CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Alec
Where the hell is she?
I waited for her in the Rainforest Cafe, dreading our “date.”
It’d been her idea to schedule a fake date at the mall, where anyone and everyone could see us, and on paper it was a solid idea. We could get food and do something datey, all in one place, snapping a few pictures for social media before calling it good.
But that kiss was destroying my ability to think straight.
How could a fucking split-second kiss be making me so damn crazy?
Yes, it had been the result of a dare and we’d said it was all part of the act and blah blah blah, but if I was being honest, the minute her lips touched mine, I forgot who I was, where I was, and who was fake dating who.
I only knew I wanted more.
And I swear to God it seemed like she felt the same way.
Things between us almost felt too good to be an act.
Which made one thought about Dani keep creeping into my mind, dangerous but undeniable.
She’d let me down during the worst time of my life. That one motherfucking day that started with disappointment and ended with me at the police station.
“Hey, you,” I heard, and when I looked up, it felt like something was squeezing my chest.
No, it felt like someone had punched me in the chest.
She was so pretty, holy shit.
I swallowed and tried to be cool, but that little skirt showed o amazing legs, and the dark blue of her sweater seemed to amp the pink of her cheeks, and had her hair always sort of glittered when she stood underneath recessed lighting?
She gave me a nervous smile, like she wanted me to like the way she looked,
and it made me feel weak.
Get it together, dumbass.
“Collins,” I said as she sat down on the chair across from me. “Can I tell you that you look hot without you punching me or getting pissed?”
“I’ll allow it,” she said with a little smirk. “And you look really, really nice,
Alec. Like a grown-up version of Zeus.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Oh, someone doesn’t like changing out of his sweats,” she teased in a quiet voice, picking up the menu that was sitting on the table in front of her.
“If we were really dating,” I said, “would you actually want me to wear this
when I took you out?”
What the hell is that?
I wasn’t sure why I wanted to know, but I did.
“I mean, you look good like this,” she said with a breathy giggle, like she was embarrassed. “But if we were really dating, I wouldn’t care what you wore.”
“Can I get you two some drinks?”
Dani looked at the server with an appreciative smile, like she felt rescued
from… something.
Yeah, same.
We both ordered Cokes and then I asked the waitress, “Would you mind taking a picture of us?”
“Of course not,” she said, taking my phone and stepping back. I moved my chair over and put my arm around Dani, the smell of her perfume and the way I could feel her hair on the side of my neck making me a little nuts.
“Say cheese,” the server said, but I was too hypnotized by apple juice and owers to say anything at all. Before I could grab my phone, Dani took it and got busy making a post.
She’d been the one posting photos of us to my newly-created-by-her public social media accounts.
“Okay, what do you think?” Dani asked, holding out the phone.
The picture was great. I looked like I was trying with the Ralph Lauren shirt —and my hair was on point—but Dani was stunning. We were absolutely
pulling o two good kids on a date, which was what we were going for.
But the caption was what nailed it.
Dinner at the Rainforest Cafe because she likes the sound of thunderstorms, then book shopping at B&N. #perfectdate
She was fucking goodat this game of pretend.
“Wait,” I said, looking at my prole. “How do I have hundreds of followers already?”
“I followed Cassie and a couple guys from the team, so since you’re you,” she said with an eye roll that for once didn’t feel like judgment, “everyone wants to be your friend.”
“You really think I’m a douche now, don’t you?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I did at rst, especially when I was ‘some chick’ you knocked over with your bag, but now I think the Zeus hype happens because you’re pretty decent at hockey and there’s not a lot you can do about it.”
“Wow, that feels like a raging compliment coming from you,” I said.
“I’m not a jerk,” she said defensively. “You’ve just changed a lot since we were kids, and it caught me o guard.”
“Trust me, so have you,” I said, wondering if she was still ticklish. I used to be able to drop her to the oor with just a touch on the back of her neck. “You came back as this quiet, shy, uptight girl, but every once in a while I see the Dani I used to know, so I literally can’t gure you out.”
“Well, that’s good, because I don’t like to be gured out,” she said teasingly, and I wished I didn’t know that her lip gloss tasted like cherries.
Suddenly I’ve got a killer sweet tooth.
The server came back and took our food orders, and after she left, I heard myself say, “So tell me everything that’s happened since the last time I saw you.”
She was picking up her drink, and her hand froze halfway to her mouth when she heard my question. “That’s, uh, a lot of time.”
“Yep,” I said, suddenly wanting to know everything.
“Well,” she said, shrugging. “Not long after we were here for my grandma’s funeral we moved to Texas, which I hated.”
“Why did you hate it?” I asked.
As much as I didn’t want to bring up trauma, I wanted to hear about the years that sucked. For some reason, I wanted her to want to tell me about them.
“I don’t really feel like getting into the mess of it,” she said. “But let’s just say when you’re an Air Force kid, sometimes you move to schools that are ne and sometimes you move to schools that are not ne. Like, not necessarily the school itself is bad, but, like, maybe just a group of people suck, right?”
“Right,” I agreed, glad I didn’t actually have any personal experience with this.
