Falling: A Fake Dating College Hockey Romance (North University Book 1)
Falling: Chapter 9

“So, you’ll be my personal trainer and I get to be your boyfriend?”

“Finally. Now you’re getting it.” I smile, my cheeks starting to hurt with the number of times I’ve smiled since I’ve asked her to repeat herself to me. She points a finger at me, reiterating, “Fake boyfriend.”

I almost scoff at that. Some girls would die to have the chance to be my real girlfriend. Not like that’s anything I’m interested in. I don’t do relationships, and I don’t sleep around as much as everyone thinks I do. Just because I wear a jersey and a lot of my teammates decide to be assholes, doesn’t mean I’m one. I’ve always kept a clean record, and I don’t let any girl drag me into shit that I don’t need to be involved in. It’s one of the reasons I was made team captain. That, and my stats are some of the best this school has seen in years.

From what I’ve gathered, Wren wants to make everyone believe that we’re dating so they will give her and the skating team the attention they need to get more funding and attend the winter showcase. In return, she’s going to help train more, reshape my diet plan, and basically become my personal trainer.

This could help her a lot with this ice queen facade she’s trying to pull off. She acts like she can’t stand me, huffing and rolling her eyes whenever I’m near, but I know that deep down, there’s a part of her that enjoys my company.

I don’t blame her.

I’m irresistible. And the second people replace out I’m taken, her popularity across North is going to skyrocket. I’d be doing her a huge favor, but I think I might be getting the better half of it than she is.

Since I met her at the party, no one has made me want to get to know her more than she does. The fact that she makes me work for all these little pieces of information about her only drives me closer to her. It makes me want to spend all my time around her, getting to know her, and figuring out why she is the way she is.

As if she can tell I’m thinking about her, she slaps me on my arm. “Hey, loverboy. Don’t start dreaming up some magical fantasy where we start dating for real. That’s not going to happen. Neither of us is in the position to even think about that, alright? You’re just hyper-fixating on me to avoid fixing your problems.”

I narrow my eyes. “Hyper-fixation is an insult to how I feel about you.”

“Really? Can you please provide me with a more accurate assessment?”

“I’m fucking obsessed with you, Wren,” I say. There’s no other way to describe it. Not having hockey to focus on has severely messed me up mentally. It’s not given me something to work for or work toward. Trying to get motivation is like trying to replace water in a drought. The only thing that feels worth thinking about that isn’t my inability to play or my grief is her. Sometimes, it feels like she’s the only thing I can think about that makes me breathe.

“See, hyper-fixation,” she says, gesturing to me.

“Obsession,” I correct. I pull out my signature grin, thinking she’d smile too, but she doesn’t. She slips her bag over her shoulder and stands. “Hey, where are you going?”

“This clearly isn’t going to work. It was a stupid idea,” she huffs. She tries to walk past me, but I circle my fingers around her wrist, pulling her back to me. She gasps at the contact, her eyes flickering to mine.

“Says who?”

“Says me.”

“Don’t I get a say in this?” I ask. Her teeth sink into her bottom lip as she clearly tries to mentally argue with herself about doing this. I swipe my thumb against her skin, and she sighs. “I want to help you, Wren. I swear.”

“You’ve got to take this seriously,” she whispers.

“I am,” I say, “I will. Let’s just talk about it.”

“We need to make some ground rules.”

I nod. “Okay. What else?”

“You can’t tell anybody we talked about this and what we’re considering doing,” she says, her tone sharp and authoritative.

“Okay. Are you going to sit down so we can talk some more, or are you just going to stand?”

She rolls her eyes. “I’ve got to go and—” Her phone vibrates in her bag, and she fishes it out, groaning when she sees the caller ID.

“Is it your nightmare ex-boyfriend?”

I don’t know why I ask. For all she knows, I don’t know anything about Augustus, but after all the boyfriend talk, I’m curious. I don’t know why they broke up, but from what I found out, they were dating for years. He’s a fucking fool for letting her go. If I had Wren Hackerly for real, she wouldn’t spend a second doubting if I really cared about her. I’d worship the ground she walks on. I already do.

Her body stills at my question. “What do you know about Augustus?”

“Nothing. I just know you two broke up.”

Her shoulders drop. “Right.”

“What? What was that? Why’d you say his name like we’re talking about Voldemort?” I quiz, searching her features. Her walls are back up again, her green eyes growing darker. Anger unfurls in my stomach, and my fists grip on to the arm of the chair. “What the fuck did he do to you?”

“Nothing, Jesus. There’s no need for you to go all caveman on him,” she says, patting my shoulder, but it doesn’t help me relax. She could just be making excuses for him. “Kennedy’s got in my head about the whole social media thing. Pages like NoCrumbs spread some shit about me and Augustus. Just…” She takes a deep breath. “Just don’t believe everything you read, okay?”

