Page 18 of Out of the Shadows
Dumbfounded, Knox nodded. “Well, I guess I’ll leave you guys to … whatever it is you were going to do. See you in the weight room, Michaels. Hailey, nice to meet you.”
He nodded at both of us, hiding how much this interaction had thrown him for a loop.Same, buddy. Fucking same.
Knox climbed the staircase, and Hailey eyed me for a moment, then abruptly turned and started back down the stairs. If she thought we weren’t going to discuss what just happened, she wassorelymistaken.
Ten
Hailey
PRESENT – 19 years old
Fuck, fuck, fuck. What the hell was I thinking? Oh. My. God.
The plan had been to be more on the offensive — not this! I had zero idea what had gotten into me, but for some goddamn reason, I hadn’t been able to keep my fat fucking mouth shut.
Colt hadn’t said a word, and I’d been put off by the look on Knox’s face when he realized Colt was with me. Fuck him and his preconceptions. At least he’d managed to control himself after I explained and thus narrowly escaped landing on my shit list — barely.
Now I had only to figure out what I would say to Colt, whose expression was unreadable about these disastrous last ten minutes. We arrived at my SUV, which was packed with boxes and bags, and I busied myself opening the trunk and shuffling the boxes around.
Even without looking, I felt Colt’s looming presence right behind me. Whenever his body was near, it was like electric sparks ran over my skin.
He cleared his throat, and I slowly turned to face him. His massive chest was so close that my nose almost touched it, and I sucked in a sharp breath. He obviously took this as a sign of discomfort because he immediately backed away a little. The last thing I wanted was for him to get the impression I was afraid or uncomfortable in his presence.
“No, wait.” Without thinking, I grabbed his forearm and pulled him over to the side of my car, where we were somewhat protected from prying eyes. Although, Colt’s head was still sticking out over the car roof.
“Look, I, um …” I scrambled for an explanation, something believable — anything. Being sandwiched between two cars with his intoxicating scent swirling around me didn’t help either.Come on, Hailey, focus.
“Girlfriend?” he asked, his voice gruff and deep.
“Well … yeah, about that.” Struck by a flash of inspiration, I blurted out, “I don’t date. I just don’t. And honestly, being a cheerleader, I know I’m going to attract a lot of attention from the wrong kind of guys — jerks who won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. I thought, maybe … if you didn’t mind … you could pretend to be my boyfriend, just to keep them off my back?”
He stared at me with a blank expression.Shit.
“Just for a little while,” I rushed to clarify, “until I’m not the new girl anymore.”
Under normal circumstances, I’m sure he’d never have considered going along with it, but since I’d already fed this story to one of his teammates, I hoped he’d beswayed. “I know it wasn’t cool of me not to ask you before and … oh fuck, please tell me you don’t already have an actual girlfriend?”
“I don’t.” The blank mask on his face fell a little as I gazed up at him with big eyes, and for a second, I thought I recognized something like disbelief.
“Colt, I am so sorry for putting you in this situation. Of course, it was an absolutely dumb idea, I’ll tell Knox the truth next time I see him—”
“Why did you do it?”
“Why did I do what?”
His eyebrows furrowed. “Why did you decide to tell Knox that you’re my girlfriend?”
“I …” I swallowed hard and leaned back against my car. “I don’t like prejudice. I could tell just by looking at him that he thought I couldn’t be yours, and it pissed me off, so I wanted to prove him wrong.”
He tilted his head, and his lips twitched. “Interesting.”
“Yeah, like I said, it was a stupid idea to just assume—”
“I’ll do it.”
“You’ll do it?”
“Yup.” He nodded.
