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The Fake Date
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2026-08-26 06:31:55"Explain to me," Coach Reyes said, dropping a phone on his desk with a photo already pulled up, "why half the internet thinks you have a secret girlfriend, and the other half thinks you're sleeping with your stepsister."
Cameron stared at the screen. It was a grainy shot from the rink last week, him and Lena, tangled together after her fall, his hand in her hair, her palms flat against his chest. Someone had caught it through the hallway window. Someone had posted it with the caption ‘Cameron Hayes and mystery girl???’ and it had exploded overnight.
"It's not what it looks like," Cameron said.
"I don't care what it looks like. I care what the scouts think it looks like." Reyes leaned back, arms crossed. "You've got NHL people watching every move you make this season. They don't want drama. They want a kid who shows up, plays clean, and doesn't turn into a headline. Right now you're a headline."
"So what do you want me to do?"
"Kill the story. Make it boring. Give them something normal to write about instead of whatever ‘this’ is." He tapped the photo. "A girlfriend. A real one, with a name and a face, so this mystery-girl nonsense dies. Or better yet, figure out who she actually is and clear it up before it turns into something you can't walk back."
Cameron didn't say anything. He was still staring at Lena's face in the photo, frozen mid-fall, mid-something, and the memory of exactly how she'd felt against him hit harder than it should have three days later.
He left the office with a plan already forming, and he hated how much he liked it.
*****
"Absolutely not."
Lena didn't even look up from her laptop, typing hard enough that Cameron half expected the keys to give out.
"You haven't even heard the whole plan."
"I heard the part where you want me to pretend to be your girlfriend. That's the whole plan. That's plan, singular." She finally looked at him, standing in her doorway like he owned it, which, fine, technically he did. "The answer is no."
"It's one week." He stepped inside without an invitation, because apparently boundaries were optional in this house. "The gossip dies down, the photo stops trending, my coach stops looking at me like I personally cost him a national title, and you go back to hating me in peace."
"I don't hate you." The words were out before she could stop them, and she watched something flicker across his face, surprised, pleased, dangerous. She cleared her throat and pushed forward. "I dislike you strategically. There's a difference."
"Noted." He sat on the edge of her desk, entirely too close, entirely too comfortable. "One week, Lena. Some hand-holding at a team dinner. A few photos on my I*******m, so the algorithm believes it. That's it."
"And what do I get out of pretending to date the most insufferable man on campus?"
Something shifted behind his eyes, calculating now, careful. "What do you want?"
She thought about the text still sitting in her phone. ‘Ask Cameron what really happened to your dad's career.’ She thought about the way he'd gone pale in the rink, the lights cutting out, the door locking before either of them could finish that conversation and he'd sworn up and down afterward it was just a facilities error, nothing more, and changed the subject so fast she still didn't believe him.
"Answers," she said finally. "You tell me everything you know about my father and yours. All of it. No more half-truths."
His jaw tightened. For a second she thought he'd refuse outright.
"Deal," he said instead, quiet. "After the week's over. I'll tell you everything."
"Why not now?"
"Because some of it isn't just my secret to give away." His eyes held hers, steady, serious in a way she hadn't seen from him before. "Trust me for a week, Lena. That's all I'm asking."
She hated that some reckless part of her already wanted to.
"Fine," she said. "One week. Fake girlfriend. Then you talk."
"Deal." He held out his hand, the same way he had that first night, and this time she took it. His fingers closed around hers, warm, sure, and neither of them let go quite as fast as the handshake required.
The team dinner was worse than she expected and better than she wanted to admit.
Cameron kept a hand at the small of her back all night, introducing her with an ease that felt unsettlingly real, laughing at things she said like he actually found them funny and not just performance for an audience of hockey players and their skeptical girlfriends. When Marco cornered her by the bar and asked, too smug, whether the rumors were true, Cameron appeared out of nowhere with two drinks and a look that sent Marco retreating without another word.
"You're good at this," she murmured, once they'd found a quiet corner.
"Good at what?"
"Pretending."
Something crossed his face, quick, gone before she could name it. "Maybe I'm not pretending all of it."
Her breath caught. "Cameron…"
"Don't." His voice was low, rough. "Don't say my name like that unless you mean something by it. I've been trying really hard to remember this is fake, and you're not making it easy."
"You're the one who put a hand on my back all night."
"You're the one who leaned into it." His eyes dropped to her mouth, and neither of them moved to close the last foot of space between them, though every instinct in her screamed to. "This was supposed to be simple."
"It was never going to be simple." She stepped closer, close enough that his breath caught audibly. "I don't think either of us is very good at pretending."
His hand came up to her jaw, thumb brushing her cheekbone, and for a moment the noise of the party fell away completely.
"One week," he said, barely a whisper. "That's what we agreed to."
"One week," she echoed, and neither of them sounded convinced.
His phone buzzed hard against the table between them, breaking the moment, and Cameron cursed under his breath as he grabbed it.
She watched the color drain from his face as he read the screen, a message from a number she recognized instantly, because it was the exact same one that had texted her three nights ago.
‘Enjoy the fake romance, Cameron. Won't be so fake when I release what I know about your father — and hers.’
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