Page 170 of The Fake Date Agreement

“There’s no girl.”

He stares at me, his lips flat. “You jocks are all the same, aren’t you? All fucking whatever girl shows you the first bit of attention.” He steps up to me. “Well, Tobie is mine. She was mine first, and she isstillmine.”

“Until you humiliated her and broke her heart,” I say softly, dropping my smile. “Or have you forgotten about that?”

His fists clench as he steps up to me.

“As you were so eager to point out, I’m a lover, not a fighter,” I tell him, smiling slightly. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t or won’t put a fool down when he bites off more than he can chew.”

He’s working himself up to throwing his first punch when a familiar voice calls out, “Everything good?”

Marc takes one look at my teammate and does the smart thing by backing up. There’s a reason we call Theo ‘The Animal’ on the ice, and if this guy has been to a game or two, he’d be a fool to do anythingbutwalk away from the six-foot-four defenseman built like a tank.

“This isn’t over,” Marc warns and stalks away.

I watch him for a bit, just to confirm he actually is going before I turn to my teammate. After what he did to Caleb, I’d be a fool to turn my back on him.

Theo glances from Marc to me. “What was that all about?”

I shake my head. “You don’t want to know.”

I’m not sure I know what it was about, other than jealousy. I haven’t so much as looked at another woman since Tobie entered my life. And I won’t. Why would I when Tobie is everything I would ever want or need?

Theo cocks his head, still curious as I open the door, and we head inside the building. It’s evening, so music and the distant sound of a television playing drift from the common room.

He’s on the sixth floor. When we walk back from practice together, he heads for the elevators while I take the stairs for thefirst. But when he trails me to the staircase, I raise my eyebrow. “Didn’t get enough steps today?”

“Something like that.”

He doesn’t say a word as we walk up the stairs.

“Why do I think there’s something you’re not saying?” I ask.

He doesn’t respond, though he looks deep in thought.

I’m turning to walk away when he says, “How do you do it?”

I angle my head back. “Do what?”

“The girls. It can’t just be because of the accent.”

I smile. “If I were to tell you that, I’d be spilling all my secrets.”

He nods and continues upstairs.

I eye him for a beat.

Keeping secrets from teammates isn’t easy when we’re around each other so much of the time. We train together several times a week, travel for hours on the team bus for away games, and socialize as well, so we’re a stronger, close-knit unit.

It’s how I’ve worked out something that Theo would prefer I didn’t know.

“Have you tried telling her how you feel?”

He takes the next step up, then stops. “It’s not that easy.”

“Well.” I pull open the door for my floor. “You won’t get far with the girl that I’ll pretend not to know if you don’t tell her how you feel.”

I walk to my room and unlock the door. Just before it slams shut behind me, Theo catches it. “You don’t know who it is.”

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