She was doing this for the team. To protect the Storm from bad press, to keep sponsors from running. She wasn’t doing it for me.
She still hated me.
Maybe more now than ever.
I tried to laugh, but it caught in my throat. “So you’re just going to fake-date the league’s biggest liability? That’s noble, Sommers. Really.”
She didn’t rise to the bait.
Didn’t smirk. Didn’t toss a retort back like she used to.
She just nodded. “Someone has to clean this up.”
Cameron exhaled like he’d just avoided a multi-million dollar catastrophe. “Okay. Great. We can spin this. Get ahead of it. Launch a controlled rollout.”
Mara was already typing furiously on her tablet. “Oh, we’ll need photos. Date night at the pier? Brunch downtown? Maybe a charity event?—”
Reid cut her off. “Keep it simple. Quiet. We’re not turning this into a circus.”
But I barely heard them.
All I could think about was Daphne—her voice, her silence, the way she wouldn’t look at me like she used to. The distance between us felt wider than ever.
Fake dating.
This was going to be hell.
Mara didn’t even glance up from her tablet when she said it. “Honestly? I’d believe you two were dating already. The tension’s insane.”
I shot her a look. “It’s not tension. It’s disdain.”
“Sure,” she said, smirking. “Disdain with eye contact like foreplay. Got it.”
Cameron cleared his throat, trying to redirect before I opened my mouth again and made things worse. “We’ll keep it simple to start. A soft rollout, like Mara said. First post—hand-holding at that community fundraiser this weekend. Maybe a quick stadium kiss before the next match. Light PDA. No interviews yet. Just enough to make the narrative plausible.”
My jaw clenched. “Sounds like hell.”
It came out rougher than I intended, but I didn’t take it back.
Because it was hell. Not the fake dating part—that was a nightmare all on its own—but the proximity. Being close to her. Pretending.
Daphne didn’t miss a beat.
She turned slightly toward me, lips curling into the kind of smile people mistook for charming—but I knew better.
It was her professional smile. The mask.
“Don’t worry,” she said smoothly. “I’ll make sure it’s convincing.”
I stared at her.
She wasn’t bluffing. Daphne Sommers could sell water to the ocean if she wanted. And right now, she wanted to sell the story that we were in love. That whatever happened on the sideline had been some grand, romantic gesture instead of a split-second act of pure rage.
I nodded once, because what else was there to do?
But inside, I knew the truth.
This wasn’t about convincing the league.
