“Vince,” she said flatly. “You mean him?” She gave a half-hearted wave and closed the distance between us.
“Yeah, Sean Murphy—” He stopped midsentence as Mel stepped beside me.
Her eyes locked onto mine before looking at the woman I had been speaking with. “Mom,” she said smoothly, “I see you’ve already met Sean.”
Her mom did a visible double take. Score 1–0 in my favor.
“Not yet, we were about to,” I replied, offering my hand. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Boyd.”
“Mom, my boyfriend, Sean.”
Vince froze behind her. Even a stick to the ribs couldn’t have hit harder. Mrs. Boyd shook my hand without really seeing me, blinking between us instead. I kept my posture loose, though every muscle was wired tight. Puck drop. Game on. Time for my Oscar-worthy performance.
Chapter fourteen
Mel
“Finally, I get to be official,” Sean joked. “She couldn’t wait for this party to get the skeleton out of the closet.”
Then he looked at me with the hottest smile I’d ever seen on him—wide, sincere, and scrambling every thought I had. Okay, he wasn’t so bad at this fake boyfriend thing, and definitely not bad at the hot ‘smile’ thing.
Mom’s eyebrows remain lifted, frozen as if she’d walked out of a Botox commercial. “Oh?”
I held my breath, bracing for how Sean would handle this.
“Told me not to let work get in the way. I had to pull some strings, but she’s worth the trouble,” he added easily.
Either he genuinely didn’t notice Mom gearing up for an interrogation, or he was doing a damn good job pretending not to. Oh, who was I kidding? Those warm eyes, rich and way too knowing, told me he totally knew.
Mom’s stunned expression lasted all of three heartbeats. Then her face softened, eyes narrowing. I knew that look. It was the same she wore when she was suspicious.
Suddenly, I was more nervous than I’d been two years ago when Vince left, and it seemed everyone had been talking about our breakup.
Because this wasn’t just any crowd, this wasmycrowd—childhood friends, extended family, people who still brought up the time I was cast as a tree in the second-grade play. If they sniffed out that this was a bluff, my humiliation wouldn’t only echo; it’d explode.
Sean must’ve felt me stiffen. He reached for my hand and pulled me gently closer to him, then his arm slid around my waist casually as if we did this all the time. The man had a perfect save. His thumb brushed against my hip, a barely-there motion no one else could see, but my whole body noticed. The simple touch anchored me when I wanted to fold in on myself.
Vince looked on, tongue-tied. But Sean in his button-down, jeans, and whole damn performance was dangerously convincing. He didn’t just play well for the crowd—it gave me the nerve to stand tall under Mom’s pointed gaze.
I found my voice. “Vince, I didn’t know you two knew each other.”
“Love, we only met today,” Sean answered.
My heart skittered atloveas Sean looked down on me. He’d raised the bar of this pretense, so I wrapped my arm around his back to level up. One glance at my mom told me she could use asplash of cold water to wake up from her second shock from the familiarity on display.
“But we had a solid hockey exchange earlier,” Sean added, and squeezed my waist.
The heat from his hand sparked straight through me, lighting every nerve ending. If Sean’s smile melted snow caps, this was a tectonic event. One more squeeze, and I’d be legally classified as lava, which was a good problem.
“There you are,” Sam’s voice rang out as she joined us. “I was wondering where you went, Sean.”
She said it so casually, as if they were old friends from beyond that one time at the ice cream truck.
I’d never been so grateful for my truth-bomb sister.
Sean smiled. “Hey, I had to steal your thunder and meet your mom.”
He matched her casualwe-know-each-otherbeat for beat.
