Chapter 11
Daphne
I stood in front of my closet like it held the answers to life’s biggest questions.
It didn’t.
Blouses, dresses, jeans I hadn’t worn since college—none of them screamed fake girlfriend attending high-stakes team dinner with the league’s most emotionally repressed star.
I tried on a red dress. Too bold. Then a cream sweater.
Too casual. Then jeans and a bodysuit. Too I didn’t try, but not in a cute way.
By the time I settled on a silky black top with a deep neckline, tailored blazer, and ankle boots sharp enough to kill a man, I was ten minutes behind schedule and exactly at the right level of chaotic confidence.
Classy but bold. The outfit said I’m hot but unimpressed.
Which, let’s be honest, was sort of my entire brand.
My phone buzzed.
Nora.
Send pics. If he doesn’t lose his mind, I’ll sue.
I snorted and sent her a mirror selfie—half-body, good lighting, one raised brow for dramatic effect.
He won’t even blink.
Another ping.
That man would blink if you called his name while unbuttoning his shirt.
I laughed. Loud enough to scare the cat, who blinked slowly at me from the windowsill before going back to ignoring me.
Leave it to Nora to throw gasoline on my already blazing nerves. I hadn’t told her I’d spent all morning replaying Kieren’s last text in my head. You couldn’t if you tried. That one line had looped so many times I might’ve accidentally turned it into a love song.
Not that it meant anything. Obviously.
It was a fake relationship. A show. A cover story for the media and management and whoever else needed West Michigan’s most brooding defender to seem like a functioning human.
Still… his voice had been softer lately. His eyes less guarded. Like maybe—just maybe—he didn’t hate this whole situation as much as he pretended.
I stared at my reflection one more time. Smoothed the blazer. Took a breath.
“You’ve got this,” I muttered to myself. “It’s fake. You’re fine. You’re wearing boots that say don’t test me. What could possibly go wrong?”
I reached for the doorknob just as a knock landed on the other side.
The timing startled me—one of those weird, magnetic coincidences that made my stomach dip. I opened the door.
And there he was.
Kieren Walker in a tailored charcoal suit and a black dress coat that fit him like a secret weapon. His tie was dark—maybe navy, maybe midnight—and the wind caught just enough of his silver-streaked hair to make him look like someone had summoned him out of a fantasy. Brooding. Sharp. Unfair.
I took one step back.
“Wow,” I said, because subtlety had officially died in my throat.
He looked me over slowly, eyes skating down from my blazer to the boots, lingering a second too long on the neckline of my silk top.
There was definite heat there. That low simmer I’d only seen flare when he was yelling at refs or getting dangerously close to smiling.
“You clean up all right,” he murmured.
I arched a brow. “You saying I looked like trash before?”
“I’m saying,” he said as his gaze locked with mine, “I’d rather not be held responsible for what happens if you keep looking at me like that.”
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
He smirked. “Fake girlfriend or not, that top’s a hazard.”
I narrowed my eyes but stepped forward. “Let’s get this over with before you start writing poetry.”
His chuckle was low and warm, and he placed a steadying hand on the small of my back, guiding me toward the curb like we were the kind of couple who did this all the time.
The kind who touched casually. Easily.
The kind who didn’t feel their pulse spike every time skin met skin.
It was January in Michigan, and the air bit hard—sharp as glass and dry as paper. My breath fogged immediately. The pavement had been salted, but there were still patches of slippery frost where the ground hadn’t absorbed the sun all day. My boots tapped over the sidewalk with cautious clicks.
“Careful,” Kieren said, anchoring his hand firmer against me as I stepped around a slick spot.
“I’ve walked on ice before,” I replied, though I didn’t pull away.
“Yeah, but those boots are trying to kill you.”
I scoffed. “They’re my favorite pair.”
“They’re death traps.”
“They’re fashion.”
“Same thing.”
His car beeped from the driveway, sleek and black, practically steaming in the cold. He opened the passenger door for me like a gentleman—or someone playing one. I slid in, pulse thudding in my throat, and he circled around to the driver’s side.
The door shut with a satisfying thunk.
And just like that, we were in a metal box together. Heat on low. Tension on high.
Kieren didn’t look at me right away. He adjusted something on the dash, jaw tight, eyes forward.
But I could feel it.
That same pull from the taco shop. The soccer field. The walk that wasn’t supposed to matter.
And somewhere between the frosted windshield and the faint brush of his fingers on my coat earlier…
I stopped pretending it didn’t.
