Page 195 of The Fake Date Agreement

I press the answer button. “Mom, this isn’t a good time.”

“I’ve been speaking with Daniela. I don’t understand why you don’t want?—”

“Mom, I have to go.”

Her voice is tight. “Practice? Hockey, even during spring break? What is your obsession with?—”

“It makes me happy,” I snap, my patience shot. “Maybe I would have been a little more patient if I knew where Tobie was and Caleb wasn’t lying in a hospital bed.”

“Who is Tobie?”

Shit. I didn’t mean to say that out loud.

I scrub a hand over my face as I stand outside the hotel. “Ever since I picked up a stick, I knew it was what I wanted to do. It felt like it was the thing I’d been created to do, Mom.”

She’s silent.

“But you had all these big plans for me and Nessa. We were going to make all our cousins and aunties and uncles so proud. We were going to be doctors and lawyers and achieve so much.I learned to shut my mind to the idea hockey would ever be anything more than a hobby, but I can’t do that anymore. I tried, and I tried, and all it did was make me so miserable I dreaded getting up to go to my college lessons. I dreaded picking up the phone when you called because I knew I would have to lie and act like everything was okay when I hated my life.”

“Javier…” She breathes.

“Then Grandpa died, and he said to do what made me happy. Told me not to let my life go the same as his did. He had all that money, but there wasn’t one day that he looked forward to work.” I clear my throat. “Hockey makes me happy. Daniela wanted to be a doctor’s wife more than she wanted to be with me, but I thought you would understand why this is something I need to be happy. If you can’t be happy for me, then I don’t know what else to say. I have to go.”

And I hang up and drive back to the campus.

Whatever happens now with my family, I’ve said it. I’ve dumped all the stuff in my head and heart out, and that’s all I can do.

When I peer up at her window from the quad, the curtains are drawn. And when someone lets me into her building, there’s no sign of Tobie in her dorm.

I knock on her door, and there’s no answer. Then I knock on Max’s door.

She has no love for hockey players, but she must know we care about Tobie.

Max could be with Tobie somewhere, or they could be inside, listening to my knock and refusing to open the door.

I knock a couple more times, wait another five minutes, and leave.

I’ll be back tomorrow.

Until I have seen with my own eyes that Tobie is okay, I will keep coming back.

Chapter 46

Tobie

I’ve been holdingeverything inside since Marc’s knee hit the white marble lobby, and he slid a diamond ring onto my finger.

He proposed.

The man who cheated on me decided he wanted me back.

A tear drips from my eye. I drag the back of my hand across it the way I have all the others.

I whisper to myself, “Just a little farther.”

We hit a pothole, and I rock in my seat as the driver’s apologetic gaze briefly hooks mine. “Sorry about that. One day, someone will do something about this road.”

I look away, too focused on holding everything in for just a little farther to care about the potholes, my red eyes, and the pain that hasn’t faded for a second.

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