Page 15 of Rule 3: Never Fake Marry the Coach's Son
“I can deal with non-private, Dmitri.”
Marrying my crush? That’s another story. But I’m handling it.
This is to help Dmitri. And I want to do anything to help him. If marrying him is that thing, then I’ll do it.
Easy.
Nothing strange about it. No way.
“We will need to buy rings in Vegas,” Dmitri says. “I do not know your ring size. I am sorry.”
He looks so genuinely apologetic that my heart twists. The early morning light catches on his dark lashes as he glances down.
“I wouldn’t expect you to know my ring size,” I say. “Idon’t know my ring size.”
“We will measure for you. For both of us.”
“Okay.” My voice still has that breathless quality that I hate.
“Is platinum okay?” He leans closer. “There’s black titanium too.”
“I think platinum is nice.” I stare at my hands, trying to imagine his ring there. “Whatever is cheapest.”
He frowns. “This is your wedding, Oskar. Expense is not an issue.”
“Oh.”
“Need to decide what bands should say.”
“Right.” I swallow hard.
I suddenly wish I’d seen all those wedding shows that my sisters used to watch.Say Yes to the Dress. God, getting intoSeeking Mr. Rightearlier would probably have helped me too.
“What sort of things are normal practice for putting on rings?”
“It should be a date and something about our love.” He scrunches his lips. “Well, we started hanging out when you joined the Blizzards on June 10th. We can put that and just ‘I love you.’”
“I love you?”
He turns toward me, and I swear to God that my skin prickles as if rising up toward him.
“You are my best friend. Of course, I do.”
“Right.” I nod hastily, my heart attempting a symphony.
He frowns, then slides his large hand onto my knee. Heat seeps through my pants. “And soon you will be my husband.”
My chest squeezes. Dmitri isn’t supposed to say those words to me. Even in my dreams, and I hate that he appears in them sometimes, since it seems like a betrayal of our friendship that sometimes at night he enters my sleep and does things that he would never want to do.
Because I’m not for him. I never will be.
And I hate that each night when I do go to bed, I wonder if Dream Dmitri will appear. That version who kisses me and does all the things that Real Dmitri would recoil from. The things, God, I haven’t done. The things I’ve only seen when I’ve ventured onto certain webpages.
“Does this make you nervous?”
“No,” I lie, my voice cracking.
We’re friends. And now we’ll be permanently attached on our lifelong paper trails.
