Relationship goals. Right. Because nothing says "goals" like waking up alone after the best sex of your life and realizing your fake boyfriend wants nothing to do with you.
I set the phone face-down on the coffee table. Through the window, the road where Ryder's truck disappeared stays empty. Practice probably lasts a few hours. Then he'll come back, and his truck will be twenty feet away, and we'll both pretend last night didn't happen.
Unless it did happen, and he regrets it, and I just destroyed his NHL chances by being too much too soon.
The coffee's gone cold in my cup. I should get up. Should work. Should do something productive.
Instead, I stay on the couch and watch the empty road and wonder if you can ruin something that was never real in the first place.
I try to imagine tomorrow's game. Standing in the crowd. Cheering for him. Playing the supportive girlfriend while my stomach ties itself in knots. Watching him skate and fight and be brilliant, knowing that last night meant everything to me and possibly nothing to him.
Four games. That was the deal. We're only halfway through.
I pull my knees up and wrap my arms around them. My laptop sits closed on the table. My phone stays silent. Outside, the sun keeps climbing, and the world keeps turning, and I'm stuck here trying to figure out how to survive seeing him tomorrow when I can barely survive this morning.
The blanket's not warm enough. The coffee's not strong enough. The silence is too loud.
I press my forehead to my knees and close my eyes.
Tomorrow, I have to see him. Tomorrow, I have to pretend we're fine. Tomorrow, I have to stand there and smile while everything inside me screams that this was a mistake.
The road outside stays empty. My phone stays dark. The cabin stays quiet.
And I stay here, alone, wondering what happens when you break the rules of a fake relationship by making it real.
Chapter 14
Ryder
Wednesday morning, and the puck hits me in the face.
Not the helmet. Not the shoulder. The actual face, because apparently I forgot how to play hockey sometime between leaving Piper's bed and showing up for morning skate.
"Jesus, Lockwood!" Jax skates over, laughing so hard he can barely stay upright. "Were you trying to catch that with your teeth?"
I spit blood onto the ice and glare at him. "Shut up."
"Dude, you just took a slap shot to the face during a drill where the whole point is to not get hit in the face." He's still laughing, the traitor. "What the hell is wrong with you this morning?"
Everything. Everything is wrong.
I slept with Piper. The kind of sex that makes you forget your own name, the kind that changes everything. Then I panicked and left before dawn like some kind of coward, and now I'm standing on the ice wondering if I ruined the best thing that's ever happened to me while also possibly destroying my NHL chances because I can't stop thinking about the way she said my name.
"Nothing's wrong," I say, which is the biggest lie I've told all morning.
Jax gives me a look that says he doesn't believe me for a second, but Coach blows the whistle before he can interrogate me further.
"Line drills!" Coach yells. "And Lockwood, try keeping your head in the game instead of wherever the hell it's been all morning!"
I skate to the line, determined to focus. Hockey is what matters right now. Three more games to impress the scouts, three more games before I have to figure out what the hell I'm doing with Piper.
Except every time I try to focus on the drill, my brain replays last night. The way she looked at me in the firelight. The vulnerable honesty when I told her about my dad. The moment she kissed me first, soft and certain, like she'd been waiting as long as I had.
I miss the pass completely and crash into the boards.
"Lockwood!" Coach's voice echoes across the rink. "Off the ice. Now."
The team collectively winces. Getting pulled from practice is never good, and I've never been pulled before. I'm the reliable one. The captain. The guy who shows up and does the work.
