Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
juniper
So, which game do you want me to kick your ass at first?” I teased as we entered the fairgrounds again the next day.
“Which one’s your favorite?” he asked, not answering my question.
“Ooh.” I thought about it for a moment. “Probably the ping-pong toss.”
“Play a lot of beer pong while you were at SGU?”
Heat rose to my cheeks. I was the reigning champ of beer pong at my—Brady’s—house. I could run the table all night. “A couple times here and there,” I replied in a self-effacing manner.
“I’ll take that as a yes, then.” He smirked, nudging me with his elbow.
I stuck out my tongue. “I guess you’ll just have to find out,” I teased.
“What does the winner get?”
“What do you think the winner should get? Keep in mind, you’re going to lose, so you’re essentially choosing what my reward is. Choose wisely, because I’m still waiting for you to get on a horse sober.”
He rolled his eyes. “You women and your horses.”
“Well, then what do you think the winner should get?” I repeated my question. “I mean, from what I’ve heard, you all make a lot of bets. What kind of things are you wagering?”
A cloud suddenly passed over his gaze, but it was gone as quickly as it had appeared. “Money usually…”
I waited for him to continue, but was only met with silence. “All right, then. The winner of each game gets five bucks,” I decided.
We stepped up to the first game, the ping-pong toss, where rows of shot glasses were set up and you had to sink as many ping-pong balls as possible.
“Okay, Peachy, show me what you’ve got.” Mikey handed me a ball.
I gave him a smug look. “Please, I could do this in my sleep.” I threw the first ball, and it bounced off the rim of one of the glasses but managed to land in a different one. “See?”
He raised his brows like he didn’t believe me, and I grabbed the next ball, sinking another shot.
“I’ve gotta say, I’m impressed. If I ever need a pong partner in the future, I know who I’m going to call.”
“Like I said, I’m a professional.” I did miss the next shot, but I didn’t have to eat my words quite yet because I made the next two. My percentage may not have been perfect, but it was good enough. By the end, I had made five out of six. “Your turn, Casanova.”
Mikey only made three out of the six, and I shot him a cocky grin as I stuck out my hand. He paid up, handing me a crisp five-dollar bill.
“You can pick the next game. Are we upping the wager?”
“Hmm, tempting, but no. You’re going to drain my pockets if we increase the reward.” He laughed, and it almost made me forget the reason why we made this trip in the first place.
He led me over to the game where you hit a pad with a hammer and test your strength.
I let a boisterous laugh slip. “That’s a low blow!”
After shrugging, he gave me a wink. “I’ve gotta win somehow. If playing dirty is how I have to do it, I’m not above that.”
“I’ll remember that the next time you want to make a bet with me,” I teased.
This time, I made Mikey go first, so at least I had reasonable expectations for how hard I was going to have to swing the hammer.
He rubbed his hands together before stretching his arms and twisting his torso like he was about to compete in a boxing match.
Then he took the hammer from the carnie and stepped up to the plate.
His muscles rippled and the veins in his forearms popped as he reared back the hammer and brought it down onto the pad.
I brought my hand up to my mouth to make sure I wasn’t drooling over the sight of him, but my eyes widened in shock when the weight only went about three quarters of the way up to the bell.
“I’m kind of shocked you didn’t get it, but I definitely enjoyed watching.” I bit my lip as he handed me the hammer.
“It’s all in the technique.”
I weighed the hammer in my hands. It wasn’t very heavy, so I should have been able to lift it over my head easily and swing it with enough force. It was making sure I hit the target in the right spot that mattered.
I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath, then opened them, swinging the hammer with all my might. The ball shot up, hitting the bell ever so slightly, but still causing it to ring.
My jaw dropped, and so did the hammer in my hands. It fell to the ground as I spun to face Mikey. His smile reached ear to ear as I practically jumped in his arms from excitement.
“I did it! I can’t believe I did it!”
He wrapped me in his arms, and I felt the vibration of his laughter in his chest as he stroked my hair. “You sure did.”
We raced around the fairgrounds, playing every game we could find. I was sure he was letting me win some of them, but I didn’t even care. It wasn’t about the money, I just liked being around him.
Mikey wrapped his arm around me as we walked toward the food vendors. We’d be heading home tomorrow.
“I’ve had a lot of fun with you this weekend.” I smiled.
“I have, too.”
“Should we talk about…” My voice trailed off as a realization hit me.
Whether or not we talked about our relationship status now or later, I knew what I was going to do. I was going to tell him how I felt. How I truly felt. That even though this all started out as fake, everything now was real to me. That I cared about him. That I wanted to be with him.
My thoughts were cut short as we turned around the corner and I made contact with someone’s shoulder.
