“Faking a relationship won’t fix anything.”
“No,” Cole agrees, “but it buys time before it all blows up.”
Cole means well, but he doesn’t understand whathe’s asking. Pretending to have Kyle—being near him, smiling for cameras, acting like I belong beside him—will break something inside me I’ll never get back.
“This is business.” I square my shoulders, forcing my voice to stay even. “That’s all it can be.”
Kyle’s head snaps toward me, eyes narrowing. “That’s not all it is.”
“It has to be,” I say, though my throat burns. “You’ll thank me when this is over.”
He studies me like he’s trying to find a crack in my armor, but I don’t let him see it. Because if I let even one bit of the truth slip through, we’ll both be out of a job, and worse, I’ll never be able to unfeel what he’s already made me want.
“You two get your stories straight before morning.” Cole clears his throat, breaking through the tension.
Kyle finally speaks, his words rough and frayed at the edges. “This isn’t business to me.”
His eyes are begging me not to say what’s already written between us. There’s a flash of disbelief there, then something that looks dangerously close to hope, like he thinks I’ll take it back if he just stands still long enough. Every part of me wants to reach for him, to smooth the furrow between his brows and tell him I don’t mean it. That I’m scared. That this isn’t fair. But I can’t. Instead, I force my voice out, quiet and even, when it feels like my whole body is shaking apart.
“It is now. See you at the next strategy meeting.”
The words taste like ash. A lie wrapped in duty. I see my words hit him square in the chest—his shoulderstense, and the small flinch he tries to hide, like I just drew a line between us he can’t cross. And for a moment, I almost crumble. I meant it when I said I wanted something real. But this is what real costs us.
His lips part to argue, but then he closes his mouth, jaw flexing, like the effort costs him more than he wants to admit. “See you then.”
Cole mutters something under his breath as he claps Kyle on the shoulder, steering him away. And then it’s just me, alone in the echo of what’s left. I press my hands against the wall, letting my head drop forward as the tears burn again.
This is what protecting someone looks like. Pretending you’re fine while everything you want is ripped out from under you. I want something real. And now, I’ll have to spend the rest of the season pretending like I already have it. I’ll smile for the cameras and play the part while keeping my heart locked behind press releases and strategy notes.
The worst part is that he’ll believe me when I say it’s all fake, and that’s how I’ll lose him.
Chapter Sixteen
Kyle
The words land, soft but final, like the closing of a door I didn’t realize I’d been standing in.
“It is now.” Alycia turns before I can answer, shoulders squared like she’s walking into war.
She doesn’t spare me another glance, just that steady, practiced calm she wears, and it guts me. Every step she takes feels like a thread snapping tight in my chest. I want to call out and stop her, to say something that will make her stay, but my throat locks up. Because I know if I open my mouth, I’ll make it worse. So, I stand there and do nothing while she walks away.
Her heels click against the tile, sharp and even, fading until they’re just echoes in the kind of silence that eats you alive. The sound follows me, crawls under my skin, until all I can hear is the rhythm of her walking away from whatever this could have been between us.
She looks like the picture of calm in the middle of chaos, but I know how hard she’s fighting to stay that way. She looks unshakable, untouchable, but I’ve seenher tremble. And watching her pretend she doesn’t feel anything makes me want to break something. Not the situation or Cooper’s rules, but the distance she’s putting between us to protect something that is already bleeding out.
By the time she disappears around the corner, my chest feels too small for everything inside it. Anger, want, regret, all twisted into one raw ache that has nowhere to go. I drag in a breath that tastes like adrenaline and something I do not want to name. My pulse hammers behind my ribs, every beat screaming at me to do something, but there’s nothing left to do that won’t wreck both of us.
“She’s tougher than she looks.” Cole exhales beside me.
“That’s not the point.”
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I know.”
For all his sarcasm, Cole gets it in a way no one else can. He has lived with the fallout of bad decisions that brand you for life. He knows the difference between loving someone and ruining them.
“I can’t let her take the hit for this,” I say, my voice lower than I mean for it to be. “I started it. I should’ve?—”
“Shut your mouth?” he cuts in, but there’s no bite to it, just weary affection. “Kid, you did what any Hendrix would’ve done. You saw someone disrespect her, and you handled it.”
