Fake Skating(75)

He swallowed again and his jawbone tightened. “Okay.”

He turned around, and for some reason I felt no less… unnervedlooking at his back. It was ridged and hard, like his skin was stretched tight over those lean muscles. I held the patch in my left hand and raised the fingers of my right hand to his shoulder. I gently set my fingertips on his skin, my heart beating in my ears as my fingers slid over his shoulder blade.

“Right here?” I asked in what came out as a whisper.

“A little higher,” he said, and everything between us was somehow in slow motion all of a sudden. My fingers brushed his skin, slowly, and I swear I felt him shiver under my touch as I traced higher.

“Here?” I managed to croak.

“Yeah,” he said.

I peeled the backing off the patch and stuck it to his shoulder, using my palm in slow circles to gently press it to his skin.

“You’re fine,” he said in a gravelly voice. “You’re not going to hurt me.”

“Good,” I said, my voice more a breath than a sound as my palm smoothed over the patch. “Turn around so I can get the front with Icy Hot.”

He obeyed, his dark eyes full of questions as he looked down at me, but he didn’t say a word.

I placed the cream onto the right side of his collarbone, set down the tube, then lifted my fingers to his shoulder.

“Is this all right?” I asked, noticing my hands were shaking just the tiniest bit as I put them on his body. I had no idea what I was doing anymore, I only knew that I was under the influence of somethingas I started rubbing the slippery lotion over his skin.

“Yeah, but you don’t have to do this,” he said, his jaw flexing and unflexing. It felt like something huge was hovering between us, something thick and heavy that stole the air from the room.

I didn’t know what it was, but breathing was suddenly difficult.

“I—I want to,” I managed, feeling like I couldn’t think when he looked at me like that. I wasn’t even sure my lips were moving when I said, “I don’t like when you’re in pain.”

He raised his left hand and cupped my cheek, his eyes impossible to read as those big fingers grazed my skin. I wasn’t sure how, but the moment felt more intimate than the kiss that hadn’t left my mind since last night.

His gaze locked with mine, both of us breathing harder as he leaned in, inching closer—

“Is someone in here?” The door handle jiggled as someone said through the crack, “Is this open?”

“Y-yes,” I yelled, looking up at Alec while jumping away from him, quickly wiping my fingers on my skirt, my heart about to explode in my chest. “I’ll be out in one minute!” I yelled.

Oh God, oh God, oh God.

He was watching me, his expression unreadable, and I wished I knew what he’d been about to do. I bent down and quickly picked up his shirt, then helped him slide his arms into it before gathering my bags off the floor while he buttoned.

“Okay, we’re good,” he said, and when I turned around, he was all put together again.

But he was still looking at me in that way, the way that I couldn’t figure out.

What the hell just happened?





CHAPTER THIRTY Alec




Everything changed after that date. Not only between us, but about us.

And it was confusing as hell.

At school, everyone suddenly recognized us as a couple. Dani thought it was because of the Instagram account, but no one seemed surprised to see us together anymore and everybody accepted it at face value.

Which was great.

In addition to that, the team was on fire at every practice. All of a sudden, everyonewas playing at another level, and the general superstitious consensus was that it had something to do with Dani being my good-luck charm. It was asinine, the way we were all so superstitious, but even I bought into it a little bit.

Because our game had been elevated to the nth degree ever since Dani and I started “dating.”

As if that weren’t all fucking great enough, things were moving in the right direction on the reputation front too.

The Tribune ran an article on me and my family, and as much as I hated that it was necessary, my parents were an open book about everything and it made for a fantastic feel-good story. And I knew Dani’s and my PR work was paying off when the interviewer actually asked me about my dating life.

“I know you’re only in high school, but rumor has it that Zeus, the guy who’s been a little bit of a loose cannon, has been straightening his ways and focusing on other things. Do you want to comment on that?”

“I know what you’re getting at,” I joked. “All I’ll say is that I reconnected with a childhood friend who is ten times better than me in every way. She inspires me to be more.”

And that wasn’t a joke, to be honest. It felt… true.

And I liked seeing Dani coming out of her shell. I noticed her dressing less… monochrome and oversized, and she gave an informative speech in Sykes’s class and didn’t even look like she was going to faint.

The only thing that wasn’t great (aside from my shoulder, which was definitely not fucking great and probably getting worse by the day) was that it felt like my head was constantly spinning when it came to her.

Because it was all pretend, right? Everything between us was supposed to be pretend, but more and more it felt, well… not pretend.