CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Alec
“So I feel like this is going well, don’t you?” she asked. Her voice was soft, and I knew she was trying to break the tension.
I nodded as I drove because I wasn’t really sure what to say.
Yeah, it went really well at the team dinner—except when my dad damn near collapsed in pain!—and Coach seemed happy to see us together. Our fake relationship was going great at school, too, except for the fact that I kept getting distracted by her.
Logically, I knew it wasn’t a thing, that weweren’t a thing, but when it was just the two of us, I kept fucking forgetting.
None of this is real.
Which was why I appreciated the wake-up call tonight. The gut-wrenching dose of reality that hit me when my dad’s knee buckled was exactly what I needed. Seeing him like that was an instant reminder of one of the worst times of my life, when my friend chose not to be with me but to instead take my fucking
nemesis—that twat—to our spot.
His presence helped ground me.
“Yeah, it was good,” I said.
“Are you okay?” she asked, holding her hands in front of the heating vents.
“With your dad, I mean. I didn’t know…”
“Just tired,” I said, which absolutely wasn’t a lie, but I also didn’t want to talk about my dad. Not with her. Whenever he sat for too long, pain shot up his leg.
It happened often, but that didn’t make it any better.
“So do you have trouble sleeping the night before a game?” she asked, clearly avoiding the subject of my dad. “I’ve never played any sport, but it seems like since you’re decent at hockey, it might be a little stressful.”
“No more than any other night,” I said.
“What does that mean—you don’t sleep well?” she asked.
“You’re not my real girlfriend, Collins—you don’t need to worry about how many hours of sleep I’m getting, okay?”
It came out a little harsher than I’d intended, but I needed to create a little distance.
Her eyebrows went together and I knew she felt that one.
“I was just asking,” she said.
I pulled into her driveway, and when I opened my door to get out, she said, “You don’t have to walk me to the door. No one is around.”
“It’s dark, so I’m walking you to the door,” I said, feeling like an ass. But when I got to her side of the car, I saw that fucking Benji Worthington was out on his porch with a vape pen in his mouth.
Forever a douche.
“Fucking Worthington,” I muttered under my breath.
“Why do you guys hate each other?” she asked quietly as she climbed out of the car, looking in Benji’s direction. “I mean, we never liked him because he was a tool, but obviously things got worse.”
“Yeah, he’s an asshole.”
“Oh, well, that explains everything,” she said sarcastically.
I sighed. “He’s just my enemy and I fucking hate him, okay?”
“Your enemy?” she repeated in a tone that told me she thought I was being dramatic.
“Okay, so maybe not my enemy, but he’s a dick weasel who gossips like an old church lady,” I said, wanting to punch him just for sitting there. “I guarantee you he’s the one who spread the bong picture.”
“Seriously?” She glanced toward Worthington’s house.
“Oh yeah. He plays for St. John’s Academy—”
“The ones who beat you in state last year?” she interrupted with a gasp.
“I can’t believe you know that,” I said.
“I can’t believe you scored twice in that game,” she said, closing the car door.
“Apparently that’s impressive for a defender.”
“Look at you, doing all your research,” I said, looking down at her mouth.
She smiled up at me, and it was insane how badly I wanted to kiss her.
Wait.
What? Where is this feeling coming from?
It was insane and plain fucking stupid.
Get it together.
“He’s watching us now,” she said quietly, “so I’m going to laugh like you’re hilarious and charming.”
She let out a little giggle and, yeah—he noticed us.
His attention was all ours, but he had no idea we’d spotted him.
“Holy shit, that’s it,” I said, my mind spinning. “With the way he gossips— we should totally kiss.”
“What?” she said loudly, with a laugh, like she thought I was kidding.
But I glanced over her head and could tell Benji was staring, completely psychotically watching us, and I wasn’t above begging.
Because if I could use him to broadcast this andmake him jealous, that was a huge fucking win.
“Please let me kiss you please let me kiss you please let me kiss you please let me kiss you, Dani,” I muttered, looking into her eyes and groveling. “I just hate that fucker so much and this is going to kill him please fucking let me kiss y—”
“Okay,” she quietly interrupted.
I hadn’t realized how sure I was that she was going to say no until she said okay.
“What?” I couldn’t believe I’d heard her right. I looked down at her upturned face and said, “Really?”
“If you think it’s going to get back to the right people,” she said, her voice a near whisper as she leaned a little closer so Benji couldn’t hear us, “then why not? We did it before just for fun, so why not do it now for public-relations
purposes?”
Just for fun, my ass.
“Are you sure?” No matter how I felt about her now, I’d never want to pressure her into doing something she didn’t want to do.
Even though it was suddenly the only thing I’d ever wanted to do.
So much for keeping it together.
“I’m sure,” she whispered, nodding. “Lay it on me, Zeus.”
