Chapter 9
NICO
After she helped herself to a few fries and a bite of my burger, we moved on to the subject of hockey and our team, and she surprised the shit out of me by taking part in the conversation. Especially when it came to my position on the team.
Which is what he tells the table now, and Jo doesn’t disagree. “You need to find the energy you had back in Florida,” she says. “You had almost double the shots on goal there.”
It takes a few seconds to recover from her observations about my play and the fact that I find it incredibly attractive. Even if she is this emo goth girl, she also likes hockey.
My girl likes hockey.
“I also played there for three years. Of course my average is going to be higher there than for a team I’ve only been on for a few months.”
“If you look at the same months, though, you were still taking a lot more shots. It’s like you’re afraid or something since you were traded.”
I let my gaze wander over her face, the silver and black makeup she’s put on her eyes that wings out to the sides, the long lashes that fan like butterfly wings, and the dark berry lipstick that makes her lips look ripe for the taking.
Her skin has a sort of sparkle to it, and I’m tempted to cup her cheeks, discover if I might sparkle too, but I know that would make her uncomfortable, so I force myself to stop admiring her and reach for my beer instead, trying on my best flirtatious smile. “You been doing research on me?”
“Maybe,” she whispers back, and is…is Josephine—my Jojo—flirting back with me?
“Maybe I like that.”
Her throat flushes red, and I take another long gulp of my cold beer, hoping it cools my blood.
“I’m going to run to the restroom,” she tells me and slips off her chair, though I can’t even watch the way her hips sway, because that ridiculously oversized black hoodie hides most of her body.
As usual, she’s in all black, from her head to her combat-boot-covered toes.
What I wouldn’t give to see more of my fiancée’s body.
Once she’s out of sight, Cubby shakes his head. “I can’t believe you’re getting married.”
“Honestly? Me either.”
“But you love her?” JP asks, and I huff.
“Of course I love her.” At least, I hope I look like I do.
“What did Sheffy say when you told him?” Buss asks, and I toss another fry into my mouth. I informed Alex of this plan almost as soon as I concocted it. My best friend proceeded to call me an idiot and warn me that this would most likely blow up in my face.
Maybe.
But it would be worth it. To protect her from more embarrassment with her family. To give her a little happiness. It would be worth it.
“She’s a good girl,” Buss says, and I nod.
“The best.”
And for some unknown reason, I feel it’s true. Even though I barely know her at all. Aside from the fact that she’s reserved yet easygoing, cute but insecure, creative and introverted, I know deep down that she’s a good person. The best kind of person.
I feel it the same way I know how to play hockey—with my gut. An instinct.
There are worse ways I could try to secure my spot on this team. Pretending to be in love with Josephine Atkins is a piece of cake.
By the time she returns to the table a few minutes later, I’ve finished my beer, and since I promised we’d only stay for one drink, I catch her around the waist as I stand. “You ready to head out?”
She nods with a quiet, “Please.”
“We’re outta here.” I clasp hands and fist-bump my teammates, and they all smile and wave at Jo.
JP invites her to hang out again, but she doesn’t answer, and I doubt I’d be able to convince her to come out with me again since the season is starting next week.
Once it does, we won’t have many nights off, but I appreciate my friends all being cool about her.
Outside, I lace my fingers with hers, and I like that she’s stopped acting shocked every time I touch her, with her jaw open slightly, as if she’s never held hands with anyone before. As if no guy has ever put his arm around her and tugged her into his side.
I unlock my car and walk her around to the passenger side. “You have fun?”
“They’re nice guys.”
“Were you afraid they weren’t going to be?”
“No, but I only know them in passing, through my camera.”
“But that’s how you like it, isn’t it? So nobody sees you.”
She inhales deeply, blinking a few times, and even now, she’s clearly afraid of me seeing her.
It’s so obvious, her fear of sticking out, of being noticed, but now that I have noticed, I can’t stop.
Everything about her is interesting, from how her lipstick stays on even though she’s constantly sawing her teeth into her bottom lip to how she smiles but only with her mouth closed.
