Page 129 of False Play
He shook his head adamantly then leaned in and pressed his lips to my forehead. His arms wrapped around me—tight, fierce, protective. The kind of hug that felt like a promise. “We’ll figure it out,” he murmured against my hair. “But you’re not taking the fall for this. Not alone. Not ever.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
HENRY
DID YOU SERIOUSLY ROMANCE-BOOK-FAKE-DATE ME?
I didn’t thinkeither of us got one lick of sleep last night.
We talked…a lot. We weighed every possible scenario, played out the worst-case outcomes like a bad movie on repeat. But no matter how we tried to slice it, we always came back to the same conclusion.
We needed to come clean.
There was no other way around it. Logically speaking, my father didn’t have hard evidence. All he saw was a single piece of paper with our signatures and a few vague rules. So what? It wasn’t like the media had access to it. Not unless someone handed it to them, and after the big scare we had, even though I refused to throw it away, because it will always carry the reminder of how we started, I made sure to put it in a safe place.
“Are you sure about this?” It was the first question she asked when I opened the passenger door and helped her out of the truck. We were parked in the employees’ parking lot at HQ, ready to face the music.
I nodded. “It’s the right thing to do.”
“We’re both idiots for thinking this wasn’t going to blow in our faces,” she muttered.
I squeezed her hand and brought it to my lips, pressing a soft kiss to her knuckles. “I don’t regret it one bit. It led me to you.”
Her eyes softened for a moment, but she let out a low laugh. “You have to accept it was kind of crazy, though.”
“You can blame the guys for that,” I quipped.
She patted my arm playfully. “Stop trying to pin your crazy ideas on them!”
“It’s the truth.” I chuckled. “When I proposed the idea to you, all I wanted to do was help. But…” My cheeks heated. I couldn’t believe I was confessing something so stupid. Like we were in goddamn high school.
She narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms, giving me the silent go-ahead to continue.
“Donovan may or may not have asked Aurora for advice since she loves to read romance books, and they may or may not have come up with the idea for me to take you to all these fake dates and spend time with you so you could see the real me or whatever,” I mumbled. Saying it too loud felt ridiculous and pathetic.
She gaped at me. “Did you seriouslyromance-book-fake-dateme? Like—like I’m the unsuspecting heroine and you’re the broody love interest with a secret plan to win me over?”
I scratched the back of my neck, trying not to laugh. “I mean…when you put it like that, it sounds worse.”
“Oh my God,” she said, half laughing, half horrified. “And the whole team?”
“Hayes was the master planner,” I muttered under my breath. “There was a group chat.”
Her mouth dropped open again. “A group chat?!” shegroaned into her hands. “I cannot believe I fell for something so cliché.”
“But a good one, right?” I wiggled my brows. “Slow burn, fake dating, forced proximity?—”
She raised an eyebrow. “Are you a reader now or what?”
I scrubbed my face, where some stubble was already growing. “I didn’t read any books, but I could probably get into it. Sounds fun as fuck. I could learn a thing or two, make things interesting.” I wiggled my eyebrows.
She rolled her eyes without a word. I dropped a kiss on her cheek with a laugh, and she pushed me playfully as we strode into the building.
Once we were right outside the conference room, I stopped and gently tugged Kennedy back toward me. Sometimes things could be fun and games, but now, everything was on the line. We didn’t know what was going to happen. There was so much up in the air; the uncertainty of it all was terrifying.
“Whatever happens in there,” I said, brushing her hair behind her ear, “we face it together. Okay?”
She smiled, just barely, with a silent nod.
