Page 62 of Test the Ice
“Didn’t you see the ring on her finger?” I ask. “She’s taken.”
“She is?”
I follow his line of sight, and a feeling I haven’t felt since my hot seventh-grade teacher informed the class that she was married settles into the pit of my stomach. Raging, hot jealousy sends my reflexes haywire as I stare at Reese bent over at the waist with her perfect peach up in the air, fixing something on Daisy’s costume.
I lift my stick and jam it into Lars’s stomach.Relax, I sent it into his pads.
“Yeah, she’s taken.” A hot flush spreads against my skin. “By me.”
Lars shoves my stick away. “You’re engaged?”
A few of my teammates come to a skidding halt against the ice. “What did you just say?”
I spin and skate backward to face my teammates, who all similarly share a look of shock. “Yeah.” I’m nonchalant. “That’s my fiancée.”
“Bullshit,” Hayes mumbles through a laugh.
Emory skates out from the net and angrily pulls his mask up. “It’s true. Now quit gossiping and chuck some pucks at me.”
“I didn’t even know he was dating anyone," someone mutters on their way past.
I make eye contact with Emory, and he shakes his head with disappointment before he fixes his mask.
He has no room to judge, though. He marrieda stripper he barely knew, for fuck’s sake.
Twenty-Two
REESE
I feel like a fraud.
I’m sitting in the first row, right next to the bench, cheering on my pretend fiancé with a ring on my finger that doesn’t belong.
The only thing that isn’t fake about this entire evening is that I’m surprisingly absorbed in what’s happening on the other side of the ice.
I won’t admit that I’m actually impressed, butwow.Daisy wasn’t kidding when she said the games are fast and exhilarating.
Kind of like this whole engagement with Malaki.
With Daisy being too busy to sit with me, I’m just waiting for the gleam of my ring to catch her eye before I fill her in–or maybe I’ll get lucky, and she’ll never notice, and I won’t have to explain myself. She thinks I’ve finally just decided to take her advice and come to one of the games, which couldn’t be further from the truth.
The whistle blows, and I’m back to cheering the Blue Devils on.
They’re aggressive, and fast.
Especially Malaki.
It’s hard not to gravitate toward him, and that has nothing to do with our growingfriendship?
Are we friends?
Fake lovers?
I freeze at the thought. We arenotfake lovers.
We’re friends.
Friends who act engaged. Totally normal, right?
