Page 12 of The Closed Off Captain

“I don’t know.” She comes and stands right next to me, and I lower the phone so she can see too. I wish she wasn’t standing quite so close to me; she smells good. Really good; it’s hard to focus on whatever it is I’m supposed to be focusing on. I push those troublesome thoughts away and give all my attention to the screen. I rewind it a little bit, thinking maybe I missed something. We watch as the interview finishes, and I stand up to walk away.

“I don’t know what I’m missing,” I say.

“Wait,” she says absently. “They must say something about you in the next segment. Let me watch really quickly, so I know how to handle it.”

“Well, that was Gunner Coftman from the Green Thunder. He is one of six captains we’ve been talking to—” He stops talking and points. Suddenly, the camera pans. I stare in shock as the camera catches me staring down the director.

“If I ever see you put hands on her again, you won’t like what happens.” My jaw tightens as I process what I’m seeing and hearing.

The idiot director spouts off his nonsense. “Then don’t have her in here for an interview; she’s a liability. She almost walked up there during the interview. Twice.”

“Then you should have let her. Don’t manhandle her again.”

“Unbelievable.” The director leaves the screen, and then it’s just Chloe and me. She stares up at me, and the look I’m giving her...I palm the back of my neck. The cameras aren’t close enough to pick up our private conversation, but no words are needed. The image does the perfect job of making us look far too cozy. The camera pans back to the co-hosts who are grinning like cheshire cats.I never liked those two.

“Well, that was interesting,” one of the guys says.

“No.” Chloe takes my phone from me and clicks on the comments. “No.” She scrolls down. “No, no, no.”

I don’t have to read the comments to know what they say. They set that up perfectly. I can’t do anything while she has my phone, so I just wait. She finishes a moment later and all but shoves it back at me. “This is a mess. The comments are a hot mess. Everybody’s already paired us up.” She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath; I’ve seen her do this before when she’s super stressed. The urge to comfort her hits me hard, and I take a small step backwards. “Okay. Okay. We can deal with this. Who actually is the girl that’s going to be your fiancé? We need to geton this asap. We’ll set you up on a few dates, get her a ring, get her to come to some of your games and take photos. We’ll clear all this up. Okay, who is she?” She looks up at me expectantly. And suddenly, I can’t form a coherent word. “Coftman?”

I force the words out, looking around first to make sure there’s nobody around trying to take pictures or anything. “I don’t have anybody.” My words are so low, I’m sure she can barely hear them.

“What?” She steps closer.

“I don’t have anybody,” I repeat.

She stares at me in shock. “But in the interview, you said you had a fiancé.” I nod. “But you don’t have anyone?”

“I panicked and went with what we talked about. This wasyouridea,” I feel the need to point out. She closes her eyes again, and this time I get the distinct impression that she’s counting. Something about it, that I’m the one driving her to do it, makes me want to laugh. I don’t because I’m pretty sure she’d murder me.

She takes a deep breath. “It’s so good I don’t drink alcohol,” she mutters under her breath. At least that’s what I think she says. “Okay. We go back to the original plan. Everything is back on track. We just get a woman, put a ring on her finger, and you have a fiancé. We just need somebody like today. Did any of your teammates’ wives’ have anybody?” I palm the back of my neck again and feel the heat rising in my checks. I need to get back to the ice and work out some of this tension in my body. “Did they?” she asks again.

“No.”

“Okay. Who do you know?” she asks boldly. “What women have you gone on dates with that you could handle being fake engaged to?”

“None.”

“What do you mean none?” she asks. “Gunner, this is serious. We have to find somebody. You announced to the entire world that you’re engaged. You can’t be suddenly not engaged.”

“I did that because you told me to,” I remind her.

“Well, yeah, once we had a girl.” She narrows her eyes at me. “You know if you wouldn’t have avoided me all week, we could have worked this out for today. But you refused to talk to me.”

“That’s because I don’t want some woman I don’t know pretending to be my fiancé. I’m not a good actor; I can’t pull that off.”

“Well, then what are we supposed to do, Gunner?” she asks exasperated. A small thrill goes through me that she actually called me by name instead of my last name. I don’t think she even realizes she did. “You maybe shouldn’t have announced it on live tv if you weren’t planning on going that route.”

“You do it.”

Silence falls, and I watch her carefully. Her eyebrows nearly hit her hairline. “What?”

“You do it. Play the part of my fiancé. Everybody already thinks we’re a couple after that video, so just go with it.” I shrug, even though nothing about this conversation is easy. She stares at me, and I think I might have actually stunned her to silence. I refuse to let the smile escape that wants to, only because I’m worried she’ll murder me where I’m standing.

“I’m the PR agent for the team; you play for the team. We work together! We can’t date or be engaged or whatever!” She throws her hands up at this.

“We can,” I say quietly. “I looked into it.”

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