Page 23 of Fake Out Hearts

I know his words are meant to comfort me, but the word ‘husband’ makes my stomach flutter all over again. He must see the nerves playing out on my face, because he squeezes my hand and twists in his chair to face me.

“Becca, listen to me,” he says, dropping his head a little to hold my gaze. “This is all going to work out great, okay? After we’re married for a couple of years, you’ll get your permanent residency without having to work on Shawn’s shitty reality TV show. And you can pursue your dreams. All of them. Everything you came here to do.”

I nod but still can’t seem to find any words. This all still feels so surreal, like it’s happening to someone else and I’m just an observer along for the ride.

Theo strokes my thumb with his, his expression patient and gentle. “Would it help if we talked about some of the little details?”

“Yes!” I say in a rush, because I’m realizing how badly I need it. How badly I need to feel the ground under my feet again, even if it isn’t concretely in place yet.

“Okay. Well, for starters, I think sleeping together again should be firmly off the table. What do you think?”

I nod. “Agreed. That won’t do anything other than complicate the whole situation even more.”

“Exactly. How do you feel about PDA though? If we’re going to sell this thing as real, we’ll probably need some of that, especially in public.”

“Oh god,” I groan, and Theo’s eyes shoot wide.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“It just hit me how public all of this is actually going to be. I mean, you’re a hockey player—a well-known one. And I just left another one of those with a TV show for you. The media is going to have a field day with this.”

“Only as much as we let them,” Theo insists, and all I can do is stare at him as half a dozen examples of people violated and ruined—or worse—by the paparazzi flash through my mind. Princess Diana. Britney Spears. Lindsey Lohan. The list is endless. What makes him think we’ll be any different?

“Theo, you can’t promise that. You can’t control them. You know that as well as I do.”

“You’re right, I can’t control them. But I can control their access. Plenty of power couples manage to dodge the press and keep their personal lives away from the tabloids.”

“And how the hell are we gonna do that?”

Theo bites his lower lip and shoots me a serious look. “You’ll have to move in with me in Denver,” he says, and I feel like the entire plane is spinning around me, like we’ve already taken off and are crashing back down.

It makes perfect sense. Of course I’ll have to live with him—he’s my husband now, after all—but it hadn’t occurred to me yet.

“I know it’s a huge step, but we have to do it to sell the story of our marriage, and there’s no better way to keep the world out than to build a fortress,” Theo says, keeping his voice low—which is probably a good idea, because for all we know, there could be someone in the seats around us listening to or recording our every word. Like it or not, Theo is an almost instantly recognizable guy, so it’s almost guaranteed someone on this plane has placed who he is.

“Right. Okay, yeah,” I murmur, slowly coming around to the idea. “But we can’t stay inside the house forever. How are we going to handle being out in public?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there. Luckily, we still have some time before that will be an issue.”

“We do?”

“Yeah. I’m flying back to Denver with the team later today, and we don’t have another game for a few days. That should give us enough time to work out all the logistics, get you settled in Denver with me, and let me break the news to the rest of the Aces. I’m sure the PR team will have some ideas too.”

“About what?”

“How to handle the media, how to keep things as private as we can, that sort of stuff,” Theo answers, and I breathe a sigh of relief because for a second, I worried I was already getting signed up for some social media campaign. And I’m not anywhere near ready for that.

“Okay,” I say and take another deep breath. It’s all going to be fine, just like Theo said. And I might barely know him, but Ibelieve he knows what he’s doing with the press. He’s had years of experience dealing with this sort of thing, much more than I do, so I’m going to have to trust him.

Because if we’re really going to sell this marriage as authentic, I’m going to have to start acting like it. If the media sees me falling to pieces in public, that will sink our ship before it even sets sail, so I’m going to have to learn to put on a brave face and do the dance.

And if there’s anything I know how to do, it’s dance. I’ll just have to keep putting one foot in the front of the other, one move at a time. The first move is getting back to LA to pack up my things and tie up the loose ends I have back there. Thankfully, there aren’t many, and the realization makes me grateful I wasn’t more integrated in Shawn’s life. This could be so much messier than it is.

“Buckle up, princess,” Theo says gently, snapping me out of my thoughts. “We’ll be taking off soon.”

Without me noticing, the plane has already pushed back from the gate and began taxiing toward the runway, so I belt myself in, take another deep breath, and sit back in my seat. Theo squeezes my hand again, and when I glance over at him, he gives me a small, private smile.

“Thank you,” I tell him. “I needed that.”

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