Chapter 5
five
The door bounced against the wall behind whoever had opened it, and for a solid two seconds—an eternity, in context—neither of us moved.
Rhys’s hand was still curled at my waist, mine still fisted in the front of his shirt in a way I had absolutely no memory of deciding to do, and it took the sound of someone clearing their throat, loudly and with obvious relish, before either of us actually pulled apart.
We turned toward the rectangle of hallway light at the same time, both of us blinking against it like we’d been dragged out of a movie theater into the middle of the day.
“Oh my gosh,” Kelcey said, because of course it was her.
Of all the people in this house who could have opened this exact door at this exact moment, the universe had picked her.
One hand flew up to cover her mouth, though not fast enough to hide the wicked look already spreading underneath it.
It was obvious that she hadn’t been expecting this closet to be empty, no matter how much she was pretending she did.
I just wasn’t sure what she’d been hoping to find.
Beside her was a boy I vaguely recognized from the Crofton soccer team, who looked more surprised by the discovery but no less thrilled. He was tall and dark-haired, and he propped his shoulder against the doorframe with a casual posture as he smirked at us.
“Sorry,” Kelcey said, not remotely sorry. “We were looking for the bathroom.”
That was a weak excuse, since there was no reason they would be looking for it together, but I didn’t speak up.
“You practically live here, Kelcey,” Rhys said drily. “You know where the bathroom is.”
“Definitely not the bathroom,” the guy agreed amiably, eyes moving slowly from Rhys to me and back again, something calculating flickering behind the amusement. “Didn’t realize you were in here, man.”
“Landon,” Rhys said. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”
“I did,” Landon said cheerfully. “But since this is the best thing that’s happened to me all night, I don’t plan to go anywhere else.”
Landon’s eyes were full of pure entertained delight as they swung to me, and I could feel the heat of his gaze as he looked me over. It wasn’t like he was checking me out, but more like he was checking that I was real.
“You’re going to want to introduce me,” Landon said, the words sounding more like an order than an observation.
“No, I’m really not,” Rhys said. I resisted the urge to turn my gaze over at him as I wondered what exactly we were doing here.
Obviously, I knew who Kelcey was, but I didn’t know Landon at all, and I wasn’t sure what Rhys’s hope for this moment was.
He wanted to make his ex jealous, but I didn’t see how the two of them being here were going to accomplish that.
Was he expecting somebody else to come this way?
“So you guys are really together,” Kelcey said, her voice flat.
“Was there something about me saying she was my girlfriend that was confusing for you?” Rhys asked. His words didn’t have much bite to them, but I flinched anyway, moreso at Kelcey’s narrowed eyes than anything.
“You never mentioned her before tonight and all of a sudden you’re making out in a closet,” she said. “Doesn’t something about that seem suspicious?”
“Maybe I’m just not interested in sharing my life with you,” Rhys snapped back without missing a beat.
The closet, which hadn’t exactly been comfortable to begin in, suddenly felt much smaller. I swore a chill passed over us and I shivered, even in the heat of the party.
“Come on,” Landon said, his tone joking but forced. “It’s not like Rhys is much of a sharer anyway.
“I wasn’t asking you,” she snapped, and something about the snap was too sharp for the moment, too much for a girl catching her boyfriend’s step-brother making out with some random girl in a closet.
Landon must have thought so too, because he went quiet, glancing at Rhys instead of laughing it off like I’d expect from someone who apparently thought this whole thing was the highlight of his week two seconds ago.
“You’re Sebastian’s sister,” Landon said instead, to me, like he was steering the conversation somewhere else on purpose. “Right? The star of the Parkhurst team.”
His tone was surprisingly not mocking, even as he called Sebastian the star of the team. But the question still felt weird, just like when Rhys had greeted me by name. How did they all know who I was?
“Yes,” I said, though the words came out slow and questioning. Landon shot a look in Rhys’s direction that I couldn’t decipher but that for some reason put my hackles up. “Why?”
“No reason.” Landon’s grin only widened, which meant that there definitely was a reason that he had no intention of sharing. “Small world, is all.”
“Hilarious,” Rhys said in a tone that suggested he didn’t find it funny at all. He shifted, angling his body in a way that put him a half-step in front of me like he was trying to physically obstruct Landon’s line of sight before he could say anything further.
