Fake Fiancée

“Ryn was with me.”

So? My lips tightened. Just hearing her name, knowing that she suspected we weren’t real, drove me insane. Sometimes, I was even surprised she hadn’t gossiped more about us or at least tried to tell the media. Maybe she did care about Max.

“Nothing happened,” he said.

I flipped back around and let the fridge slam shut behind me. “I don’t care. It’s fine. Come on. You can finish the movie with us, but after that I need to study.” I started to walk away.

“She broke up with Felix.”

I froze, my pounding heart the only thing I could hear for a moment.

I turned back to him. “Are—are you getting back with her?”

He reared back. “Fuck no.”

“If you want to, I’ll understand. We can ‘break up’ early . . .”

“Stop it. I don’t want her . . . haven’t in a long time.” His voice was gruff.

“Yeah?”

He nodded. “I didn’t touch her except to make sure she got in her apartment. We made sure Felix wasn’t there and left. End of story.”

He followed me into the den and sat next to me on the couch. Isabella and Ash sent us curious glances, and I figured it was easy to see things weren’t quite right. Finally the movie ended and they both left. I saw them to the door and made a date to have lunch with them soon.

When I walked back into the den, Max’s words hit me in the face.

“I remember you,” he said quietly, a tumultuous look in his eyes.

My heart jumped. Trembling, I stumbled to the couch and plopped down next to him before my legs could give out. My world shifted, realigning itself and I cupped my cheeks, feeling, checking to see if this moment was real.

For a moment I couldn’t breathe.

This is what it feels like to lose your breath over a guy, I randomly thought.

I just looked at him.

He squeezed my hand. “I think my subconscious has been trying to tell me for a long time, and tonight I had a dream about a girl whose car went into a lake.” His face filled with wonder. “You’re that girl . . . the one who ran away into the woods. You were so beautiful . . .” he stopped, pinching the bridge between his nose, contrition on his face. “You ran away—and I let you. God, I should have gone after you and given you a ride . . . something.”

I bit my lip. “I wouldn’t have let you. It all happened so fast for me to think really, but I couldn’t involve you in my mess.”

“It was the night you left your dad, wasn’t it?” He focused piercing eyes on me. “You must have been terrified. I mean, now—it all makes sense.”

I nodded. “Yes.”

He touched my hair, almost gingerly, and let his hand drift down my cheek to my arm. He laced our fingers together. “My mom died the night of your wreck. One second we were getting the keys to our cabin, and the next she was lying on the ground. She’d been complaining of a headache for days . . .” He cleared his throat, emotion working his face. He tugged at his bottom lip.

I slid over closer to him and rested my head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

He leaned against me and we supported each other. “It happened the summer before I came to Leland. We were on a last little hurrah vacation together—and then you—it was like I was there, but I wasn’t, ya know? In the days after she died, sometimes I couldn’t recall what I’d had to eat that morning. All I did was play football, and it saved me. But how could I . . . forget you?”

The saying maybe he’s just not that into you came to mind, but I didn’t say it. I believed the universe had pulled strings for us—but did he?

“Stop.”

“Stop what?”

“I see your wheels turning. Look at me.” He turned my chin toward him. “I’m sorry I didn’t remember you from three years ago. My brain just filed it away—or locked it up—I don’t know. Maybe I wasn’t ready to see it? Does that make sense?”

I nodded.

“And tonight? I’m sorry I didn’t text you. It was an oversight.”

I blinked, because it felt like he was changing the subject too fast, as if he was unsure about dissecting the night we met.

But I went with it. “I believe you about Bianca.” He wasn’t Bart, and he never would be.

Relief crossed his face. “Thank God.” His thumb caressed my lips. “Sunny . . . I want you so much that it scares the fuck out of me.”

“I’m scared too.” Of getting my heart shattered. Of you not having the same feelings for me that I have for you.

He kissed me, his lips soft but then insistent, his tongue demanding.

My anxieties were shoved away, and my overwhelming need for him skyrocketed. We’d been apart so long. I whipped my shirt off and his fingers traced the outline of my breast then dipped in to skate across my nipple, strumming it, making me moan.

We went at each other like crazed animals.

He jerked his shirt off while I unclasped my bra, and within seconds we were skin to skin, brushing against each other. His forearms lifted me up and sat me in his lap while I kissed down his throat to his chest, my teeth nipping at him and then soothing it with kisses.

He tugged down my pants and shoved my underwear to my knees, his fingers finding me like a homing beacon. He strummed me, and I moved with him, arching into his every stroke.

“You’re drenched,” he growled. “Fucking mine.”

Almost frantic, he unsnapped his jeans and pushed them down just enough to pull out his cock. Straddling him, I stroked him up and down as he played with my breasts, sucking on one then the other, his scruff like fire, hurting so good.

“I don’t have a condom,” he whispered in my ear. “But I’m clean.”

I wanted him like that. I rotated my center against his hard length. “I’m on the pill.”

“Fuck, yes,” he groaned.

He tossed his head back and called out my name as I settled him in deep.

But then he took over. Fast. Furious. Perfect.

Hands held my hips and he thrust into me. He tangled a hand up in my hair and tugged my head back, and once my neck was arched, he sucked me hard. It made me hotter. Desperate. Wetness dripped between us. I screamed his name when I went over the edge.

He came soon after, satisfaction and something else that I couldn’t read on his face as he kissed me.

Max

HOMECOMING ARRIVED. ALL WEEK I’D been obsessively studying the opposing team’s defense and perfecting my pass. I was not going to lose another fucking game. Then my dad called and announced he’d be at the game tonight. Encouraged by Millicent and my chance at the Heisman, he was eager to come. I hadn’t seen him since last Christmas, and it was screwing with my head.

Ryn pulled me to the side as we waited to take the field. “What the hell is wrong with you today? You’re distracted.”

He wasn’t wrong. Stress was eating at me. Every single thing I did, every play I made was crucial.

I rubbed my head. “I’m fine.”

But I played like shit during the first half. We were up by ten when the defense read my play, and I threw the ball right into the beefy hands of one of the Carolina players, who ran it back for a touchdown.

At halftime, my gaze locked with Sunny’s and I sent her a two-finger kiss and held it up. It was something she’d come up with early in the season—a public display to make me look good when the news covered me or it was photographed.