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

We only have six days.

Sunday until Saturday.

That’s all we get. That’s all the time I get with her until the new year and things start to get more serious for the both of us. That’s why when we’re on the plane and Wren falls asleep, I make a plan of what to do to make this a good vacation. A much-deserved break for her. I book us in for massages, hikes, and saunas, and I look around for a nice restaurant. I’m really cutting deep into my savings for this, but I need to do something nice. She’s been on edge since her showcase, and if I can erase that worry for a few days, then I’ll do anything I can.

On the drive to the airport, on the plane, and even when we drive from the airport to the hotel, we both ignore what happened last night. I shouldn’t have gotten annoyed with her, but I’m getting tired of pretending I don’t want her. I’m tired of her ignoring the obvious fact that I want her for real.

I don’t want to ruin these next few days because after this, we could be done. If my first few games go well and she qualifies, we’ll have no reason to be doing this anymore. She’ll go back to skating regularly and I’ll go back to playing.

It’ll be over.

By the time we check into the five-star hotel, we’re both exhausted. We throw our bags down and settle in. She’s the kind of person to unpack all of her stuff immediately while I usually live out of my suitcase for the first two days.

This room is a lot bigger than the one that we stayed in at the gala. Instead of a massive bedroom, the room is smaller sized, but it has two huge bathrooms on each side of it. The kitchen and living room are connected in another room, with the refrigerator filled with drinks and snacks.

We spend the first two days in a haze, going through all the things that I booked for us to do. We go for massages, mostly for Wren. We spend our days out in Palm Springs, visiting the most touristy places we can, and we spend our nights binging bad movies and eating room service, talking about everything and nothing.

I could get used to this—the two of us sitting in robes, eating ice cream, slouching on the couch, and watching movies. Sometimes, she talks about whatever book she’s reading, and I’m only half listening. I just like watching the way her mouth moves. I’d let her talk about a ten-book fantasy series if it meant I could watch her talk.

This morning, we decided to go down to the beach to read. I’m still making my way through the book Wren got me, but I brought my trusty hockey book as backup. I’m doing a lot more staring than I am reading. I’m lying on my back, slightly angled toward Wren, who’s lying on her stomach, her head propped up on her bag while she reads. The sun has blessed her with faint freckles along her back and arms, and I’m fucking obsessed with every single one of them.

She’s wearing a lilac bikini with a white knitted cover-up. She looks ethereal. I don’t think I could tear my eyes away even if I wanted to. Being with her is like watching the ocean crash against the shore. It’s like looking straight into the fucking sun.

“Can you stop ogling?” she asks without looking up from her book.

I pick up mine and pretend to read it. “I’m not ogling, I’m reading.”

“Really?” She turns to me, squinting her eyes, her head resting on her hands. “What are you reading?”

“The McDavid Effect.” She snorts, smothering her laugh in her arms. “What’s so funny?”

“It’s not funny. It’s… typical, that’s all.”

“What’s typical about a hockey player reading about hockey?”

“Everything.” I roll my eyes and grab the book out of her hands, and she tries to reach for it.

“And what are you reading? Romance? Isn’t this the book that Kennedy got for Christmas?”

“Yeah, she’s letting me borrow it since she has a million copies. Give it back.” She tries to reach for it again and looks adorable while trying to. I push my hand up higher so she can’t see it. I skim the page she was reading and gasp loudly.

“Amelia Wren Hackerly, this is straight-up porn.” Her face turns even redder than it was earlier from the sun.

“It’s not. Jasmine is a great author. She writes about her own real experiences with love. It’s entertaining. You could learn a thing or two,” she retorts as she snatches the book out of my hand, putting it into her bag.

“It’s filthy is what is,” I say, and she shakes her head with a soft laugh.

“It’s inspiring,” she murmurs before turning her sun-kissed face away from me and resting back on her arms. I can’t even argue with her anymore because the sight in front of me is so fucking worth it.

“Why don’t we go out tonight?” I suggest later that night after we’re both tired from hiking on the Araby trail. I stand over her from the back of the couch while she lies down, her gorgeous eyelashes resting against her cheeks.

“I’m exhausted, Miles. We’ve done, like, everything on everyone’s bucket list ever in the last few days,” she says, sighing deeply. She opens her eyes and pushes herself up on her elbows.

“Don’t you want to go out for some real food? We’ve been living off room service for four days,” I say as I walk over to her side of the couch, and her eyes follow me.

“Aren’t we going out on New Year’s Eve? We can wait until then.”