Her voice was quiet, and she looked down at her hands for a minute before her eyes came back to mine. “So my middle school in Texas wasn’t ne. I’d like to say they were all terrible people because it makes me feel better, but the truth is that I didn’t really make friends at that school. I just know there were a few girls who decided they didn’t like me, which made my experience there kind of not great.”
“Bitches,” I said, really feeling that. Really fucking hating whoever made her face look the way it looked right now.
“Whatever, it’s all part of growing up; at least that’s what my dad always told me,” she said with a fake smile and a shrug.
“What’d your mom say?” I asked.
“Oh, my mom called the principal and the mean girls’ mothers and she raged,” Dani said, smiling. “So eventually I stopped telling her, because of
coursethat made it worse.”
“Oh shit,” I said.
“Oh shit, indeed.”
“Where’d you go after that? I feel like my mom said it was, like, North Dakota…?”
“Yeah, we moved to Minot, and after that we moved to Germany, and now
we’re here.”
“Did you like Germany?” I asked.
“I mean, I loved the country,” she said. “If I’d been an adult who could just freely explore Germany whenever I wanted, it would’ve been great, but as a high school kid living on an American Air Force base that just happened to be in
Germany, I didn’t love it. My mom was really unhappy there, because it was when things got bad with my dad, and it just felt like we were sort of isolated.”
“I’m sorry about your parents, by the way,” I said.
“Are you?” she asked with a funny grin. “You never liked my dad.”
“But I love your mom and hate the thought of her being sad,” I said. “Did you know it was coming?”
“Yes and no,” she said. “I knew my parents were ghting more than they ever had—well, ghting with them was just passive aggression and snapping—but I knew my mom was unhappier than I’d ever seen her. Still, though, I just assumed that was who they were together. I didn’t actually envision them coming to an end.”
“I’m sorry for bringing this up—are you okay about it?”
“Yeah,” she said, shrugging. “Mom’s happier now, but I also still feel bad for Dad and miss him. Even if he can be a jerk sometimes. It doesn’t make any sense, right?”
“It does, though,” I said, surprised I’d never considered that that was what it’d feel like in a divorce. “I can’t imagine not seeing my parents every day, even if they were being assholes. At the end of the day, he’s still your dad.”
She just nodded in response, before saying, “By the way, your date conversation is a real downer.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, and as she looked at me with sad brown eyes, the thought that it might be time to confront the past between us suddenly hit me in the gut.
Knowing just a fraction of what she’d been going through made me want to understand what really happened back then.
But just as I was about to form the words, something stopped me.
Why did it still feel so raw? After all these years?
“So tell me about your life in the time we’ve been apart,” she said. “Unless you don’t want to talk about it. The accident sounds like it was a nightmare. I’m so sorry—I don’t think I ever said that.”
Here was my chance. Get it all out in the air. She’d opened the door; all I had to do was step through it. But… “Yeah, actually, I don’t really want to talk about that,” I said. “The bottom line is that Big John is a fucking force of nature and overcame it all.”
“Thank God,” she said, shaking her head. “So let’s talk about hockey, then.
The last time I saw you, either you weren’t playing hockey yet or you never talked about it during the summer months when I was here. So how did you go from that to this?”
My chest loosened, and I was thankful for the change in topic. “I’ve played hockey since I was four,” I said, “but I sucked until eighth grade. Then I grew like a foot and a half, and I don’t know if my body was always waiting for me to get bigger or something, but all of a sudden I was coordinated. And faster than
everybody else.”
“And the rest is history?” she asked.
“Pretty much,” I said, because it’d almost felt that simple.
She had a million questions about hockey, which I fucking loved, and I was laughing my ass o when she pulled out her phone and proceeded to take notes —crease is half circle in front of goal—so she could “keep it all straight.”
“Have I told you that you have nice legs, Collins?” I asked as we walked out of the restaurant, because, according to Dani, we still had some book shopping to do.
“I don’t think you have,” she said, biting down on that gorgeous fucking lower lip like she was trying not to smile.
“Am I allowed?” I asked as I reached for her hand.
She had a little crinkle in her forehead when I asked that, which served as the perfect reminder.
“You know,” I said with a shrug. “Public space and all. A lot of people from school hang out here.”
“Okay, yeah,” she said, her smile relaxed as she looked at me out of the corner
of her eye.
And suddenly, I felt daring. Hungry.
“Then let me just say you have amazing legs.”
Her eyebrow lifted. Had I crossed a line?
Could I help it anymore?
But I was saved by a group of girls from my calc class who stepped o the escalator that very second. Yes. I nodded in their direction so Dani could see them.
“Showtime,” I said, lowering my voice and yanking her a little closer. “Am I also allowed to say you have a great ass?”
“No,” she said, but a shy smile curved her lips and her cheeks went pink.
God, what is happening to me? I needed to take a step back.
“Fine, ne,” I said, holding up my free hand in a gesture of innocence. “I won’t tell you that you have an amazing ass that I steal peeks at all the fucking time.”
“Stop,” she said, still smiling, and suddenly it didn’t matter.
It didn’t matter that we were pretending, because the honest-to-God truth was that I was on the best date I’d ever had in my entire life.
I was so screwed.
