Page 37 of Play Your Part

She stepped back. “Yep, for the Wolves annual Halloween party. I’m still surprised you’re wasting your one team-sanctioned event with me for this. It’s not even public.”

“Exactly,” I said, grasping onto this explanation and pushing aside the one lingering in the back of my mind. The words she said the first night we met. “It seems more natural.”

“I guess the one-month mark seems as good as any,” she said with a shrug.

Right. Sometimes I forgot that next week would be four weeks since her father’s party.Four weeks.The me from a month ago would barely recognize this life—hamming it up with a girlfriend for the cameras, taking in a kid, playing the best hockey I had in years. Relaxed.

Maybe things would work out as I hoped, even if it looked different than I thought.

16

KENNEDY

EachmorningofmyAlexei-free week followed the same routine—snooze my alarm three times, force myself out of bed, run outside until I couldn’t breathe, shower, dress for work, and shovel down a bowl of cereal before shuffling out the door.

It wasn’t unlike my routine before Alexei entered my life. It took only two days for that thought to drive me a bit mad. Agreeing to fake-date Alexei meant I could cross off the last item on my list—Take a risk—but disappointingly, I stared at the remainder of the list, realizing that after a month, I accomplished nothing else.

I supposed next week’s Halloween party meant I could cross off another item, but as much as going to a party with my fake boyfriendtechnicallymade progress, it wouldn’t change my life. It certainly wouldn’t—and hadn’t—make me happy.

And yet, when I chose another item to complete to make myself feel like I had donesomething,I chose the easiest one.

On the day the Wolves returned from their road trip, I stood under the hot shower, watching blue hair dye circle the drain.

It had taken four hours to add midnight blue to my hair—a commitment by itself, but while I sat in the chair, I promised myself I would tackle something substantive next time. I would start easy by making a call to the admissions office for the University of Palmer City, UPC, and see what I would need to do to finish my degree. Knowing the information didn’t mean I had to act on it. And just because this list existed, it didn’t mean I had to finish it quickly… or at all.

That was one benefit of being left behind. I no longer had anyone to answer to.

At the insistent ringing of the doorbell, I picked up the pace and dried myself as quickly as possible. My damp legs strained as I hopped around, trying to slide into jeans. More effort than my actual workout.

The doorbell rang again. “Coming!” I shouted, though I had no idea if they could hear me. I tossed on a T-shirt, forgoing a bra in my haste. It wasn’t like I was going to leave the house—let’s be real, though, sometimes that didn’t stop me—and my boobs weren’t so large they’d be distracting in this baggy shirt anyway. When I finally reached the front door, I glanced into the peephole to see Zach Briggs, jabbing at his phone screen and frantically talking to himself.

“Oh thank God! Where have you been? I’ve been calling you!” Zach’s breath came out in pants. He dropped the phone to his side and focused on me with wild eyes. “Do you have a fire extinguisher?”

“What?”

“A fire extinguisher.” He motioned with his hands the action of taking down flames. “There’s a fire… I didn’t mean to but… Volk said if he wasn’t around, I could call you, and then you didn’t answer, so I sprinted over—”

I moved quickly to the kitchen and grabbed the extinguisher, not wanting to waste another second if there was, in fact, a raging fire in Alexei’s house. Zach sprinted back to the house as soon as I reappeared in the doorway. Despite my aching legs, I followed, running through the door Zach held open for me and directly into the kitchen. No fire alarms blared, but flames leaped out of something on the stovetop that was impossible to see thanks to an impressive amount of smoke. I didn’t waste more than a second before stepping toward the flames and pulling back the pin, raining foam until all that remained was the smoke of a dead fire.

Zach moved tentatively toward the oven. “Whoa, that was—”

“What were you thinking leaving the house with a full-ass fire raging?”

His eyes grew wide in surprise because I yelled at him. Or, I hoped, from the realization of how stupid it was to leave a fire brewing on the stovetop without doing a thing.

“I didn’t know where the extinguisher was, and you didn’t answer your phone—”

“Ever think of calling the fire department?” I asked. I was surprised Alexei didn’t have a sophisticated security system like Gemma and Matt, one that called the fire department automatically after the fire alarm beeped for longer than a minute. Over the top of us, I spotted the smoke detector hanging from the ceiling and pointed. “Did you do that?”

Zach’s ears turned full-on red. “Volk can’t find out. He’ll kick me out, and I’ll have to go back to the hotel, and Ihatedliving all alone there. Plus, he has so many video games. I don’t want to leave the video games.”

I continued to glare at him, taking a moment to absorb the word vomit hurled my way.

“Please don’t tell. Please.”

“You think he won’t find out with this mess?” I waved my arm around the kitchen. Alexei’s house looked otherwise pristine, and I had zero faith Zach could hide what happened. “Good luck with that.”

Zach followed me to the front door, but instead of closing it, he trailed me straight through it. I continued walking past the three houses separating our temporary residences. Once we reached the door, I spun to face him, causing us to collide. He was considered on the shorter side for hockey but still had several inches on me.

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