“You’re not secretly a murderer, are you?”

“If I were secretly a murderer, you would have been dead already.” I hold my hands up in surrender, and she laughs. “It’s just my mom. I’m going to meet her and get some older and wiser advice about life. You know, the usual.”

“I bet Hacks gives the best advice,” I say.

She flashes me a sarcastic smile. “The best.”

“We’ll talk later, yeah?” I don’t know why the question makes me feel anxious. It really shouldn’t. I know I’ve been clingy, almost desperate to get her to talk to me, but it finally feels like we’re stepping in the right direction, and I don’t want her to pull away from me. I want to see where this goes.

“Yeah. We’ll talk soon. Bye.”

When she leaves, a rush of air leaves my lungs before they fill back up again.

This might finally be the thing to pull me back to the surface after months of feeling like I’m drowning. I’ve tried everything to get rid of the aching in my chest, and nothing has worked. I’ve played mind games with myself so I could get back onto the ice without having a panic attack. I thought I’d be better by now, but apparently it doesn’t work like that. I can’t just snap my fingers and hope that everything will be fine just because I’m telling myself it is.

As I’m about to clean up the mess the girls made, my phone rings in my back pocket. I take in a deep breath when I see Clara’s contact name fill the screen. I don’t remember the last time I spoke to her. The few days after I found out about my mom cheating were a blur of heated conversations and memories I’ve tried my hardest to block out. Honestly, not talking to my sister every day has been hard.

We grew up almost like twins in the weirdest way. There’s a seven-year age gap between us, but we did everything together. I think my parents were worried that we’d make the gap too large, so they pushed us into doing everything together the second I could walk. It felt like a treat to hang out with my cool older sister who showed me how to skate and would take me to the Ski Village that she worked at.

My parents worked a lot, and it gave us more time to hang out with each other. My mom teaches at a middle school, and my dad is a radio host for one of the local channels. I always thought it was a weird combination, but they made it work.

Until they didn’t.

Apparently, my mom had been cheating on my dad since I was in middle school. She managed to convince him that she was just working it out of her system as if she hadn’t been married to my dad for almost thirty years. Clara knew, and she didn’t tell me until after Carter’s funeral. I spent a whole seven years of my life without the knowledge that the person who has always preached about loving their family and being loyal has been fucking my dad over for years. And he still stayed.

I pushed myself further and further away from the three of them while I tried to wrap my head around it, and I’ve still not come to terms with it.

“Miles, what the hell are you doing?” is the first thing my sister asks when I answer the phone. I have to close my eyes and feel my chest rise and fall, allowing it to calm me down before speaking.

“Hello to you too, sister,” I deadpan, knowing that if I sass her in some way, she might save us both the torture of pretending that everything is fine. “I’m just having coffee in a cute café on campus.”

“Don’t be smart with me, Miles,” she spits out. “No one has heard from you in months, and in case you forgot, I’m still your emergency contact. Miss Hackerly called me. Why aren’t you going to your classes? And how the hell did you get benched? Hockey is the only thing keeping you there.”

I feel the bile rise in my throat, but I swallow it, rubbing my temple. “Since when do you care? It was easy for you to lie to me for years. Excuse me if I want some mystery in my life to remain.” I know it’s a low blow, but it’s too late, and the words are already out. I hear her huff over the phone, growing more agitated.

“Get your shit together or you’ll lose your scholarship. Just go to your classes, and don’t fuck this up,” she warns.

I don’t know how many more people are going to say this to me before it fully sinks in. It’s so easy for me to say, “Yes, fine,” but it’s the doing that I can’t do. I can’t even pick up a hockey stick for God’s sake.

“I’m going to figure it out,” I say after a while. “Bye, Clara.”

“I hope you do. And Miles…” She pauses, taking in a breath. “I love you. Always.”

My chest suddenly feels tight. Suffocating. This feeling has been happening a lot since Carter died, and I can’t get rid of it. It makes my breathing quicken, and it feels like something heavy is weighing on my chest, like I won’t be able to get up.

Since we were kids, Clara and I would end every “I love you” with “always.” It became a thing within our family, and even when times were hard, especially when times are hard, we are supposed to say it.

But right now, the words dissolve on my tongue before I can get them out.

I can’t bring myself to say anything other than “Always,” as I end the call.

I take in a deep breath, dropping my head to the back of the chair, and vow to do something about this. If Wren is willing to help me get back on my feet, I’m not going to take this for granted. I need to get back on the ice this season. I need to do it for myself and for Carter.