It was the shitty little twinkle in her eye that made my knees weak. And the way she lifted her chin and tilted her head the tiniest bit, like she was getting ready, dear God. Suddenly my heart was pounding and my breath was frozen in my lungs and the smell of her perfume—apple juice and flowers—was jamming up my senses, making it impossible to breathe normally.
Because there she stood, in the dark beside my car, looking up at me exactlythe way I’d always wanted her to.
Lay it on me, Zeus.
I forgot all about Benji when I watched my ngers slide into her hair as if they worked independently from my brain. I held her in place, the curls soft against my hands, and as I lowered my mouth, one word was transmitted through to
every corner of my mind like a chant.
Dani’s Dani’s Dani’s Dani’s The blond hair wrapped around my knuckles, the unsteady breath that hovered in a cloud between us, the long eyelashes uttering closed—the reality that they all belonged to herhit me like a blow, like a punch that knocked me all
the way down.
This was Dani, holy shit.
I felt her lips underneath mine—sweet cherry lip gloss, oh God—and it was like being struck by lightning. I felt a jolt in every nerve ending in my body when she opened for me, and I was electried when her ngers sted in the front of my coat and her tongue— “What the fuck is going on out here?”
Dani jumped away from me, and I felt like I was going to die when I opened my eyes and saw Mick Fucking Boche standing on the porch, glaring at me.
Oh shit.
He was wearing all black, like an angel of death, and his big arm was extended, his nger pointed directly at me. “Get your ass inside. Now.”
Shit, shit, shit.
Dani turned and started for the porch, but Mick said, “I mean you,
Barczewski!”
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Yes, sir,” I said, my heart beating so fast that it was possible I was going to faint from the fear like a little old lady. I followed Dani up the path to the porch and into her grandpa’s house, where I was surely about to be destroyed.
But as I went inside, I realized that the bright side of my death was that Benji was being eaten alive by jealousy at that very moment. He’d always been into Dani, so it was just *chef’s kiss* that he’d had a front-row seat to me winning.
Take that, jackass.
He may have been too jealous to give me props, but having witnessed Mick Boche catching me with his granddaughter and hollering at me to come into his house?
Ben was probably already running inside to share the info.
Dani said, “It’s not Alec’s—”
“I don’t wanna hear it,” Mick bellowed, cutting her o. “You need to go
upstairs so I can talk to him.”
“What?” she gasped in disbelief.
He pointed toward the staircase that led upstairs. “You heard what I said—
go.”
“You can’t—”
“I can and I will—and I know what you’re thinking, Danigirl. You’re thinking I’m not your dad and I can’t do this. But you’re wrong—I can do this.
I’m the one who’s here, I’m the one who’s around, and I’m the one who gives a shit. Go upstairs and I’ll talk to you later.”
She blinked fast, like she couldn’t believe what he was saying, and then she mouthed the word sorry to me before she turned and went up the staircase.
Traitor.
“Sit down,” he barked, gesturing toward the kitchen table.
I obediently dropped into a chair, grateful for the opportunity to sit because my legs felt like they might give out and the odds were good he wasn’t going to punch me in the face if I was sitting at his kitchen table, right?
“From what I know, you’re not a bad kid.” Mick crossed his arms over his chest and glared down at me. “But did you seriously think you could date Dani for a minute and then be all over her in my own fucking driveway? Are you kidding me right now?”
“I—”
“Were you trying to prove some kind of point, like you’re a tough guy who’s not afraid to disrespect Boche’s granddaughter right in his own goddamn yard?”
“Oh my God, no,” I said. “And we’d barely even—”
“Really.” He didn’t believe me. “You weren’t remotely aware of the fact that I
might look out a window?”
“No,”I insisted, shaking my head.
“Really.”
“No,” I said, even louder. “Respectfully, I wasn’t thinking of you at all. I kissed Dani because I really like her and then I forgot about everything, especially where I was. This had nothing to do with you.”
“So Dani was the only one you were thinking of when you decided to kiss her.”
Is it hot in here?I tugged at the scarf around my neckand said, “Yes. I mean, I was kind of hoping Worthington saw because I hate that guy, but yeah—it was all about Dani.”
“I hate that little shit too. Did you know he has a Maserati?”
What is happening right now?
“Yeah,” I said, shaking my head. “He had a Cayenne last year but drove it into a light pole.”
“Figures,” Mick said in disgust. “Fuckin’ idiot.”
“Right?” I agreed.
“Listen—I’m going to be honest with you,” he said, tilting his head and looking at me like I was a bug. “I don’t like you dating her.”
“You don’t.” I didn’t know why, but that mattered to me. Even though it was a fake relationship, there was something about knowing someone you respected thought you were a piece of shit that felt… well, really shitty.
“No, I don’t. Not at all. Dani and her mom have spent the past seventeen years with a manipulative little pecker. I look at her and I don’t even see a spark of the kid I used to know.”
