Fake Skating(46)

“How would it b—”

“Because the girl in a breakup always gets the bad rap, okay?” I snapped, hating the truth of it. “You’re offering me this social protection as a new person, where I get to go everywhere and be part of your magical friend group, blah blah blah, but what happens if you decide to fake dump me in a few weeks and I haven’t had a chance to make my own friends yet? Then your friends can start trashing me, and it might end up being worse on my end than if we’d never done it.”

“My friends aren’t assholes—they wouldn’t do that,” he said, brushing it off like I was ridiculous.

“Oh, they definitely would,” I insisted, knowing from experience just how quickly people could turn. “But the bottom line is I’m not going to do this unless I have your guarantee that it’s not over until I say it’s over.”

Could I sound like a bigger psycho?

“But.” His eyebrows were scrunched together. “What if one of us wants to go out with someone else?”

I knew this would be the problem. Zeus the party boy wasn’t going to accept the idea of potentially not being able to chase girls for the next few months.

“I know it’s not ideal, but it’s the only way.”

“We can’t just start and see how it goes?” he asked.

“This is the only option.”

“Not to play the devil’s advocate for you,” he said, sounding like he thought I was being ridiculous, “but how do you know I’m not going to agree to this and then dump your ass anyway in a month if you start annoying me?”

Nice.

“Because if you do that,” I said, digging deep for my badass bravery, “I’ll tell everyone—including my grandpa and every hockey dude he knows—that it was all a lie in order to help your image.”

“Whoa.” His head came around for a quick second, and I could tell I’d shocked him. “You’d seriously do that?”

“I mean, I wouldn’t want to,” I said with a shrug, feeling like the world’s biggest demanding jerk but knowing it was the only way.

“Mm-hmm,” he said, looking back at the road, and I wished I knew what he was thinking.

Are we doing this or not?

When we finally got to school and started walking toward the door, he still hadn’t said anything. And it was killing me. Did he agree to my demands?

But when he grabbed the handle to the front door, I got my answer.

“Let me ask you this,” he said quietly, looking over his shoulder to make sure no one was close. “Do you want to soft launch this thing or go hard?”

“So we’re doing it?” I asked, the cold wind sending a shiver up my spine.

“Yeah,” he said, those dark eyes on mine. “So how do you want to play it?”

I had no idea exactly what he was asking, because we were walking into a public school building—it wasn’t like “hard launch” could mean much, right?

“I guess that’s your call.”

“All right.” His jaw did a little flex thing as he looked at me, and then he pulled open the door and gestured for me to walk in front of him.

“So…?” I said quietly, glancing over at him as I walked through the door he was holding. “What do you want to do?”

“What I always want to do,” he said. “Go hard.”

I looked down when his hand grabbed mine, when he linked all five of his fingers in all five of mine. My eyes moved up to his face, and he was watching me like he was waiting for my next move. Somehow I sensed that if I didn’t like this, he would totally back off, and I didn’t know what to do.

Because something about him holding my hand scared me.

The school was already noisy, with everybody arriving and hanging out in the halls, and my heart started beating a little bit faster. What were people going to think? What was going to happen? Did I really want to do this?

The panic started rising again.

But then his fingers flexed, squeezing mine, and it felt like a reassurance.

I gave him a tiny nod, my wordless attempt at letting him know I was all in on going hard.

“Let’s do this, Collins,” he murmured, and then he started walking, pulling me alongside him. I nervously let him tug me along, hyperaware of people looking in our direction.

Because he was holding my hand like my boyfriend.

This was a statement.

And then—then he went harder.

“By the way,” he said, yanking me a little closer as we walked. It was playful—flirtatious, even—as he gave me a teasing look and said, “I like this coat. It’s cute.”

“You like this coat?” I asked, looking down at it.

“I do. It reminds me of the one you were wearing in your Utah Christmas photo.”

“The sheep jacket from third grade, are you kidding?” I asked around a laugh. “I forgot all about that. I loved that coat.”

“It’s got the same kind of fluffiness,” he said, releasing my hand long enough to grab my sleeve and sort of yank me in his direction. “But what’s really ridiculous is that scarf.” He nodded his head toward the huge knit scarf around my neck. “You dress like you’re in Antarctica.”

“Because it feels like Antarctica here,” I said. “I think I’ve been frozen since the second we rolled into town.”