“We should go,” Rhys said. He waited but neither of them moved. He nodded pointedly at the doorway they were both still occupying. “We’re going to need you to move—unless you two are planning on joining us in here, in which case I have some real concerns about your night.”
“Ew,” Kelcey said. She backed up a step before he even finished, arms still crossed, chin up in a way that looked more like armor than annoyance.
“Wouldn’t want to interrupt anything. Congrats, by the way.
Really.” The word came out clean and cold enough that I almost flinched on Rhys’s behalf, though I had no idea why he’d need me to.
She turned and walked off without waiting for Landon, who lingered. His eyebrows were raised as he looked at Rhys.
“Big house,” Rhys said, seemingly unimpressed. “Lots of rooms. Feel free to enjoy any of them that aren’t this one.”
Landon held his gaze for one more beat before he shrugged, threw me a “nice to meet you, sort of” over his shoulder, and jogged off to the backyard.
He looked back over his shoulder one more time, that same knowing smirk fixed firmly in place, aimed squarely at Rhys like a promise of a conversation still to come.
I waited until their footsteps had dissolved into the general roar of the party before I let out a breath. Then I turned on Rhys.
“Okay, what was that?”
“What was what?”
“That. The whole—” I gestured vaguely at the empty hallway, at the space where the tension had been thick enough to trip over. “She looked like she wanted to set something on fire. And he looked like he was in on some joke that he didn’t want to share with the rest of us.”
“Kelcey’s dramatic. It’s kind of her whole thing.” He reached past me to straighten a coat that had gotten knocked half off its hanger in the scramble, not meeting my eyes—which, for a guy who’d spent the last twenty minutes of the party radiating total confidence felt like a tell.
“Oh my gosh,” I whispered. My stomach felt like it was bottoming out.
I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it immediately—Rhys’s annoyance with Kelsey the moment she walked into the house, how he’d looked for her in the crowd, her anger at the scene…
“When you said you wanted to make a girl jealous, you meant Kelcey.”
The lack of an immediate no was enough of an answer for me. I dropped my head into my hands. No wonder he’d been so happy to swoop in and say we were together. I had a million questions of how she’d gone from being with Rhys to being with Justin, but right now didn’t seem like the time to ask.
“Now seems like a good time to tell you the favor is a bit bigger than a kiss,” Rhys said. I peeked at him through spread fingers. He still wasn’t looking me in the eye. “I need you to keep pretending to be my girlfriend.”
For a second, I just stared at him.
“Excuse me?” I finally managed, because apparently my brain needed a moment to catch up with the words.
I was still trying to reconcile the Rhys who had casually announced to his step-brother and his ex that I was his girlfriend with the Rhys who was now standing in front of me asking me to actually commit to the lie.
“I need you to keep pretending to be my girlfriend,” he repeated.
His voice was quieter this time, stripped of the easy confidence he’d been using all night, and that made the request sound even more serious.
He wasn’t teasing me, and he wasn’t looking for an excuse to kiss me again; he was waiting for an actual answer.
“You just said that the favor was a little bigger than a kiss.” I stared at him in disbelief, then gave a short, incredulous laugh because surely he couldn’t mean what I thought he meant. “You want me to pretend to date you?”
“For a while.” He said it so simply that I almost wondered if I’d misunderstood him again, but then he gave me that small, cautious look that told me he knew exactly how insane this sounded. “I know it sounds like a lot.”
“A little bigger?” I repeated, throwing my hands up. The cramped closet suddenly felt even smaller, as if the coats hanging around us were closing in to listen to the conversation too. “Rhys, that’s not a little bigger. That’s a completely different favor.”
“I know.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “But the thing is, we’re both kind of stuck now.”
There was something about the way he’d said it that made me suspicious. I folded my arms across my chest and watched him carefully, waiting for the part of this ridiculous plan that he clearly hadn’t told me yet.
“Kelcey, Landon, and Justin are all under the impression that we’re dating,” Rhys said.
“Yeah, because you told them!” I snapped.
He lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug. “It seemed like the right move at the time. Got you out of Kelcey murdering you, didn’t it?”
“I think I’d actually rather she murder me right now,” I muttered, remembering the look of fury on Kelcey’s face a minute ago. I eyed him, realization finally dawning on me. “Is that why you did it? You told them I was with you to make Kelcey jealous?”