Page 43 of Puck Prince

“I thought it would get him off our backs,” I say.

Callie actually laughs. Cackles like a hyena right in my face. “Really? And how did that go for you in practice, hmm?” She waves a hand over me. It doesn’t take a PT to see I am dying over here.

“I feel like you’re enjoying this.” I trudge my way closer to the door she’s guarding.

“Your pain, I’m enjoying. The stench? Not as much. You need a shower.”

“I’m glad you agree.” I go to step around her, but she moves in front of me. I glare down at her from under an angry brow.

“We could have told him the truth.”

“Yeah,” I scoff, “and what truth is that? That we fucked each other in a moment of stupidity and have been trying to avoid each other ever since?”

“Or that I was being attacked by the press and you were just trying to get me away from the cameras. That is what you were trying to do, right?” She angles her head to get a better look at me. “Or did you have this sham relationship planned all along?”

“Why the hell would I do that?” I growl.

“I don’t know. Maybe you like having a fuckboy reputation and?—”

I get right in her face, shutting it down before this train gets away from the station. “You were right about one thing a secondago: you don’t know me. And you’re right about another: I was trying to get you away from that jackass cameraman because I get it—being hounded by the press sucks. So the least you could do is be thankful for it.”

“Except that that’s not what you did,” she fires back, undeterred. “You didn’t come clean. Instead, you marched in my uncle’s office, grabbed me like a caveman, and claimed we are an item. Exclusive. What in the name of God’s green earth made that seem like the logical answer to you?”

I pause and consider the question. If I’m being honest, it wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision. I went to Coach’s office knowing he was ripping into her. I saw all of the static in the news and on social media. It wasn’t people calling me a manwhore or a fuckboy like I would have assumed. There were headlines like “Owen’s New Girl” and“Owen Sharpe Off the Market.” It made me think about what Miles said.

“There’s nothing more boring to the press than a hockey player in love,” I echo.

“A who inwhat?” Callie gasps.

“That’s what Miles told me. He’s engaged, and the paparazzi couldn’t care less about him now.”

“Are you saying we should getengaged?” Callie blurts out a couple octaves too high.

“What? No! God, no.”

She presses a hand to her heart like my lack of interest in marriage is the best goddamn thing she’s heard all day. “Thank Jesus. Because that almost sounded like a half-assed marriage proposal.”

“All I am saying,” I grit out, “is that if people think we are together, they won’t be spreading rumors about who we are actually dating. Or fucking.”

“Or!” She holds up a finger patronizingly. “We just avoid each other like we agreed, and the press will leave us both alone because we are, in fact, single and just as boring as a married couple. I like that idea better, myself, because it means not being around you.”

“It doesn’t work that way.”

“Why not?”

Because when I’m not being photographed with Callie, I’m walking with Summer, carrying her son’s car seat in broad daylight as they come and go from my apartment.

Because Callie isn’t anywhere close to my biggest problem right now.

But I don’t say that. My personal life is none of her damn business.

“Because it’s not going to stop,” I say instead. “If we’re constantly trying to avoid each other, only to accidentally bump into each other all the time because not only do we live next door, but we also work together, it’s going to get attention. It looks like we are hiding something. So, I say we pretend we’re together. Let them talk for all of forty-eight hours and then watch them lose interest.”

“So you want to lie and fake being in a relationship… with each other?”

“I want it to end. And this is the best way to make that happen. So, yeah.”

Callie studies me for a minute. And for that minute, I almost think she’s on board.

---