Page 9

Tobie

I check my reflection in the mirror hanging on the wall and wince at my bloodshot eyes before opening my door.

“You’re early,” I greet the two hockey players who look freshly showered in sweatpants and hoodies.

Reid flashes me a grin as he walks in. “We’ve all heard Coach screaming at Brave enough for it to have a long-term effect on our punctuality.”

I frown. “ Brave ?”

“Paxton Edwards, center on the team. If he’s not late already, he’s on his way to being it.

” Javier smiles as he enters. “We live in the same dorm, on the same floor. We often leave at the same time, and still, the guy is late. It’s like he gets sucked into a black hole on his way to wherever he’s going. ”

I scrunch my nose. “I still don’t get it.”

“His nickname is Brave,” Reid says, sitting on my bed. “Takes a brave man to be late for Coach. And to do it repeatedly…” He shakes his head. “His nickname should’ve been suicidal.”

I move to close the door when a large, tanned hand holds it open.

I look up.

And up.

Caleb stares down at me.

Since only Javier and Reid stopped by my room this morning, I hadn’t believed he would be here.

I can’t keep staring at him and doing nothing. He’s going to think I’m an idiot. “Oh, I didn’t think you were coming.”

Caleb’s arm brushes against me as he enters, and his fresh sage and cedar scent briefly distracts me. “Reid convinced me this was in all our best interest,” he says.

“ Convinced you . Yeah, right.” Reid snorts.

What’s that supposed to mean?

Forest-green eyes flick to my head. “You get that checked out?”

I clear my throat. “Uh, I was…”

After a quick trip to get myself checked out at the clinic, which, thankfully, all was good, I was crying under my sheets for the majority of the day. The redness of my eyes and my overall scruffiness probably attest to the fact that today, I just don’t care.

“I was busy,” I finish lamely.

He says nothing as he props himself against the wall.

I close the door and turn around to take in the three men occupying my room.

Reid has made himself comfortable on my bed, slipping off his sneakers before he sat on it, so I appreciate that.

Javier is back to sitting at my desk, flipping through the same book he picked up before.

A romance.

I try not to blush, and I don’t tell him to put it down because if I did, I have a strong suspicion that would only make him more interested in why.

And I specifically do not want or need him to get anywhere near page fifty-two.

Or 179.

Or…

I look away.

And my gaze clashes with a penetrating stare.

Caleb is leaning on the wall beside my closet, arms crossed, watching me. They’ve all studied me intently at various points over the last twenty-four hours, but none of them observed me with the focus that Caleb does.

As a freshman, my dorm room was so tiny I could barely bring anything with me from my small-town home in Lawrenceburg, a tiny dot on the map in Nebraska. I shared back then. There was no way I could afford a single room.

As a senior, the upperclassmen dorms are a little bigger and more expensive, but I’ve always worked over the summer.

My dad works from home as a regional sales manager for a food processing company.

Occasionally, the company takes on temp admin staff, so I’ll pick up a few hours doing that or serve food and drinks at the Lawrenceburg diner or bar, anything that puts a few extra bucks in my pocket. I’m not proud.

Outside of splurging on overpriced hockey game-day tickets, I’m frugal, so I could afford a private dorm room going into my junior year. With three men over six feet tall in it, they eat up all the space, and so I hover, not sure where I want to sit.

Reid pats the bed next to him. “There’s plenty of room over here.”

“Uh, I’m good,” I say, again making me think that Caleb is right, and I should get myself checked out for head injuries. That’s twice now I’ve refused to get closer to a hot guy.

“So, what happened?” Javier finally puts down the book he was flipping through, and I make a mental note to put it and others away if they ever come back here. “You didn’t seem like you were interested in taking us up on our offer.”

I carefully do not look any of them in the eye. “I’ve had enough humiliation to last a lifetime over the last twenty-four hours. Let’s just say it’s something unforgivable.”

Nothing like whispering to a nurse in a free clinic that your ex was sleeping with another woman and you don’t know if you have an STD. Her loudly repeating my request back to me in a packed waiting room was a humiliation unlike any other, and I thought the arena was bad.

And I still haven’t told my dad.

I sent him a text earlier, just a ‘ run-of-the-mill , everything is good in Lamont, hope everything is good with you’ message. That won’t be enough. He will call and notice that everything is not good with me.

Dad and I are close. We’ve become closer after Mom died of pancreatic cancer, and we speak or text most days. He’s going to call and ask about Marc, and I’ll have to tell him we broke up and why.

