All Chapters of Fake dating the Captain's step brother : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Kayla povI sat cross-legged on my bed beside Priya, my best friend and next-door neighbor, my eyes glued to her phone as she scrolled through the page I'd been dying to see all summer. Tomorrow was my first day at Ashbourne Academy. Tomorrow, I'll see him again. The photo filled the screen.I smiled at the photo of him, mid-stride on the ice, hockey stick in hand, that same stubborn set to his jaw I remembered from a rink half a world away. Okay, fine. We Googled him four times in the last hour. Maybe five."You've done the smile again, Kayla," Priya said, not looking up.I grabbed a fistful of my bedsheet and pulled it close, pressing it to my nose like it could hold me together."You don't know how it feels," I said softly. "Seeing him again.""He's just a hockey captain every girl in this academy likes," she said. "Except me."My head whipped toward her. I hadn't expected her to say it like that, like he was ordinary, like he hadn't rearranged my entire childhood in six weeks.I l

Cole povI recognized her immediately. The second I stepped out of the car, I saw it, her eyes lighting up with recognition, with something close to excitement, like she'd been waiting years for exactly this moment. I shattered it without breaking stride. Walked straight past her, past the box she held out like it meant something, like a decade could be undone with chocolate and buttercream.I hadn't forgiven her. I wasn't sure I ever would.A few months after she disappeared that summer without a word, my mother did the exact same thing. I woke up one morning and she was just gone, no goodbye, no explanation, nothing but an empty side of the closet and a silence my father never bothered to fill. Not long after, he married someone else. Brought home a woman, and with her, a stepbrother I never asked for.Two women. Both gone without a word. And now one of them was standing in my hallway holding a cake like ten years hadn't happened.When she found me at my locker, all I could see was

Cole povMy shirt was stuck to my back by the time I got through the front door, the kind of tiredness that lived in my shoulders more than my legs. The coach had run us twice as long as usual, said something about the season opener making us look like we'd never seen ice before. Nobody argued. Nobody ever did.I dropped my bag by the stairs and headed for the kitchen, already thinking about food, water, a shower, in that order, when I passed the living room and saw Rhys sprawled across the couch, phone in his hand, that stupid half smile on his face he only wore when he thought nobody was watching.I almost kept walking. Almost.Then the screen lit up again, another message, and something in me stopped moving before I'd decided to stop.I told myself I didn't care who he was talking to. I told myself that the whole way across the room, and I was still telling myself that when I leaned over the back of the couch and read the name at the top of his screen anyway.Kayla.Her last messag

Rhys povThe second we walked through the doors, three sales associates converged on us like they'd been waiting behind the racks for exactly this moment."Mr. Sterling." The one in front, tall, polished, already reaching for Kayla's jacket like it was the most natural thing in the world. "Welcome back. What can we get started for you today?""She needs something for a formal event," I said, nodding toward Kayla. "Saturday night. Something that actually gets noticed."Kayla stood a step behind me, arms crossed loosely over her chest, eyes moving over the racks with the kind of stillness that told me she was doing math in her head, calculating exits, calculating cost, calculating whether this was a mistake she could still walk back from.I knew that look. I'd seen it on plenty of people who weren't used to walking into rooms like this one."Relax," I said, low enough that it was just for her. "Nobody's going to bite.""I'm relaxed.""You're doing the arms thing.""I don't have an arms

Kayla povPriya reached me before the door had even fully closed behind Cole and Rhys, breathless, her hand closing around my wrist."Did you see his face?" she said. "Cole's face. He looked like someone had knocked the wind out of him."I had seen it. I'd been standing close enough to catch the exact moment his jaw locked, the way his shoulders had gone rigid before he crossed the hallway and pulled Rhys away without a word. My chest was still doing something strange and hopeful about it, something I didn't fully trust."Maybe he remembers me," I said, quietly, testing the words before I let myself believe them. "Maybe that's what this was."Priya's face didn't share my hope. She tilted her head, studying me the way she did when she was about to say something I didn't want to hear."Or," she said, gentler than usual, "his brother just got a date to the biggest event of the year, and Cole hates losing. Any version of losing. Even ones he doesn't actually want."I opened my mouth to a