Page 38 of Faking the Rules

"So," she says, linking her arm through mine as we continue up the stairs. "I hear you and Declan put on quite a show in the quad. Want to tell me what's going on there?"

“We're just... I don’t know, figuring things out," I hedge.

"Figuring things out," she repeats skeptically. "Is that what the kids are calling it these days?"

"Shut up," I mutter, but there's no heat in it.

She studies me as we reach my door, her expression turning serious. "You really like him, don't you? This isn't just the arrangement anymore."

"It never really was," I admit quietly, unlocking my door and ushering her inside. "Or at least, it stopped being just that pretty quickly. I just couldn't admit it to myself."

"And now?"

I sink onto my bed, suddenly overwhelmed by the events of the past twenty-four hours—the confrontation with Declan, the intensity of our connection, the looming complications of Kaitlyn's vendetta and campus gossip.

"Now I'm terrified," I confess, the words escaping before I can censor them. "Because this is real, Mia. Really real. And real means it can really hurt when it falls apart."

"Who says it's going to fall apart?" she challenges, sitting beside me.

"Statistics. Experience. Common sense." I tick off the points on my fingers. "He's going to the NHL after graduation. I'm going to Columbia. Those worlds don't exactly align. And even if they did, people like him don't end up with people like me in the long run."

"People like him?" she echoes. "You mean genuinely good guys who look at you like you hung the moon? Who defend you against psycho exes and treat you with respect and make you smile more in the past week than I've seen in the entire time I've known you?"

Put that way, my objections sound hollow, paranoid. But the fear remains, bone-deep and persistent. "You don't understand," I try to explain. "My mother left. James cheated. Everyone I've ever trusted has proven untrustworthy in the end."

"Declan isn't James," Mia says gently. "And he's certainly not your mother."

"I know that," I say, frustrated at my inability to articulate the tangled web of fear and hope and desire churning inside me. "Logically, I know that. But emotionally..."

"Emotionally, you're waiting for the other shoe to drop," she finishes for me. "For him to reveal that this has all been another kind of performance."

The accuracy of her assessment silences me.

"Ellie," she continues, her voice softening. "At some point, you have to decide if the possibility of joy is worth the risk of pain. Because from where I'm sitting, Declan Wolfe is offering you something real. Something worth risking for."

Her words echo in my mind long after she leaves for her afternoon class, long after I've showered and changed and gathered my books for Feminist Literary Theory. The possibility of joy versus the certainty of safety. The risk of pain versus the guarantee of emotional isolation.

When has playing it safe ever made me truly happy? When has guarding my heart ever brought me genuine fulfillment?

The questions haunt me through my afternoon classes, through dinner preparations with Declan, through the quiet intimacy of his apartment as we talk and laugh and explore this new territory between us. They follow me into his bed, into his arms, into the moments of breathtaking vulnerability as we move together in the darkness.

And in the quiet after, his heartbeat steady beneath my ear, his breathing deep and even in sleep, I find myself whispering the truth I'm not yet brave enough to voice when he's awake:

"I'm falling in love with you."

The words hover in the darkness, both terrifying and liberating in their simple truth. I am falling in love with Declan Wolfe. Despite my best efforts at emotional self-preservation, despite the walls I've built and the doubts I've nurtured, despite the rational objections and the statistical improbability—I am falling, have fallen, into something I never thought possible after James's betrayal.

The realization should send me running for the familiar safety of emotional distance. Instead, I find myself curling closer to Declan's warmth, allowing myself to imagine a future where this isn't temporary, where the expiration date we initially established dissolves into something open-ended and full of possibility.

It's a dangerous fantasy, one I've denied myself for so long that indulging it now feels almost illicit. But in the safety of darkness, with Declan's arms around me and his heart beating steady against my cheek, I permit myself this small rebellion against years of careful emotional control.

.

Chapter 8

Championship week descends on Westford like a gathering storm—tension building day by day, anticipation hanging in the air like electricity before lightning strikes. The campus transforms into a sea of navy and gold, banners draping buildings, sidewalks chalked with team slogans and player numbers.

Declan becomes increasingly scarce as game day approaches, consumed by extended practices, team meetings, media obligations, and the crushing weight of expectation that follows him everywhere. I catch glimpses of him between commitments—snatched moments in the library, quick coffees between classes, late nights when he collapses into my bed or pulls me into his, too exhausted for anything but sleep but needing the comfort of physical proximity.

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