I gape at him. “That’s…” Not entirely wrong. But you’d never catch me saying it. “Yeah, well…it’s still happening.” And why not tell him everything else? After all, according to him—and everyone else on the internet—he’s my boyfriend. “And my mother wants me to bring a date. She’s been trying to set me up with literally anyone who crosses her path. I narrowly avoided getting traded to an Olive Garden waiter for unlimited breadsticks earlier today. I had to lie and tell her I already had a date.”
Brody chuckles, the sound taking me right back to Barcelona. To the warmth and sunshine. The bus is visible down the street now. Headlights cutting through the darkness, that familiar rumble of diesel engine.
1 minute.
“I could be your date,” Brody says softly.
My head snaps his direction. “What?”
“To the meet-and-greet party.” He pauses. “Your sister’s marrying Derek, right? I’m invited anyway. Teammate obligation. I could—we could go together.”
Something in the way he suggests it—the offer coming out too easily, too eagerly. My heart hitches as something clicks into place. The one thing Derek’s always complaining about: Candy Kane’s image.
He needs PR. “You need this.” The words come out slow, understanding dawning. “You need a girlfriend, don’t you? That’s what this is about.”
He looks startled—like I’ve caught him at something he wasn’t ready to admit. His mouth opens. Closes. Then he seems to consider it, really consider it, and something shifts in his expression.
“Yeah.” Finally. Honest. Direct. “I need help.” His mouth makes a tight, perfect line. Good grief, even his lips are perfect. “It’s complicated.” He takes a breath that clouds white between us. “But it sounds like you need help too. With your family. With”—he gestures vaguely—“all of it.”
“So we help each other.” My voice sounds strange. Distant. “A fake date. For the meet-and-greet party.”
He lifts a shoulder.
“And then what? We have a fake fight and fake breakup?”
His mouth opens, then, “On second thought, I probably need to be your boyfriend through the entire wedding.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“It’s a contract thing.”
And I don’t know why, but those words have the power to spear through me, take me out, right there on the grimy sidewalk.
Still. “There are five big events—the meet-and-greet party, the couples shower, then three events over the weekend wedding in Maple Lake. You’d have to go to all of them.”
He nods, grimacing as though I’m the one proposing this grisly idea but he’s up for it. What a champ.
“And then what? Part ways like it never happened?”
“If that’s what you want.”
The bus pulls up with a hydraulic hiss. Brakes squealing. Doors opening with that pneumatic sound. The older woman gathers her bags, stands slowly—arthritic joints, careful movements—and gives me one last look that might be sympathy or might be judgment. Hard to tell in the harsh fluorescent light.
“Wait. Are you taking the bus?” he says, as if just figuring it out.
I glance up at him, my chin tucked into my jacket. “One too many shots to the head there, hockey boy?”
“Let me drive you home,” he says, ignoring the jab.
I should say no. I should get on this bus and go home and forget this entire insane conversation, crazy fake-relationship plot and all.
But then I think about showing up to Maya’s party alone. About my mother’s pitying smiles. About being the overlooked sister at five different wedding events while everyone else is coupled up.
And I look at Mr. Candy, standing there in his expensive leather jacket with his blue eyes, those broad shoulders, and suddenly all I can think is…
This is completely insane, but also?—
It might be exactly what I need.
