Chapter 8
eight
The last thing I expected when I walked out of the ballet studio doors that night—still dressed in my leotard but with a sweat set pulled on over top and my bag half-zipped because I’d been in too much of a hurry to bother doing it properly—was to find Rhys Montgomery leaning against his car in the parking lot like he’d been standing there for hours.
I stopped dead in the doorway long enough for a girl from the class below mine to walk directly into my back, mutter a sorry, and keep going, and it took me an embarrassing few seconds to get my feet working again.
“Finally,” Rhys said, pushing off the car and checking his phone. “Your friends left, like, twenty minutes ago.”
“It was ten,” I said, walking toward him anyway, because standing in the doorway indefinitely wasn’t really an option. “And I had to talk to my teacher about—” I cut myself off. “You know what? I don’t have to explain my schedule to you. What are you doing here?”
He flung open the passenger-side door, then said, “Get in.” He didn’t wait to see if I would, just circled around to the driver’s side and dropped into his seat like the matter had already been settled, which, aggravatingly, it had, because the only other option was standing around an empty parking lot in full view of anyone still trickling out of the building, and I’d learned enough over the last few days to know that wasn’t a risk worth taking.
I dropped into the seat with a dramatic sigh, my bag hitting the floor between my feet harder than it needed to. “What are you doing here?”
“We’re hanging out.” He said it like it was the most obvious sentence in the English language, already pulling out of the lot before I’d gotten anywhere near my seatbelt.
“That’s not an answer. And also,” I tugged experimentally at the door handle, confirming to myself that the car was locked and I couldn’t get back out, “this is kidnapping.”
He was just lucky Sebastian wasn’t due to pick me up after ballet tonight.
Normally he would be, but he had a group project meeting on Monday evenings for the next few weeks so I’d been planning to walk home, as ridiculously far as it was.
Since swim team ended a few weeks ago, I didn’t mind getting a little extra exercise in, although I couldn’t say I was totally complaining about Rhys saving me from that fate.
Not that I would ever admit that to him.
Rhys took the turn out of the lot fast enough that I had to grab the door, and I decided, not for the first time, that there was something wrong with boys who played competitive sports. For some reason, it seemed to give them a predisposition to treating speed limits like gentle suggestions.
“Some of us would like to survive the school year without a concussion,” I said, finally getting the seatbelt buckled as he slowed down a fraction then blew past a yield sign. “And where are we hanging out?”
“The gym,” he said simply.
Well, there went my relief about not needing to walk home.
I turned my whole body toward him, pulling a leg up on the seat and ignoring the way the seatbelt was digging into my neck. “I just spent an hour and a half on pointe. My legs feel like they’re on fire. I’m still wearing ballet tights. And you want to take me to a gym.”
“Justin and Kelcey are meeting us there,” he said, completely ignoring my words.
I knew we were pretending for their sake, but it still felt like there were easier ways of pretending.
Maybe I could pitch a chill movie night—we wouldn’t even have to do anything but snuggle up on the couch.
Okay, sure, cuddling Rhys Montgomery wasn’t high up on my list of favorite activities, but it still seemed preferable to weight lifting with him.
“My dad and step-mom have decided that Justin and I need more,” he lifted his hands off the wheel long enough to make quotation marks with his fingers, “‘common ground as brothers’ and since we’re both athletes, it became this. Gym as a group sport.”
“And I’m a part of this because…”
“You’re my girlfriend,” he said. It had been two days and still those words sent a chill down my spine—and not in a good way. “So you’ve been conscripted. Congratulations. Landon’s coming too, if that helps.”
“Nobody asked me if I wanted to be conscripted.”
“Nobody asked me either. Welcome to the club.”
“And Kelcey’s coming because…?” I prompted.
As far as I saw it, Kelcey coming along was the only reason for me to come along—both because it meant Justin had set the precedent of bringing girlfriends into this weird tradition and because she was the one Rhys was pretending for.
I’d been saved from the embarrassment in front of Justin the moment Rhys jumped up to say I was his girlfriend—I didn’t need to parade around with Rhys in front of him this much to make him believe me. This was for Rhys’s benefit.