The car was quiet, aside from the rhythmic swipe of the windshield wipers and the low hum of the heater. Outside, the world was washed in grey—slush on the curbs, snowbanks stacked like tired barricades. The kind of cold that settled into your bones, no matter how long you sat in the car.
Kieren drove with one hand on the wheel, the other resting loosely in his lap. Relaxed. Confident. The same way he walked across a pitch, like the entire world had to shift to make room for him.
I shifted in my seat.
“So… is there anything I should know?” I asked, keeping my voice casual.
His eyes flicked toward me, then back to the road. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, it’s a team dinner, right? Are there any hot-button topics I should avoid? Weird inside jokes I won’t get? Do you have expectations for how I should act?” I twisted slightly toward him. “How do you want me to behave?”
That got his attention.
He gave me a sharp sideways look. “What are you talking about?”
I immediately regretted asking. My gaze slid to the window, focusing on the blur of headlights smearing across the frost. “Forget it.”
Silence pooled in the car again. Not the comfortable kind. The thick, awkward kind that filled the space between people who weren’t sure how close they were allowed to be.
After a beat, Kieren spoke.
“You made a comment earlier,” he said quietly. “About embarrassing me.”
I stayed quiet. Watching the ice form at the edge of the glass, like it might spell out a way to disappear from this conversation.
He continued, “Is that what you think? That you’re going to embarrass me?”
Something in his tone pulled my attention back. Not defensive. Not amused. Curious. A little too soft.
I scowled. “No. I just—” I exhaled hard. “I’m not exactly in my element here, okay? I’m not a model, or a soccer WAG, or whatever type of girl usually shows up on your arm.”
He made a noise under his breath. “WAG?”
“Wives and girlfriends,” I snapped. “And before you act like I made it up, the tabloids have been using it for years.”
“Yeah, I know what it means,” he said. “Just didn’t peg you as someone who cared what a tabloid says.”
“I don’t,” I muttered, heat rising in my cheeks. “But your teammates might. And Hayashi definitely will.”
His jaw ticked, and for a second, I thought he might shut the whole conversation down.
Instead, he said, “Hayashi’s not the one I’m fake dating.”
My stomach did that annoying flip again.
He glanced at me. “You think I’d do all this if I thought you’d screw it up?”
I didn’t answer right away.
Because deep down, I wasn’t worried about screwing it up for him.
I was worried about what it meant if I didn’t.
Kieren didn’t look at me right away. His grip on the steering wheel was relaxed, casual. But his voice? Steady in a way that made me feel anything but. “You don’t have to prove anything tonight,” he said. “Just be yourself.”
It was such a simple sentence, so calm, so… not what I expected.
I blinked at him. “That’s either the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, or a trap.”
That earned the smallest smirk from him. “Guess you’ll have to wait and see.”
Before I could fire back, we turned onto the curved driveway leading to the restaurant.
Up ahead, valet attendants in long black coats waited beneath golden heaters, and just beyond them—flashes.
Cameras.
People.
I instinctively straightened my spine.
Kieren shifted into park, unhurried, like he didn’t even notice the chaos waiting outside the windshield. “Ready?” he asked.
“No.”
He just gave me that aggravatingly confident look, the one that said he already knew I’d step out of the car, anyway.
And I did.
As soon as I stood, the cold slapped me in the face. Sharp and dry, January in Michigan had no mercy—even with salted sidewalks and patio torches burning.
But the flash of bulbs came next, snapping like tiny fireworks. I barely had time to react before Kieren’s hand found the small of my back.
Warm.
Firm.
Possessive.
He drew me in with the ease of someone who’d done this before—a slight tilt of his body, a subtle brush of his fingers at my waist, his palm settling like it belonged there.
My arm brushed his chest as we walked, close enough to make a show of it, close enough that I could smell his cologne under the crisp winter air. Cedar and heat and something unfair.
Flashes popped. People called his name. I kept my eyes forward and my chin up, heart hammering against my ribs like it wanted out.
We stepped through the heavy glass doors into something out of a magazine.
The restaurant was sleek and low-lit, all modern wood and stone with flickering candles in glass votives. Jazz played quietly beneath the murmur of conversation and clinking silverware.
In the far corner—no surprise—the Storm had taken over.
A cluster of beautiful, loud, glittering people filled two long tables. Expensive watches, flawless teeth, confident laughter that made the whole room feel like it revolved around them.
I knew some of them by face. Others by tabloid drama.