Fake Skating(81)

But when I went up to check on her, she was off the phone and talking to Cassie and Lil in the empty kitchen.

I swear to God I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I was stunned into silence as soon as I stepped into the foyer.

“So I don’t know,” Dani said, sounding like she wanted to cry. “Like, I don’t want to move again, but maybe I should go, y’know?”

“No way,” Cassie said. “You can’t leave; it’s your senior year.”

“I mean, I probably won’t,” she said, “but there only a few months left and I just got here. A school’s a school at this point, right?”

I went back downstairs because I wasn’t some asshole who was going to creep in a corner, listening to conversations that weren’t meant for me. But I was confused as hell, wondering what her dad was up to now.

She might move again? Already?

I pretended to pay attention to the guys and the game, but every part of me was in a holding pattern as I waited for her. I needed to know what was going on.

How could he even consider doing this to her again?

She had to be freaking the fuck out.

But when she came back a few minutes later, she smiled like nothing had happened.

And she lied to me.

“Everything okay with your dad?” I asked, wanting to ditch the party so we could figure everything out.

She nodded and rolled her eyes. “He needed my Social Security number for Air Force stuff and couldn’t remember it.”

And…?

I waited, but she didn’t say anything else.

“That was it?” I asked. “At five a.m.?”

She nodded again. “Typical Dad, too impatient to wait. So what’d I miss?”

You’re seriously not going to tell me?

“Vin did a back handspring and broke the card table,” I said, but my mind was running, because what the fuck?

She wasn’t going to tell me that she might be leaving?

I mean, she didn’t owe me shit, right? This was just a fake relationship, so she didn’t have to trust me with everything going on in her life. That was what people in actual relationships did, and I needed to get my head right.

She’d tell me if she wanted to tell me, and hopefully this was just the colonel being his normal asshole self.

It was fine that she was keeping it to herself.

But when I heard her talking to Cass and Lillie over by the keg a little later,I got a whole lot less understanding.

Because Lillie asked her about us, about the history of us.

“So you guys never dated or anything before now? It was strictly platonic?”

“Yes and no,” I heard her say, but I refused to look. “We were always just friends, but he was my first kiss.”

I was a big fan of the way her voice sounded when she said that, like it’d meant something warm-and-fucking-fuzzy to her, because, well, hard same. I focused on the hockey game playing on the TV as intently as I could—quit eavesdropping, you pathetic fuck—but then I felt gut-punched when I heard her giggle and say the most fucking ridiculous thing I’d ever heard.

“But we’re together now, which is surreal because I thought I was still mad at him for what he did back in the day,” she said with a laugh. “But how can I hold a grudge when he looks so good in a hockey jersey?”

What?

What the fucking fuck?

She was still mad at me for what I did?

Was she serious right now?

What the hell did I do, exactly?

I wanted to confront her, to finally have that conversation, because we probably needed to discuss our “back in the day.”

But when I casually glanced her way a few minutes later, she gave me a conspiratorial grin and a motherfucking wink.

It was the smile of my partner in crime.

My fellow participant in the fake dating games.

She appeared to be having a blast, rewriting history while playing our game.

So fuck it, I thought.

Doesn’t matter.

She could rewrite history and keep secrets all she wanted.

Hell, she wasn’t my girlfriend, and I needed to remember that.





CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE Dani




“Where’d you get that shirt, Goldilocks?” Alec asked, his eyes strolling over me as I leaned against his locker, waiting for him with Cassie.

“Your mom let me borrow it,” I said, wishing I could read his mind as he stopped in front of me. I’d snagged his hockey hoodie because I thought he’d like that, but his face was impossible to read at the moment.

Which was disappointing when he’d been soadorably flirty at Bryce’s party the other night. My stomach flipped over every time I thought about the way he’d pulled me against him during Dumb Drink Dares, the way he’d lowered his deep voice and teased me from the point-blank range of in his arms.

And on his freaking lap.

Talk about toe-curling.

I was pretty sure he’d assumed my behavior toward him at the party was drink-related, but as someone not fond of giving up control in social situations, I knew the Diet Pepsi I’d been chugging all night said otherwise.

“It looks good on you,” he said, but something was missing in the way he said it.

What is with him?

“Why, thank you,” I replied, batting my eyelashes in an attempt to be light while my stomach got heavy.