Page 29 of The Fake Date Agreement

Confused, I nod, and he opens my closet and leans in. “She needs more clothes.”

“What?”

He pulls his head out to look at me. “These are fine for class, but we need your ex to take one look at you and forget how to use his words.”

“An outfit like that doesn’t exist.” The words slip out before I can silence them.

He looks down at me for the longest moment, and his gaze softens. “It’s not about the clothes… it’s about the woman.”

I blink at him, surprised. “I don’t understand.”

“You will.” He nods firmly.

“We’re going shopping tomorrow morning. Nine o’clock. Reid and I will meet you outside your dorm. If you have any plans in the afternoon, cancel them. We’re going to be busy all day.”

I mentally cancel my plans to cry under my covers.

“So you’re going to put me in short skirts and low-cut tops,” I say, with a bite to my voice.

Why should my clothes be the thing that convinces Marc he made a mistake cheating on me instead of him realizing he did something wrong?

Why doIhave to be the one who changes?

“What do you want?” Caleb asks before Javier can respond.

I shake my head. “What do you mean?”

“What do you want? To make him jealous? To get back together with him? Humiliation only? Whatexactlydo you want to get out of this?”

I swallow the lump forming in my throat. “To hurt him the way he hurt me. Revenge.”

Caleb cocks his head. “And, if during the course of this revenge, he decides he has to have you back? What then?”

After what he did? “I don’t want him back.”

“But if he went to his knees, pleaded for you to take him back, and apologized from the depth of his soul. What then?” Reid asks.

I laugh. “He wouldn’t do that. You don’t know Marc like I do. He wouldn’t go to his knees for anyone.”

“But if he did?” Reid insists. “You were together for six years.”

“He won’t.”

The three men filling my room silently study me. They don’t believe me. I’m not sure why they’re convinced Marc will want me back. Whatever it is they see, I sure as hell don’t.

“The championship is weeks away,” Javier says, watching me so closely it’s like he can peer into my heart and read my doubt. “Can you see yourself doing this for that long?”

I’m not sure.

Maybe other girls would eagerly embrace the idea of fake dating three hot hockey players, but that is going to come with attention I neither need nor want. Especially when my heart hurts, and all I want is to crawl into a soft, dark space and escape the sense that I was the one to fuck things up with Marc.

That I wasn’t pretty or interesting enough or into hockey like he was.

That something I did chased him away, and I’ll chase away the next guy I let into my heart.

I clear my throat. “And if my ex decides he wants me back?”

“Then you have a decision to make,” Reid says. “This can stop whenever you want it to.”

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