Or you could play me a lullaby.”

Following Bailey’s directions, I find the guitar and clamp my hands over the strings so they don’t reverberate before stealthily padding down the stairs and out the back door, then around to the porch beneath her room.

The window slides open, and dressed in an adorable pair of plaid pajama bottoms and a coordinating white shirt, she lowers onto the roof and slides to the edge. Biting her lip, she spins around, and then her leg pedals the air as she tries to find the railing she described .

So she doesn’t get hurt, I clasp her waist and cradle her in my arms.

Our gazes lock and then her eyes drop to my lips.

She says, “You’re smiling.”

“Truth be told, I never snuck out either.”

“So you were a good boy?”

“A Southern gentleman.”

“Are there dusty dirt roads where you lived?” Hope shines in Bailey’s eyes.

“I’m from Birmingham, Alabama, a city, so no.”

She sighs as if that’s disappointing. But after we sit down on the porch swing, I strum the guitar and sing a few bars of one of my favorite country tunes.

Bailey slides closer to me and then, hesitating, she tips her head to the side.

Sensing what she wants to do, I give her access to my shoulder.

She drops her head against it. Between songs from my mental archive and requests, we talk about our childhoods, family, music, and favorites: foods, movies, and pastimes.

It’s like we don’t want the night and this unexpected time together to come to an end.

I’m a fool whether I wish this were real or if I continue to go on pretending it’s fake.