“Oops…” I began to apologize until I realized who I had run into.
Ava’s eyes widened. “Juniper? I didn’t know you…” Her eyes flicked to Mikey’s then down to our interlaced fingers. “Wow, I didn’t realize you were still with him. I figured once you’d gotten what you wanted, you’d be satisfied.”
Mikey’s gaze also bounced back and forth between me and Ava. “What are you doing here? How do you know each other?”
“What, you didn’t recognize her?” Ava crossed her arms, the corners of her lips dipping in a frown. “Juniper and I used to be best friends.”
“Babe? Everything okay?”
I heard his voice before I saw him. Brady didn’t realize it was me until after he’d put his arm around Ava’s waist.
“Juniper,” he muttered.
As though my true identity dawned on him when he saw Brady, Mikey’s eyes widened then narrowed in suspicion. “What’s going on here?”
“I-I can explain.” I stumbled over my words at the same time Ava pointed at me with one hand placed on her hip.
“Why don’t you ask her?”
“I—” Words failed me, and defensiveness boiled up in me. “You were my best friend until you decided to fuck my boyfriend, Ava.”
She forced out a laugh, but there was no humor in it.
“What? And you’re so much better? You knew about me and him.
You were there last year when he took me home from the bar.
” She pointed to Mikey, recognition flashing in his eyes for a brief moment.
“You couldn’t have chosen literally anyone else, Juniper? ”
Brady piped up next. “Yeah, babe, if you wanted me back, all you had to do was say the word. You didn’t have to use my favorite bull rider to make me jealous. Although, you did look damn good last night.”
I didn’t miss the way Ava glared at Brady, but my attention was torn away from them when Mikey snapped his head toward me. “What are they talking about?”
Ava scoffed, still giving Brady a look that said, We’ll talk about that later, then continued without letting me explain or defend myself.
“What, did you actually think she wanted you? You actually believed she liked you? She used you. I mean, what better way to get back at your ex and best friend than fucking around with the famous bull rider who just so happened to be my sloppy seconds. The media attention was just the cherry on top.” Directing her attention to me, she asked with a laugh that sounded all too genuine, “How did you manage to do that one?”
I rolled my lips, prepared to argue, but Mikey beat me to it.
“That’s why you agreed to be my girlfriend? You wanted the media’s attention to do what? Make someone jealous? What, was defending me to the press part of your revenge plot, too?” Hurt—betrayal—flickered in his eyes.
“No, I—” The media attention was never part of my original plan, but he didn’t give me time to explain. “That wasn’t my intention, but—”
“You knew why I didn’t want the media attention.” His voice grew louder. “You knew it would drag things out longer, but you made it happen anyway.”
“I wasn’t planning on it being more than one night! You’re the one who asked me to do this!” I retorted, not even realizing that Ava and Brady had already gone, leaving us to fire accusations at each other. “Why did you even need a fake girlfriend to begin with?”
He hesitated like he didn’t want to tell me, but I wanted answers. I needed the answers to the questions I’d been so afraid to ask from the beginning.
A rational person would let the dust settle, come back to the topic when we were calmer, less emotional.
But neither of us had ever been rational when it came to this.
“Was it for your image? Did you do it so the fans would leave you alone? What was it?” I pushed and pushed, not letting up until he finally exploded.
“It was a bet, okay!” he yelled, even though it was drawing attention to us.
Bystanders paused in their tracks to see what was going on. When they realized who was getting in a fight, a few pulled out their phones. Mikey noticed and pulled me back around the corner, away from prying eyes. The social media trolls would have a heyday with this.
Lowering his voice, he growled, “Are you happy now? The guys bet me that I wouldn’t be able to keep a girl for longer than two weeks. Then they bet me a month. Colter offered me a nice plot of land if I could stay with the same girl until the end of the Houston Rodeo.”
I flinched, my body recoiling at his words as though he’d sucker punched me in the gut.
“That’s what those texts were. Why you didn’t want me to see them.
You used me for money.” The words fell out of my mouth under my breath.
Humiliation washed over me. “That’s why you didn’t want the media attention. You didn’t want anyone to know.”
Mikey scoffed, throwing his hands in the air. “Do you realize how hypocritical you sound? I wasn’t the only one with an ulterior motive. And I wasn’t the one who dragged it out longer. This was never supposed to last more than a month.”
The irony of it all didn’t escape me. No, I knew how it looked. But over the past few weeks, it became less about revenge and more about actually enjoying Mikey’s company. I thought maybe he felt the same way, that this fake relationship was starting to feel real.
But, once again, I was a fool.
“You’re right.” I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood. “This”—I gestured to the both of us—“should have ended a long time ago. None of this was real, and I should have never trusted you.”