“Yeah, but it’s going to be packed with people,” I say as I crouch down next to her, batting my eyelashes at her. “Don’t you want to go out somewhere nice? Somewhere where we can eat good food. Just us. Just one night, Wren.”

“Jesus, you’re so fucking dramatic.” She groans before standing up.

I go into one of the large bathrooms to get ready. I’m lucky I packed a nice outfit in case something like this were to happen. Okay, nice might be stretching it, but it’s decent.

I try to brush out my hair, but it looks wild. I’ve never known how to deal with my curly hair, so it just does its own thing. I put on a white button-down and black pants, rolling my sleeves up my forearms.

I wait in the kitchen area for her to finish getting ready because, as always, she takes hours. I stick my head into the fridge to find something, but there are only tiny bottles of tequila, so I close it.

“Ready to go?”

I turn, and the wind is knocked out of me. Literally. I think I’ve died and come back to life.

Wren is dressed in a silky black evening gown with tiny straps. She holds a silver purse in her right hand, which matches her stilettos and earrings. Her hair is slicked behind her ear as it falls onto her back.

She walks toward me, and I can’t take my eyes off her.

“You look beautiful,” I whisper. She blinks up at me, and I wrap my arms around her waist, pulling her into me as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. My hands feel so at home on her body. As if they just belong.

“You look really good,” she murmurs, trailing her palms up my chest before wrapping them around my neck.

“You’re not lying to me, are you?”

“Unfortunately not.”

Watching her try to fight herself just makes me want her even more. She takes in my outfit, her eyes roaming all over me. God, I could sit down and let her look at me all day. I’d let her use me for whatever she wants if I could have her eyes on me.

I got us a table at the hotel we’re staying at, so we only have to walk down past the lobby. I hold her hand even though we don’t have to pretend out here.

“What are you doing?” she asks, looking at our linked hands and then at me.

“I just want to hold your hand,” I admit, squeezing hers in mine. “That a problem?”

“No,” she says quietly and doesn’t bring it up again.

The restaurant is built to hover just over the LED pool with a cozy cabin vibe. Our seats are on the patio outside, giving us a perfect view of the live band that plays smooth blues music. People gather around them, glasses in their hands as they sway to the music under the sunset.

When we sit down, we both order steak with fries and a cherry blossom lemonade. I’m starting to think that my bad eating habits have rubbed off on her. We go through the never-ending list of questions to ask each other as we eat. It’s been a while since we’ve done them, and they’re my favorite part about our relationship.

“Okay,” she says, popping a fry into her mouth before scrolling through my phone. “These are pretty personal. Is that okay?”

“Sure.” I grin at her, but she frowns a little as she locks my phone and slides it over to me.

“What’s one thing you would change about your family if you could?” She bites her bottom lip as if she’s regretting asking the question.

“I wish my family were more upfront with each other. Instead of being too scared to say things, you know? It’d be a lot easier than whatever it is we’re pretending to do now.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve always been a pretty dramatic kid. I would get really attached to things and people, and I wasn’t afraid to express that, but my family has always been weird about it. My dad ignores things that he can move on from, my mom pretends like they don’t exist, and Clara is good at mediating the tension and making everything seem okay when it’s not. I don’t know, I think they just feel better hiding things,” I admit.

As I say it out loud, my stomach twists as if I’ve just finished binging shitty food. I hate how uncomfortable it makes me. I hate that whenever I talk about them, I can feel my chest tightening. That’s why at the Christmas dinner, I kept quiet.

Even when my dad and I were alone, we stuck to talking about sports and boring things instead of what we were really thinking. I knew that if I tried to say anything, I’d ruin the night. Or they’d back me up into a corner and tell me to calm down. That I was overreacting.

“I think they just find it easier to ignore problems. They’ve been treading on eggshells around me since I found out about Mom and since Carter died,” I admit, and she keeps listening to me. “You know how much I talk. I can’t move on easily, and I can’t just ignore things that are clearly there. I know my parents love each other, but sometimes, that doesn’t feel like enough. They’re not happy. It’s worse to be unhappy with somebody and still stay with them.”

“I’m sorry,” Wren says quietly. I shrug, smiling. “But you know you can always talk to me, right? Even if it’s utter nonsense. I like hearing you talk.”

“You do know I’m going to use this against you in the future. You can’t ever tell me to shut up again,” I joke. She smiles wide. “What about you?”

“I wish there was less pressure to be perfect all the fucking time,” she says immediately. She tries to laugh, but the noise doesn’t come out properly as she fiddles with her fork. “Austin’s pregnant, and she told me to tell my mom for her.”

I almost choke on my food. “What?”