Naturally, he’ll be upset and hurt for me, then angry.

While I wouldn’t mind if he got a flight into town to punch Marc in the face for hurting me, I’d like to handle this on my own.

I’ll tell him when I’m more composed because right now, all it’ll take is, “Everything okay, Junebug?” And I’ll dissolve into tears.

“We all have busy schedules,” Caleb says, watching me closely.

“I have team captain responsibilities outside of studying and practice, and Javier is majoring in biology, so he has more classes than any of us. You’ll probably see more of Reid, but between us, we can make sure one of us is always with you. What’s your schedule?”

I’m a little taken aback by Javier studying biology, not that hockey players don’t study the sciences, but I was expecting something a little less cerebral from a jock. “Pretty light. It’s uh…” I point at my class schedule pinned to the corkboard above my desk.

Javier looks at me. “Mind if I take a pic?”

I shake my head, watching as he fishes his cell phone from his pocket and takes a picture of my schedule. “I’ll share it with Caleb and Reid if you don’t mind?”

Again, he looks at me for permission. “Go for it.”

“And your cell?” Javier asks.

I reel off my number.

He taps it into his phone, saying, “I’m sending it to the others and sending you ours.”

When all our phones vibrate as Javier finishes sharing our numbers and my schedule with Reid and Caleb, I guess we’re really doing this.

This fake dating…

Situation?

Bet?

Experiment?

I have no clue what it is, but we’re doing it.

“Why’d you need my schedule?” I ask a question that if I were with it, I’d have asked before I let Javier take a picture of it.

“Your ex will know when you have free periods and days off, right?” Reid asks.

“So?”

“And you know when his free periods and days off are?” Javier asks.

I nod.

Reid sandwiches his fingers together. “Then we put the two together. He needs to see you with us and often. Does he go to any parties?”

“No…” Then I remember the arena. “But he was lying about going to hockey games by himself, so what do I know?” My voice is bitter.

“There’s a party at one of the biggest frat houses tomorrow night,” Caleb says.

I swear there’s a party every night of the week on fraternity and sorority row, and I’ve heard they can be wild. Going to one is enough to break me out in hives, but I agreed to this. “So?”

“If he goes to it, great. If he doesn’t, then whatever happens at those parties usually gets spread around campus pretty quickly. It’s a good opportunity to kick this off,” he says.

Reid eyes him closely. “You don’t go to parties.”

“I have better things to do with my time,” Caleb says.

It’s a relief to hear I’m not the only one who dodges parties like the plague.

Reid’s lips twitch. “All that’s missing is the slippers and the pipe before bed.”

Caleb doesn’t take his eyes off me. “The sooner people start seeing us together, the sooner girls can leave us alone to focus on what matters.”

“The championship,” I say.

He nods. “Practice at the rink usually draws a few girls. Some are fine. They’re dating other players, and they know the deal. Others sneak in or don’t seem to understand they’re a distraction. With you there, they’ll stop distracting me and us.”

He says it like people will buy our relationship. They won’t.

“No one is going to believe you’re interested in me,” I say.

It might work if it was just one of them, but three hot hockey players dating me ?

“Maybe not at first.” Javier stands, and I jump when he gently nudges me aside so I’m not blocking the closet. “May I?”

Confused, I nod, and he opens my closet and leans in. “She needs more clothes.”

“What?”

He pulls his head out to look at me. “These are fine for class, but we need your ex to take one look at you and forget how to use his words.”

“An outfit like that doesn’t exist.” The words slip out before I can silence them.

He looks down at me for the longest moment, and his gaze softens. “It’s not about the clothes… it’s about the woman.”

I blink at him, surprised. “I don’t understand.”

“You will.” He nods firmly.

“We’re going shopping tomorrow morning. Nine o’clock. Reid and I will meet you outside your dorm. If you have any plans in the afternoon, cancel them. We’re going to be busy all day.”

I mentally cancel my plans to cry under my covers.

“So you’re going to put me in short skirts and low-cut tops,” I say, with a bite to my voice.

Why should my clothes be the thing that convinces Marc he made a mistake cheating on me instead of him realizing he did something wrong?

Why do I have to be the one who changes?

“What do you want?” Caleb asks before Javier can respond.

I shake my head. “What do you mean?”

“What do you want? To make him jealous? To get back together with him? Humiliation only? What exactly do you want to get out of this?”