Chapter 16
lilah
I’d been staring at the same paragraph for at least thirty seconds before realizing I hadn’t absorbed a single word.
My eyes were on the page but my brain was sliding right off it, my thoughts circling the same useless track: maybe everyone will have stopped caring by now.
Maybe we can quietly end the whole fake dating thing before lunch.
Yeah, somehow I had convinced myself—against all logic, against every scrap of evidence I’d collected in seventeen years of being around other human beings—that four and a half days was enough time for a rumor to die.
Idiot.
But still, some tiny, unreasonable part of me had hoped that maybe—just maybe—the entire school would’ve gotten bored of the idea of Lilah Turner and Michael Valentine by now.
Maybe someone would’ve started a fire in the chem lab, or the headmaster’s golden retriever would have escaped and run loose around the campus, or literally anything more exciting than my accidental love life would’ve happened.
Wishful thinking. I knew better.
But it was easier to cling to this thought than to remember Sunday night in the kitchen.
How Tino had stood pressed up against me, how he looked like he was going to kiss me, and how there had been some piece of me that wanted him to do it.
I’d spent three years turning down his advances and then four days into a fake relationship, I’d almost folded. What was wrong with me?
I squeezed my eyes shut, leaned my forehead against the inside of my locker door, and muttered, “Come on, focus,” at the chapter heading on cellular respiration.
I squinted at the diagrams on the page but no matter how hard I tried, my brain refused to focus on any topic other than the boy I was fake dating.
“You look like you’re trying to mind-meld with your textbook.”
The voice startled me so much that the textbook slipped out of my hands. I scrambled to catch it before it hit the floor, but another hand got it first. A masculine hand. I let my gaze drift up to see Tino’s grinning face staring back at me and my heart kicked up a notch.
“Hey,” I said. My voice came out all breathless and I was sure he was going to notice something was off—the same fear I’d lived with all day Sunday and yesterday—but he didn’t seem to notice it at all.
“For you,” he said, holding out a Heart’s Coffee to-go cup.
When I didn’t grab it immediately, he put it on the shelf of my locker and I stared at it, wondering what it meant.
Was it a fake dating thing, trying to give the masses something to talk about?
“It has an ungodly amount of sugar in it. Like, I genuinely think this is illegal in several countries.”
Despite myself, I blinked up at him. “Really?”
“Really,” he confirmed solemnly. “You weren’t at breakfast, and I know you’re only human after you’ve had about five of those disgusting drinks. I could only carry one drink, but I’ve got some energy drinks in my locker if you need something better.”
A warmth—small, traitorous—bloomed in my chest. It only worsened when he smiled, the soft early-morning kind of grin, the one that made him look younger and irritatingly sincere.
His hair was still a little damp like he hadn’t had time to dry it after his shower and whatever cologne he used that made my stomach feel like it was doing cautious backflips.
How on earth was I supposed to focus in class when I knew Tino was in the same building as me looking like this?
I tore my gaze away from his face, and my thoughts away from him, by taking the textbook back from his hand.
It had fallen shut as he grabbed it and my papers were sticking out at awkward angles throughout the whole thing, probably all bent and rumpled now.
I opened it back up to the chapter I’d had it on before, even though I would have much rather grab the coffee and chug it as quickly as I possibly could.
But as my eyes ran over the notes on my page, my thoughts stayed focused on the coffee cup.
He hadn’t brought me coffee before class yesterday, but he hadn’t needed to because we sat together for breakfast. In fact, we’d eaten most of our meals together since we started this charade.
I hadn’t thought much of it since it wasn’t unusual for us to end up sitting together but…
“I hope you weren’t waiting for me,” I said. “At breakfast, I mean. I just had this quiz this morning and I was worried about getting here late, so I—”
“I wasn’t waiting,” Tino said, but his voice was a little too nonchalant and he shrugged one shoulder in a way that made me think he absolutely did wait for me and he didn’t want to say it. He leaned his hip against the locker beside mine, peering at the messy textbook in my hand. “So, quiz?”
“Death,” I corrected. “I have a quiz on… everything. Every single thing that has ever happened in the history of biology. Apparently.”