“Yeah, she told me a few weeks ago. It was just after we went to the game, and I was planning on telling her after my show. Then my mom missed half of my performance, pissed me off, and I didn’t tell her, so now we’re here.” She gestures to our surroundings. “Pity trip.”

I’m quiet for a minute, and I have no idea what to say. I can’t imagine having that weight on your shoulders. She looks out at the crowds of people, smiling softly at the music playing.

“Do you want to know what the worst part is? She didn’t even think about my side of it. Austin wanted me to tell her after the showcase because she thought that if I told her, she’d have all of her focus on me and forget it. It’s like me skating trumps her getting pregnant. Like she knows that Mom would fixate on me instead of her.”

“That really sucks. I’m sorry. Do you know when you’re going to tell her?” I ask after a while.

“I don’t know,” she says, sighing and falling back deeper into her chair. “I’m hoping that Austin will suck it up and tell her herself. I can’t deal with that kind of drama. Not so close to comp season.”

“Yeah, that’s fair.”

We both dig back into our food before it gets cold, neither of us asking any questions before she sits up on her chair, her arms resting on the table, her head in her hands. “Next question.”

“They just get worse,” I say, picking up my phone to scroll through it.

“I’m a big girl, Milesy. I can handle it.”

“Okay.” I close my phone, mirroring her position. “Do you believe in love?”

“That’s easy.” She laughs, pushing her hair over her shoulder before giving me a dead look. “No.”

“What do you mean no? You only read romance books.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I love love. Does it exist? Sure. But do I want it? Definitely not.”

Her candor shocks me. This whole time, I thought she was a romantic underneath all the stubbornness. A hopeless one at that. I thought that after reading all those romance books, she’d aspire to that. That she would crave it. Hope for it at least. She looks out to the band again as they play At Last by Etta James.

“I love the idea of love. The way it’s written about in books and movies. But actually, being in love—it’s scary. It’s all-consuming. Falling in love is so easy, but it’s just as easy to fall out of it or for it not to work out. My parents did. They acted like everything was fine. They went on pretending. And then one day, it was just gone. All the sparks, all the reasons they had to stay together just ceased to exist. I don’t want that. I don’t want to be constantly waiting for the day my partner doesn’t want me anymore. The torture. The anticipation. I just couldn’t live like that.”

“I don’t think you should be scared. It’s a powerful thing, being in love. We’re young, and we’re going to feel things that are more than lust, and sometimes, the only word to describe that is love.”

“Have you ever been in love, Miles?”

I swallow. “No,” I say.

What I really want to say is: I’ve never been in love, but the more time I spend with you, the more time I spend getting to know you, the more I feel like you’re going to be my first and only love.

“Neither have I,” she admits. She turns to me now, tears lining her eyes. “We use the word love for everything. I love my friends. I love my shoes. I love this food. It doesn’t mean anything anymore. Can’t there be something that has the same meaning, carries the same weight but doesn’t feel indefinite? Binding. Something that doesn’t have to tie you down to that person and suddenly change everything. When you’re in love with a person romantically, you can’t go back. But when you change your mind, it becomes a big thing. But I guess that’s what people want though. Something tangible to change in their relationship. To make it more serious or some shit.”

We both look at each other for an extended moment. The way her brain works blows my mind, and I’m obsessed with it. I want her brain. Her mind. Her everything. Anything that she’s willing to give me.

She doesn’t look away from me as she says, “If I ever feel anything remotely close to being in love, I just want to exist with that person. I don’t want to ruin it by binding us together by a word. An emotion.”

I’m shell-shocked for a minute, not sure what to say. This girl has flipped around nearly every single thought that I had about her. I finally muster up the courage to ask, “Does that mean you were never in love with Augustus?”

She shakes her head. “I knew he loved me, and I appreciated it. I knew I had some strong feelings for him, but I definitely didn’t love him.”

I nod. “Do you think you feel this way about love because you feel like you don’t trust it or because you don’t deserve it?”

“Both?”

“Well, that’s bullshit, Wren. You’re worthy of everything good in this world.”

Her eyes shine. “Even love? Even if it breaks my heart?”

“Especially love,” I say, “even if it breaks your heart.”

We’re quiet for the rest of the day. Neither one of us wanted to say more than a few words after we just bled out our emotions onto the table. Something shifted. I don’t know when or how, but something else had changed between us. Like the string that was holding us together has pulled us even closer without us realizing it.

The only thing that’s running through my mind is the fact that I’m falling head-over-heels, no sign of turning back kind of in love with this girl, and I’m not sure if I’m enough to make her stay.

I am so fucked.