I don’t know what I’d expected, but it wasn’t this. Mick was looking out the window, sounding more like he was talking to himself than me as he said, “Every once in a while she gives me sass and I wanna fucking cheer because it’s so good
to see, but I know she doesn’t want that. And she shouldn’t want that, because —well, it doesn’t matter, but she’s right to be mad at me, but my point is that I want her to gure out who she is and nd her voice without some guy in her way.”
“I—I don’t want to be in her way,” I said, rolling my eyes at myself when my voice cracked like I was a nervous middle schooler. “I want the same thing you do, I promise. And I hate the colonel too.”
“You do?” Mick said, looking surprised.
“God, yes, but it doesn’t matter because Dani still worships him,” I said, realizing the second the words left my mouth that that was probably an overshare.
Dani would probably be super pissed if she overheard me saying that.
“I know,” he said with a sigh. “She won’t hear a single critical word about him, but he’s her dad, so I have to respect that.”
“Even after he called her the other night and made her so upset that I found her crying in the locker room, she still defended him.”
“Did she say what he did? To make her cry?”
I shook my head. “No, but I didn’t really have a chance to talk to her.”
He grunted and went back to looking at me like he was trying to gure out where he was going to bury my body after he killed me.
So I said, “Mr. Boche, I don’t want to be on your bad side. I just really like your granddaughter, that’s all.”
“Well, you’re allowed to like her,” he said, crossing his arms. “Just knock o the handsy shit and let her breathe.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding, because odds were good there wasn’t going to be any more handsy shit regardless. I still wasn’t sure why she’d agreed to let me kiss her in the rst place, but I was positive that after this, I wasn’t going to get the chance to nish what we’d barely started.
“By the way, what are you doing about that shoulder?” he asked.
“What?” I said it a little too loudly, but he was looking at me like he knew everything, and there was no way that he could.
“I see the way you drop it when you’re tired, the way you rub it sometimes when you’re talking. Your shoulder’s fucked up, isn’t it?”
His words made my blood run cold, because what the fuck was that? I drop my shoulder when I’m tired?
Was this something people other than Mick might’ve noticed? Shit, had scouts noticed?
Shit, shit, shit.I couldn’t let anyone think I was injured.
“No,” I said, shaking my head and making a face like he was nuts. “Bruised as hell from when I got checked last week, but I’m—”
“Okay, okay,” he interrupted, shaking his head. “Spare me the bullshit—it’s your body, not mine. How are you feeling about the game tomorrow?”
I shrugged because this was all over the place and also, I never knew how to answer that question. I always felt like we were going to win, even when we lost.
“We’re going to win,” I said.
“Yeah, probably,” he agreed, then pointed his thumb at the door. “Go home now.”
I nearly leapt out of the chair because I was so damn happy to be leaving without being skinned rst. If I could’ve sprinted to the door and out to my car, I would’ve.
But when I got to the door, I stopped and looked back, because I felt like I
had to say something. “Mr. Boche?”
“Mick,” he corrected.
Mick?
I said, “Thanks, uh, thanks for not killing me.”
“No problem,” he said, and I swear to God he sort of smiled. “If you accidentally tap the Maserati next door with that piece of shit you drive, by the way, I didn’t see a damn thing.”
“Noted,” I said, and then I left, getting the hell out of Dodge.
When I nally looked at my phone after getting home, I had multiple texts
from Dani.
Dani: Are you okay?
Dani: I’m so sorry.
Dani: What did he say?
Dani: Please send me proof of life.
I took a sele, then sent: I’m fine and he was actually pretty cool. He just wanted to make sure I wasn’t being a dick to you.
I thought about what he’d said about her. It was interesting, the way she always assumed he was an old jerk when in all actuality, it seemed like he’d
missed her and was worried about her.
Like he was trying to help her.
I texted: This might sound crazy, but I think he’s trying to fix things with you.
Dani: How is he doing that exactly? By grunting a lot in my presence?
I could see how she could miss it. The old guy was shit at communicating.
But as much as I wanted to help Mick out a bit, I needed to cover the kiss
immediately.
I texted: So… subject change.
Dani: Yes…?
Me: About that other thing that happened in your driveway.
Dani: What other thing?
Okay, so she clearly didn’t want to discuss it. And yet all I could do was think
about it.
Me: Fair enough. See you tomorrow.
She didn’t respond, but just as I plugged my phone into the charger and switched o the lamp, my phone buzzed.
Dani: My grandpa just came into my room and told me to tell you to ice the shoulder before you go to bed, even if you’re too tired.
I stared at the message in disbelief. I wasn’t sure why it made my throat feel a little tight, and I had no fucking idea why it made me feel a thousand times more
exhausted.
I texted: Tell him thanks.
And then I went downstairs and got some ice.
