Page 81 of The Fake Play

I’ve been at my desk for hours, staring at a never-ending list of tasks Whitney sent me for Luke’s new PR strategy. The words blur together, slipping away every time I try to focus. My mind keeps wandering back to last night. I prefer to remember the fun we had, but that isn’t the memory that keeps replaying over and over again.

I hated the way he looked at me after, a mix of sadness and vulnerability in his eyes. I know he wants to hear me say I love you but I’m not ready. Love is still a foreign concept to me, at least the romantic kind. But the more time I spend with Luke, the more I’m starting to believe it’s a possibility.

For most of my life, love has been nothing more than a concept that belonged in fairy tales. There is the love I have for Michael, of course, and friends, but that’s it. Sexual things are just that—sexual. Nothing more than a human need, a release.

That isn’t to say I don’t like Luke. I like him a lot. My stomach turns to butterflies around him, and my heart dances in my chest whenever I think about him. It’s as if there’s a magnet between us. The way we fit together, the comfort…

It isn’t love. It has to be lust.

The shrill ring of my phone jerks me out of my thoughts. Odd, I never leave the ringer on. But I’d been so distracted all morning that I probably turned it on by accident. Michael’s name flashes on the screen, and I pick it up.

“Hey.”

“Keke,” he says firmly, his tone instantly putting me on alert. “Have you figured out what you’re doing about Luke?”

“I’m handling it, Michael. You know I am.”

“Handling it? Are you sure that’s all you’re doing?”

“Yes,” I reply, my voice sharper than I intend. I don’t know why his tone feels like an attack. “I’m making sure he has a solid PR strategy, and that his career isn’t at risk with all the extra attention on him. That’s my job.”

“I get that you’re focused on the professional side of things, but this isn’t just about his career. I know you care about him.”

My grip on the phone tightens, the frustration twisting into something closer to fear. “Michael, what’s this about?”

“Just think about it, okay?”

He hangs up before I can respond, leaving me sitting there, confused.

What the hell was that about?

Think about it. What does he expect me to think about? Keeping Luke’s career safe, managing his reputation is my job.

I find myself wandering into his bedroom. Maybe I shouldn’t snoop, but I’ve been living here for a while now, and though I’ve been in his room often, I’ve never really looked around, and my curiosity gets the better of me.

There are photos on his walls, mementos and trophies that tell fragments of his professional story.

My gaze falls on a photo album sitting on his bookshelf, its cover worn and slightly faded. I hesitate, feeling like an intruder but not enough to stop myself. I reach for it, flipping it open tofind a set of pictures that immediately pull me into a world I’d only glimpsed through headlines and rumors.

The first page is a picture of a young Luke, no more than six or seven, a wide grin on his face as he stands between two people I recognize instantly—his parents. His mother’s arm is wrapped around him, her famous smile flashing for the camera. His father, a friendly-looking man with dark eyes, stands on his other side, a hand resting on Luke’s shoulder.

They are on a movie set, and based upon the background images, it looks like one of the famous courtroom dramas his dad had starred in, the kind with long speeches and elaborate arguments that people talk about for years.

Luke is beaming in the photo, looking like the happiest kid in the world, but there’s a certain loneliness in the way his parents stand beside him, almost like they’re three separate pieces that don’t quite fit together. Maybe it’s because I now know about his parent’s unconventional relationship.

Or maybe I’m seeing my own childhood reflected in gestures that meant nothing.

I turn the page, finding more pictures of him as a child, each one taken on a different movie set, with a different background, and different costumes. In each one Luke is smiling and carefree, his parents beside him with love in their eyes.

He definitely had a different childhood from mine. I have to admit to myself that he’ll probably make a great dad because he experienced it firsthand.

Toward the back of the album, I find a handful of photos that give me pause. In them, Luke is a little older, maybe twelve or thirteen, standing on an ice rink in a hockey uniform. In the background, a bunch of kids wear mismatched jerseys, their faces lit up with the thrill of the game. His smile is wider, brighter, more genuine than any of the previous photos I’d seen.Such a cute kid. But there’s something different about him in this one…

And then I recognize it. This isn’t just any hockey photo—it’s a still from the one movie Luke had starred in as a kid, a film about an underdog hockey team taking on a group of wealthy kids in a big showdown game. It was one of those feel-good family movies, the kind you watch on rainy weekends with a bowl of popcorn. I’d seen it as a kid myself, but I hadn’t thought about it in years.

Seeing him in that uniform, the look of pure joy on his face, causes something to shift inside me. This is where it had all started for him, his love for the game. It’s never been just a career for Luke.

He tried to explain this to me, how he’d found hockey all on his own, separate from the world of fame and glamour that had defined his childhood. Hockey was the one thing he’d chosen for himself, the one thing that had become his, free from the expectations of everyone around him.

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