He glares at me. “Yeah, well, you don’t belong in it. Feels like yesterday you were being a complete dick to me, just like this.”
“You have no idea what I’ve been through. You have your perfect little life. Mine isn’t like that.”
“Sotell me,” he says. “What happened to you?”
“You trying to be my friend, now? Bit late for that.”
“Would have been your friend a long time ago if you ever noticed that I wanted to.”
I pause.
I can already tell he regrets how he phrased that, but it makes my cock throb again.
“You wanted me, Oliver?”
He looks nervous again.
More of that, please.
“Wanted you to befriendlyto me,” he corrects himself. “I would have been your friend at any time, Niko. You just made it impossible.”
On some level, he’s right. I had surface-level friends in high school, but none of those friendships had any depth.
Welcome to Trust Issues, population: me.
Kids in school envied me because I was popular on Instagram, or feared me because they saw me get in fistfights. But were my friendsrealfriends? Probably not.
“You wanted me to be friendly,” I say, my tone flat.
He shrugs one shoulder. “Why’d you give me the cold shoulder after every hockey game?”
The truth is that I never considered that someone like Oliver would want to be my friend.
Those trust issues permeated every facet of my life. Ithought people like Oliver couldn’t possibly beactuallynice. I thought he wanted to get an advantage over me, or get on my good side so I’d go easier on him out on the ice.
“Thought we were competitors. Not buddies.”
“Felt more like strangers than anything else. Until the final game, at least.”
My skin prickles every time he mentions that game.
Or maybe I don’t know how to act when someone’s actually nice to me.
“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” I tell him. “But I’m wondering why you’re writing about sex like you’re writing a goddamn wishlist.”
Oliver reaches his hands up to run them through his hair, and I let my gaze linger on his perfect light brown waves.
“Forget about the journal,” he says. “I want to offer you the deal I want to make with you.”
“Please don’t fucking say you want to be my friend.”
“No. You’re going to be my boyfriend,” he says.
I watch the calm look in his green eyes as he stares right at me.
“Funny.”
“I don’t mean my actual boyfriend,” he says. “I don’t want one of those, anyway. I mean myfakeboyfriend.”
