The door shut with a satisfying thunk.
And just like that, we were in a metal box together. Heat on low. Tension on high.
Kieren didn’t look at me right away. He adjusted something on the dash, jaw tight, eyes forward.
But I could feel it.
That same pull from the taco shop. The soccer field. The walk that wasn’t supposed to matter.
And somewhere between the frosted windshield and the faint brush of his fingers on my coat earlier…
I stopped pretending it didn’t.
The car was quiet, aside from the rhythmic swipe of the windshield wipers and the low hum of the heater. Outside, the world was washed in grey—slush on the curbs, snowbanks stacked like tired barricades. The kind of cold that settled into your bones, no matter how long you sat in the car.
Kieren drove with one hand on the wheel, the other resting loosely in his lap. Relaxed. Confident. The same way he walked across a pitch, like the entire world had to shift to make room for him.
I shifted in my seat.
“So… is there anything I should know?” I asked, keeping my voice casual.
His eyes flicked toward me, then back to the road. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, it’s a team dinner, right? Are there any hot-button topics I should avoid? Weird inside jokes I won’t get? Do you have expectations for how I should act?” I twisted slightly toward him. “How do you want me to behave?”
That got his attention.
He gave me a sharp sideways look. “What are you talking about?”
I immediately regretted asking. My gaze slid to the window, focusing on the blur of headlights smearing across the frost. “Forget it.”
Silence pooled in the car again. Not the comfortable kind. The thick, awkward kind that filled the space between people who weren’t sure how close they were allowed to be.
After a beat, Kieren spoke.
“You made a comment earlier,” he said quietly. “About embarrassing me.”
I stayed quiet. Watching the ice form at the edge of the glass, like it might spell out a way to disappear from this conversation.
He continued, “Is that what you think? That you’re going to embarrass me?”
Something in his tone pulled my attention back. Not defensive. Not amused. Curious. A little too soft.
I scowled. “No. I just—” I exhaled hard. “I’m not exactly in my element here, okay? I’m not a model, or a soccer WAG, or whatever type of girl usually shows up on your arm.”
He made a noise under his breath. “WAG?”
“Wives and girlfriends,” I snapped. “And before you act like I made it up, the tabloids have been using it for years.”
“Yeah, I know what it means,” he said. “Just didn’t peg you as someone who cared what a tabloid says.”
“I don’t,” I muttered, heat rising in my cheeks. “But your teammates might. And Hayashi definitely will.”
His jaw ticked, and for a second, I thought he might shut the whole conversation down.
Instead, he said, “Hayashi’s not the one I’m fake dating.”
My stomach did that annoying flip again.
