Pretending to Be Yours

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

PAIGE

The whispering doesn’t bother her. It’s the whispering accompanied by the obvious staring and unsubtle diverting of gazes that has her questioning if she should find a new gym … again.

Paige loved her old gym, but after the breakup, there was no chance in hell she was going back.

Unfortunately, her ex realized this.

Her skin is hot and prickly as she forces her focus ahead on the bouldering wall in front of her, tuning everyone and everything out. Paige mentally maps out the route that’s been kicking her ass for the past week.

It’s a difficult one with a large dyno—a dynamic move that’s not possible to reach unless you use an explosive lunge to move from one hold to the next, your entire body momentarily leaving the wall—that is positioned over halfway up the wall.

Dynos are Paige’s personal nemeses, but she’s stubborn and refuses to let them best her.

She chalks up and tries again. Gracefully, she ascends until she can wrap both hands around a large jug hold. The next holds are about two feet away and to the right. Taking a deep breath, she bounces her body down and up once—twice—then lunges.

Only her brain chickens out at the last second.

She doesn’t fully commit.

She doesn’t move. Her hands clutch the hold in a vise grip while her body wraps itself against the wall, fear locking her limbs in place. It takes a minute of deep breathing to loosen the tightness, and she can stretch out her fingers.

With a groan, Paige climbs down and throws herself onto the ground in dramatic defeat.

“You’re scared,” a familiar, annoying voice says behind her.

She glowers up at him.

A shirtless Tyler Avery is standing above her.

Rock climbing’s golden boy. He’s tall, full of wiry muscles, and always smells good.

He styles his short blonde hair in one of those modern mullets that makes him look like a tool, yet he’s so funny and charming everyone overlooks it.

They shouldn’t though, because Tyler Avery is a lying, cheating asshole.

He’s also Paige’s ex-boyfriend.

The climbing community is small enough the regulars at You Rock knew and embraced him the second he switched memberships. They know Paige too. Well, they know of her—due to her relationship to Tyler—and it’s exactly why she keeps her distance from them all.

While the gym is large enough, she can usually avoid him and his posse of adoring “friends,” she can’t help but notice the random climbers whispering and stealing glances in her direction. Especially when Tyler does this and finds every excuse under the sun to strike up a conversation with her.

Paige is a private person and was too embarrassed to tell anyone why they broke up. And, by the way everyone looks at her, she knows Tyler hasn’t told anyone either. Thus the speculation began.

“Look.” Tyler tosses his colorful bag of chalk down by her head and approaches the wall.

Paige rolls her eyes and sighs through her nose.

This man truly can’t help himself. He reaches the dyno and barely has to sink down before he’s flying through the air, effortlessly grabbing the next hold.

With one push off the wall, he uses his momentum to unnecessarily lunge again, skipping several holds to reach the finish.

There’s only supposed to be one dyno, but of course he loves to show off.

Further proving the point, he drops one hand and lets his body dangle as he grips a small crimp hold, a gloating smirk on his lips as he stares down at her. After an extended moment—further rubbing in the point—he drops and lands at his feet beside Paige with a soft thud.

“See. You just have to commit.”

“Mhm, got it. Thanks.” Paige pushes to her feet.

He catches her elbow, his touch gentle but unwavering, as he prevents her from walking away. “Hey, don’t be like that. I’m just trying to help.”

She looks down at his hand with a sneer then back up. “Why don’t you go see if Brianna needs your help?”

His face crumbles.

Good. It should.

It’s a shitty thing to cheat on someone, but it’s even worse to cheat on someone with one of their close friends. He can minimize and apologize all he wants, but it’s not like you can come back from finding your boyfriend and another woman naked in bed together.

“Can we talk?” he asks.

There’s no point. Paige knows what he wants to say.

I’m sorry.

It’ll never happen again.

It was a mistake—it’s not as bad as it looked.

I miss you.

“No,” Paige tells him for the hundredth time.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees a tall woman in a muscle tee and climbing pants. Her hair is trimmed on the sides with a bounce of dark brown curls on top. Just seeing her eases some of the stress tension from Paige’s shoulders and makes the corners of her mouth tilt up.

“What’s the deal with you two?” Tyler asks, reminding Paige of his unwelcome presence.

“Don’t worry about it.” She tries to be calm and not make a scene whenever he insists on bothering her, but today he’s testing her patience.

“You know she’s into you, right?”

Closing her eyes, she takes a calming breath before turning to him. “And?”

His forehead scrunches as his lips part in a small show of shock. “But you’re not—You’re …?”

She chuckles. No. Paige isn’t into women. At least not as far as everyone thinks. Recently, though, she’s started to wonder …

What do the butterflies fluttering in her belly every time Remi smiles at her mean?

They could mean nothing. Remi is effortlessly cool and confident. She’s a new friend and the only person Paige enjoys climbing with in the aftermath of the breakup. The butterflies could be because she’s so flattered Remi wants to be her friend. Nothing more complicated than that.

“What’s wrong, Tyler?” Paige asks. “You jealous?”

He frowns, his narrowed expression fixed over her shoulder. He ignores her question and stalks off without a word as Remi closes the distance between them. Remi watches him go with a raised brow.

“When will that asshat finally understand you’re not taking him back?” she asks.

“Couldn’t happen soon enough.”

She shakes her head. “Are you sure you don’t want me to say something to him again? I seriously don’t mind.”

“No, that’s okay,” Paige says, remembering the last time Remi did.