He angled his head, reading over my shoulder. He was close—too close, in the sense that I could feel the heat of him along my arm—and I had to physically stop myself from stepping sideways into him.
He grinned and nudged my shoulder lightly with his own. “You’ll be fine.”
“That’s bold of you to say. I’ve forgotten my own name twice this morning.”
“I can quiz you if you want,” he offered, leaning closer so he could skim the open page.
His sweater smelled faintly of laundry soap and something earthy?
I shook my head. “I think the only thing that can save me at this point is divine intervention.”
“Lucky for you,” he said, sending me a small, conspiratorial smile, “I’m basically a miracle worker.”
I snorted. “Yeah. Sure.”
“Okay, well, at least pretend I’m helping your confidence.”
“Sure,” I said softly, and flipped the page even though I hadn’t finished the previous one. “You’re very helpful. Look at you, motivating me like a supportive boyfriend.”
His eyes flicked to mine, quick but sharp.
I saw something shift in his gaze, like a flash of hurt that came and went so quickly that I wasn’t sure if I’d imagined it entirely.
Then without comment, he reached up and fixed a strand of hair that had fallen across my cheek, tucking it neatly behind my ear.
His fingers brushed my skin, the barest touch, but enough to make a quiet shiver crawl down my spine.
Fake. It was fake. And it still made my pulse stutter.
“You look tired,” he said softly.
“Wow. Romantic.”
“I meant it affectionately.”
“Uh-huh.”
He raised his hands in surrender. “All right, fine. Let me try again.” His gaze dipped to my face, and something mischievous tugged at his mouth. “You look like someone who deserves a good-luck kiss before their quiz.”
My heart did not need to react to that. It truly didn’t.
But it did.
“Tino,” I murmured, glancing up and down the hall. There were enough people for me to understand why he was suggesting it, but the thought of him kissing me just for show made my stomach twist now in a way it hadn’t last week. “Maybe not—”
“We’re dating,” he reminded me, as if that was the problem, as if I’d forgotten why he would be suggesting it.
His eyes flicked briefly to my lips. Not long enough to be too obvious, but long enough that I felt it.
I took a deep breath, torn between knowing that we needed to sell this and wanting to push him away.
It wasn’t his fault that all this fake dating was muddling my brain, making my emotions unable to sort out what was real and what wasn’t.
He was just doing what we had agreed to, and I was being the weird one for not agreeing happily.
So, I nodded and let him close the small distance.
His lips were soft—warm—gentle but certain.
One of his hands settled lightly on my waist, steadying me.
The other braced against the locker beside my head.
My fingers curled instinctively in the fabric of his school blazer—only for balance, I told myself, because the ground had suddenly become questionable.
He kissed me like we had all the time in the world.
We did not.
Because right after that second, the sharp clearing of a throat snapped both of us back to earth.
We sprang apart so far that I practically fell inside my locker and almost knocked my coffee over, righting it back up at the last second.
Tino slammed into the doors of the neighboring lockers then tried to play it off like he’d been leaning there forever.
I would have laughed if I wasn’t so mortified to see his hockey coach standing in front of us, arms crossed and eyebrows raised.
His expression hovered somewhere between I am too old for this and I regret every professional decision that led me here.
Honestly, I was feeling pretty similarly.
“Let’s remember,” he said in a tone that suggested he’d had this conversation with at least five other couples this week, “that public displays of affection have a time and a place.”
My cheeks heated and I quickly grabbed the coffee cup and took a long sip, just for something to do.
“Sorry, Coach,” Tino said smoothly, hands up. “Won’t happen again.”
Coach gave him a look that said he deeply doubted that, and honestly I couldn’t blame him. Then he turned his gaze to me, and for some reason, softened slightly. I wondered if he recognized me as Poppy’s roommate, since he’d seen her hanging around Bear often enough.
“Are you two dating now?” he asked. I just blinked in response, not sure why a teacher would be asking me about my relationship status, especially one I’d only had occasional conversations with. Would it help what Tino and I were doing for the teachers to be gossiping about us too?
Tino cleared his throat. “Uh—”
Coach held up a hand. “Never mind, don’t answer. I don’t need the details. I already have heartburn.”
Tino blinked. “We… weren’t going to give you details.”