Page 19 of The Fake Date Agreement

I peel my eyes open, dragging my glasses off my bedside table and slipping them onto my face. I squint at my alarm clock and tell myself I’m seeing things.

It’s Saturday morning.

Weekends are for sleeping in. For me, and I thought for students everywhere. Clearly not because someone is awake and banging on my door at eight in the morning.

Last night washes over me, and my stomach clenches.

The cheating.

The big screen humiliation.

Marc.

The bang comes again, and I get to my feet, belt on my bathrobe, and mentally prepare myself for a confrontation I’m already dreading.

I’m in PJs, and I haven’t brushed my teeth or hair. When I glimpse my reflection in the mirror beside my door, I make a face and look away, telling myself it doesn’t matter.

I take a deep breath, pull open the door, and blink when I come face to face with Reid and Javier, two of the hockey players from last night who should not remember I even exist. “Uh…”

Reid grins at me. “Morning. Can we come in?”

“How’d you find me?” I ask as they step around me.

“We knew you couldn’t be in Reynolds, or we’d have seen you. Didn’t think you were a freshman to be in Jubilee. So we hit up Fisher. No one knew you there, but we lucked out and bumped into a girl who knew you, so here we are in Montgomery,” Reid says as Javier sits at my desk and scans the books I have on the shelf above it.

I shouldn’t be keeping that many books up there after the last time I overloaded it and nearly broke my nose when it collapsed on top of my head.

I’m a reader of almost everything from fantasy to the classics, and I have more books packed into my room than I have space to store them. But I will always have a special place in my heart for a romance where the heroine gets a good railing. So, seeing Javier curiously eyeing those books makes me extremely nervous.

I’m still half asleep, so as I close my door, it takes me a second to process everything they did to track me down. “But why?”

“Revenge,” Reid says dramatically.

“Revenge?” I echo.

“Yep,” Reid says. “Jay and I discussed it. The fuckwit has to suffer. We intend to bring him down.”

I stare at them. “Butwhy?”

“My ex, Daniela, cheated,” Javier says and puts down a book he was flipping through.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” What woman would cheat on this Brazilian god?

He waves off my apology. “We were together for three years, and our breakup was nothing like what happened to you. So that must have hurt. I get it, and I intend to help. And…”

“And?” I prompt.

Reid crosses his arms as he leans against the wall next to my illustrated Bridgerton poster of Daphne and Simon. “We need someone to take the heat off us.”

I blink at him. “What?”

Shit. I’m nowhere near awake enough to be having this conversation. I rub the sleep from my eyes and straighten, hoping it’ll make me feel more awake.

“We’re heading into the championships in a few weeks. Between final assignments and practice, we’re busier than we’ve ever been. We don’t need girls flinging themselves at us like they have all season.”

“I don’t understand what that has to do with me?” I muffle a yawn.

“We need a girlfriend,” Reid declares.

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