I like how she seems to relax around me, and I wonder if she can tell how tense she makes me.
If she knows just how much I want to impress her.
Show her she made a good choice in jumping into this pretend engagement with me.
I don’t realize how close I’m standing until she relaxes, and I force myself to step back, lower my hands from where they boxed her in, placed outside of her shoulders on the hood of my car.
“Sorry,” I murmur and clear my throat as she curls her long legs in to sit down, and I only briefly imagine them around my waist.
Briefly.
Like, less than three seconds.
But by the time I get behind the wheel, she’s nibbling on that bottom lip, and that has me wondering what it would take to remove that color from her mouth. It’s a deep reddish-purple, and it’s impossible not to imagine her lips around my cock.
I am but a lowly man.
One step up from an ape.
Trying not having dirty thoughts about my pretend fiancée is useless when I have dirty thoughts about women who aren’t my pretend fiancée on the regular. Really, it seems only appropriate I’m having them about her.
It’s monogamous.
I’m being monogamous.
I should be having dirty thoughts about her.
It’s only right.
Right?
I’m so confused about all of this that I mindlessly follow directions to her apartment on my GPS and don’t realize that we’ve arrived until Jo knocks my elbow, saying, “Where are you going?”
“Parking.”
She turns over her shoulder, presumably looking back at the entrance to her apartment. “Why?”
“Am I not supposed to park?” I find a spot by the end of the block and parallel park like a champ, but she’s not impressed like I hoped she’d be.
Then when I move to get out of the car, she stops me again. “Nico. What are you doing?”
“Walking you inside…?”
I suspect she’s only known shitheads in her life, but her blatant bafflement makes me want to drive to her hometown right now with the old hockey stick I have in my trunk. But she gives in and lets me trail her up to her hole-in-the-wall apartment.
“Can I use your bathroom real quick?” I ask as she hangs up her bag on a hook on the wall before pointing me in the direction of it, as if I would get lost.
It only takes me three strides to cross the room, and I close the door, doing my business while inspecting the small space, littered with evidence of who Josephine Atkins is.
A framed black-and-white photograph of one of the Golden Girls—the grumpy one. The only one I know for sure is Betty White, and it’s not her, but it still makes me smile that Jo would have this picture in her bathroom.
As I wash my hands, I read the Post-it stuck on the mirror. The letters are in that sort of short and stubby handwriting all the hot girls in school used, and it reads, I can’t change what anyone thinks or says about me, but I can choose not to think or say them about myself.
Again, I have a tug in my gut to go pound the faces of anyone who ever made Jo feel bad about herself. So much so that she needs a note to remind herself not to believe them.
After I dry my hands and remember that I can protect her now—at least a little bit—I do some snooping into her things.
I examine the myriad of face washes and lotions, the cases of makeup.
There is so much makeup, but the only thing I touch is the lip stain that appears purple, and I wonder if that’s what she’s wearing tonight.
If she’d ever let me watch her put it on.
I fear I could lose a few hours to watching Jojo do anything mundane—lipstick, knitting, brushing her hair.
Though, I think I might like to do that, brush her hair.
I force myself to move away from her hairbrush and open the bathroom door to find her playing on her phone. With her long hair down, like a curtain around her face, and her extra-large black clothes all the time, it’s as if she’s trying to blend into the background.
Except now that I’ve seen her, I can’t ignore her.
She will never fade into the background for me.
“What made you want to be a photographer?” I ask once she raises her gaze to me, her eyes reminding me of Los Angeles.
Of when the chauffeur used to drive me through the Hollywood Hills to early-morning practices, the air hazy and sky barely lit, with sandstone mountains above and rich brown earth below.
Sinking into those eyes almost feels like going home.
She eventually shrugs. “I’ve always loved it. Ever since my grandmother gave me a little Polaroid camera when I was a kid.”
I take a chance and join her on the edge of her bed, sitting next to her. “What did you take pictures of?”