Fine, and maybe mine a little bit because now I got to see Justin again, lifting heavy weights nonetheless. I may be trapped in a fake relationship with his stepbrother right now, but I could still find the silver lining here.
“Because wherever Justin goes, Kelcey goes.” His jaw tightened when he said her name, gone as fast as it came.
I wondered what happened between them, how exactly she’d gone from dating Rhys to dating his stepbrother.
Had she started dating Justin before he and Rhys lived together, or had she met Justin through him?
Until she showed up on Saturday, I had no idea she existed, which made me wonder if they’d only started dating recently, but then again, since she didn’t go to Parkhurst, maybe it wasn’t known by many people.
I was desperate to ask Rhys about it, but I knew he would dodge the question.
The gym he brought me to had floor-to-ceiling windows and a smoothie bar built into the lobby, a much fancier place than I would have expected the average high school student to have a membership at.
I recognized Justin’s car in the lot from the times I’d seen him driving around, though he and Kelcey weren’t waiting for us outside, unlike Landon who had been leaning on the outside wall and scrolling on his phone.
As we walked up, he said, “Fair warning, Kelcey’s in a mood. ”
“When is she not?” Rhys muttered, low enough I almost missed it, and pushed through the doors before I could ask any follow-up questions.
We passed quickly through the spacious lobby, the sound of our footsteps echoing through the large expanse.
I stuck close to Rhys, feeling out of my element as he walked up to a desk and got a guest pass for me—something he reassured me was part of his membership—then to the doors of the locker rooms. He stopped and turned so suddenly that I crashed straight into his chest for the second time that day, but he easily stopped me from staggering backward as he put his hands on my shoulders and steadied me.
I blinked in surprise at the sudden touch, but he seemed completely unaffected.
“Do you have better clothes?” he asked, his gaze running down my body briefly before returning to my face.
“Little late if I don’t,” I quipped back. He stared at me flatly until I sighed and said, “I’ve got an extra outfit in my bag. Not the best workout clothes, but they’ll do.”
That said, after today, I would definitely be keeping extra clothes in my bag at all times just in case—clearly Rhys was not looking to be predictable or offering up information in advance.
I got changed quickly, switching out my tights and leotard for the black stretchy shorts and one of Sebastian’s old Parkhurst Prep Soccer T-shirts that was big enough to throw on over my leotard when needed and could work well enough for a workout over the sports bra I was already wearing.
I was sure Rhys would have some words about the shirt, but it was his own fault that I didn’t have the right clothes.
When I pushed open the locker room door, Rhys was waiting in the hallway with his back propped against the tiled wall.
He looked up as the door heavy-swung shut, and his eyes dropped instantly to my chest, tracking the faded white lettering of the Parkhurst Prep Soccer logo across the oversized shirt.
For a long, painful second, his whole expression went completely blank.
His jaw set in a rigid line pulling at the corners of his mouth, and his fingers closed around his phone with enough force that his knuckles turned white.
I bristled, tugging defensively at the oversized hem. “What?”
“Tell me you’re not wearing my rival’s jersey to my gym.” His voice was low, laced with a sudden, sharp edge that I immediately misread as pure disgust.
“It’s a T-shirt, not a jersey. And it belongs to my brother,” I snapped back, folding my arms across my chest—which only highlighted the logo more. “You didn’t give me time to go home and change, remember? Unless you brought an extra outfit in that designer gym bag of yours, you’re stuck with it.”
Rhys stared at the logo for one more beat, a strange shadow passing over his eyes before he looked up to meet my gaze.
The disgust I’d expected wasn’t there; instead, his eyes looked uncomfortably intense as if the sight of me in a Parkhurst soccer shirt was actively physically painful for him to look at.
Without breaking my stare, his arm came behind the back of his head, and in one swift motion, he was tugging his own T-shirt off and tossing it at me. I caught it just before it overtook my face and drowned me in the scent of his cologne. “Wear that instead.”
I toss it back to him. “No thank you.”
He caught it easily. “If I have to look at the Parkhurst crest for another hour, I’m going to throw up.”
“You’re so dramatic,” I muttered.
He locked eyes with me, closing the distance between us in three swift strides. He was just a breath away now. Rhys reached out and grabbed my hand, then shoved the T-shirt into it.