The pair first met two weeks after Paige switched gyms. Remi overheard Tyler begging to belay for Paige.

She didn’t like that type of climbing when they were together, why’d he think it would be different when they were broken up is beyond her.

After she declined for the third time, Remi jumped in.

“She told you no, man.”

He cut a glare in her direction. “You don’t get it. I’m just trying to help her, so why don’t—”

“She doesn’t look like she needs your help.”

Paige had taken the opportunity, while Tyler was distracted, to clip the nearest carabiner into her harness and shoot up the wall.

“Paige, come on,” he shouted.

She slowly climbed, then lingered at the top, hoping he’d be long gone by the time she made it back down. Only he stood there waiting until the stranger noticed and they exchanged heated words she couldn’t hear. He stomped off after that, shoulders tense and his hands tightened into fists.

Closing her eyes, she rested her forehead against the wall and let out an embarrassed sigh. While she appreciated this random person’s help, guilt coursed through her veins at needing it.

“Are you okay?”

She startled, not expecting the woman to still be there after she had finally climbed back down.

“Y-yeah. Yes. Thank you. Sorry about … all that.”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” the woman said. “Did you know that guy?”

“He’s my ex, but he’s …”

“Trying to weasel his way back in?”

“Something like that.”

She nodded, then looked at the route Paige just completed. “Care if I give it a try?”

Paige handed her the carabiner. It wasn’t planned, but they naturally gravitated toward one another after that, routinely climbing together.

Tyler keeps his distance when Remi is around—thank every deity in existence.

“Are you still stuck on this dyno?” Remi asks, pulling her from her thoughts.

She groans. “Yes.”

“You’ll figure it out. Remember when you couldn’t land that tight heel hook a couple weeks ago? And now you sail through it.”

The corner of her mouth tilts up. “You’re right; I’ll get it. But not tonight. I need a break.”

They jump around, trying different levels, and Paige bolsters her confidence by flashing—aka completing on the first attempt—a tricky route she never could have completed six months ago.

After, while gulping down water, she sits on the mat while Remi attempts a new route.

Her muscles flex as she moves with fluid ease up the wall.

The corner of the tattoo on her left shoulder blade peeks out the side of her tee as she leans for her next hold.

Paige is jealous of her strength and technical skills.

She’s so composed, graceful, and her small, proud smile, when she reaches the top, is so stinking cute.

“That one was fun,” Remi says as she tosses herself next to Paige.

“And you made it look so easy.”

“Thanks.” She ducks her head. She takes a sip from her water bottle and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

“You okay?” I ask. “You seem a little off tonight.”

She’s been quieter than normal. This unusual heavy tension crackling in the air around her.

Remi grimaces. “My mom is giving me crap about going to an ‘ex-girlfriend’s’ wedding single.”

Paige’s head whips in her direction. “Wait. What? You’re going to an ex’s wedding? Why?”

She shakes her head softly, her dark curls bouncing. “She’s not my ex. We only went on a couple dates, it was barely anything.”

Paige frowns. “But you’re invited to the wedding?”

“She’s also a teacher; my old admin was terrible, and, when her school had an opening for a second-grade teacher, she reached out. We’ve been working together for almost two years now and have become pretty good friends.”

Paige nods along. “Okay. Makes sense. And your mom thinks you should bring a date?”

“A girlfriend, preferably,” Remi clarifies. “I let it slip that I had a plus one and I was going to invite Kristine if things continued to go well between us, but then … well, you know how that worked out.”

This she’s told Paige about. After getting ghosted by Kristine, Remi decided the problem was her.

Paige hasn’t known Remi long—only three months—but even she knows that’s absurd.

Still, Remi insists if multiple women ghost or are the ones initiating the breakup, the problem has to be her and not them.

How could the problem ever be Remi?

“My mom doesn’t like that I put myself in a dating timeout and keeps reminding me I’m turning thirty soon.” Remi sighs. “She wants me to hurry up and find someone so I can get married and give her more grandbabies, but I don’t have the heart to tell her I’m not even sure if I want kids.”

“Oof. Been there,” Paige says. She made the mistake of telling her mom she didn’t want kids when she was a teenager, and to say her mom took it terribly is an understatement. She insisted Paige would change her mind when she got older, but Paige still hasn’t.

“Yeah,” Remi says and picks at a loose thread on her chalk bag.

“I’m sorry, that sucks.”

She nods. “It’s not like I don’t want to ever date again. Eventually, I do want to find my person and get married and adopt like ten dogs.”

“The dream.” Paige laughs. “I get that though. After everything with Tyler, I have no desire to date again anytime soon.”

“That’s understandable.” She scoffs under her breath. “I can’t believe everyone here is so obsessed with that guy.”

Paige finds him across the gym laughing with a couple of people. “He can be charming when he wants to be.”

Two girls on the outskirts of his group have their heads bowed, talking. They glance in Paige’s direction several times making the hair on the back of her neck prickle.

She’s so over this shit.

Tyler steals a glance over his shoulder at Paige, and she remembers his earlier comments and his obvious jealousy.

He scurries away like a scared little mouse whenever Remi is nearby, what would he do if Remi and Paige actually were dating?

If she’s lucky, he’d give up stalking her and switch back to their old gym.

The thought makes Paige giddy.

Then she gasps, making Remi jump.

“What if you did bring a girlfriend to the wedding?” Paige asks.

“It’s in four weeks, so I don’t see how that’s possible.”

“Oh, but it is. I have the perfect girl for you.”

Remi frowns. “Who?”

“Me!”