Chapter 7 Brody #2
Chloe turns around, grinning—a real grin, not the careful smile she’s been wearing all day. “I was in a league in college.”
“Of course you were.”
Derek’s smirking. “Looks like your girlfriend is carrying the team, Kane.”
“I’m aware.”
But watching Chloe light up like this—confident, happy, unselfconscious—is worth the humiliation.
She walks back to me, still smiling. “Want me to show you?”
“Please.”
She picks up my ball, demonstrates the approach, the release, the follow-through. Her hands move confidently, precisely. This is her element.
“Now you try,” she says.
I step up. The ball feels heavier than it should. I focus on the pins, visualize the path—
Gutter ball.
Chloe’s laugh is pure and bright and completely unguarded. “Okay, we need to try something else.”
She steps up behind me, her hand on my arm, adjusting my stance. “Loosen your grip. You’re strangling it.”
“That’s what it feels like.”
“And follow through—like this.” Her hand guides mine through the motion.
We’re standing close. Too close for the performance. But it doesn’t feel like performance.
It feels—
Real.
I try again. The ball wobbles down the lane, clips three pins.
“Progress!” Chloe cheers like I just won the Stanley Cup.
“I knocked down three pins. That’s not—”
“It’s three more than last time!”
And she’s so genuinely excited for my terrible bowling that something in my chest tightens.
This girl. This girl who gets overlooked by her family, who makes herself small, who accommodates everyone else—she’s cheering for my pathetic three-pin knockdown like it matters.
Like I matter.
We lose the tournament. Spectacularly. But we’re laughing the whole time, and when the photographer—some professional Maya hired—captures us mid-laugh, covered in the glow of the overhead lights, it doesn’t feel staged.
It feels like the most real thing I’ve done all night. Until my phone buzzes in my pocket.
Rick
Don’t forget social media posts.
Right. I almost forgot.
I pull out my phone and swipe to the camera. Debate warning Chloe what I’m about to do, but Derek is watching me. I can feel his eyes tracking every move I make, every word I say. He’s looking for cracks.
So I just get it over with.
I slide my arm around her waist, tilt my head close to hers, and aim the camera. She tenses against me, but I whisper “For the story” against her hair. Then, because I need this to look real, I press my lips to her temple just as I snap the picture.
We look…convincing. Happy. Like a couple who’s been together longer than two weeks.
But looking at the photo, something feels off.
Her smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes. Like she’s performing too.
Maybe we both are.
I post it anyway.
@CandyKane: Good company, great night.
Generic. Safe. Believable.
It pulls in three hundred likes in five minutes.
“See?” I say, showing her the screen. “People love us.”
“Because we’re so convincing,” she says quietly.
There’s something in her tone. Sadness? Resignation?
I can’t tell.
By eight o’clock, the party is winding down. Guests are filtering out, saying their goodbyes, thanking Maya and Derek for a lovely evening.
Chloe’s helping clear tables—because of course she is, even though there’s staff for that. I watch her fold napkins, stack plates, move efficiently through the room like she’s trying to be useful.
Trying to earn her place at her own sister’s party.
It breaks something in me.
I catch her wrist gently. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
We say our goodbyes—Maya hugs Chloe tight, whispers something I can’t hear. Derek shakes my hand, holds it a second too long.
“See you at practice,” he says.
It’s not friendly. It’s a warning.
I nod. “See you.”
“Well,” I say, pulling out of the parking lot, “that was a disaster.”
Chloe looks at me, startled. “What?”
“Oh no, you were great.” I flash my most reassuring smile. “And I think Maya and your parents are sold. But there’s no way Derek believes us. Not to mention I bowled like someone who’s never seen a ball before.”
“You weren’t that bad.”
“I was objectively terrible.”
She almost smiles. “Okay, you were pretty bad.”
“See? Disaster.”
“And I think we convinced most people,” she offers.
“Most people aren’t the problem. Derek is. And the couples shower is in two weeks.” I grip the steering wheel tighter. “We need to do this better.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t know you were good at bowling. I didn’t know you went to college here. I don’t know your middle name or your favorite movie or—” I stop myself before I say How to make you laugh every day the way you did while bowling.
She’s quiet.
I continue. “We don’t really know each other. Not the stuff real couples know. And Derek’s going to figure that out.”
“So what do we do?”
I glance at her as I merge onto the highway. “We fix it. A real date. Not a performance. Just us.”
CHLOE
We fix it. A real date. Not a performance. Just us.
The word real lands in my chest like a stone dropped into deep water, and I’m nodding before my brain catches up to what I’m agreeing to, which is how people end up in cults or time-shares or other situations that are universally assumed to be bad news.
“Okay,” I manage. “I’m free Monday.”
Earth to Chloe—what part of “fake boyfriend” do the two of you not understand?
He glances at me as we merge onto the highway. “All right, then, Monday it is. I’ll pick you up for dinner. Seven.”
I turn to the window and thank God for the darkness hiding my furiously blushing face.
Minneapolis slides past in streaks of light and shadow.
The skyline glitters against the winter sky.
We cross the Mississippi, and the bridge lights reflect off the dark water below.
Normally I’d think about how pretty this is, how the city looks like something out of a movie at night.
But right now I’m too busy trying to remember how to breathe like a normal human and not think about the fact that we’re alone in this car and his cologne smells amazing and I am absolutely not prepared for whatever’s about to happen.
The silence stretches.
“You okay?” Brody asks.
I glance back, my hair falling around my shoulders like a curtain.
“Yeah. Just tired.” I aim for casual, land somewhere near desperately trying not to have feelings. “Long night.”
Snow drifts past the windshield in lazy flurries, caught in the headlights. The wipers sweep it away in a steady rhythm.
Now it’s quiet. Loud quiet. I should say something.
But my brain has apparently clocked out for the evening, leaving me with nothing but the hyperawareness of him beside me—the way his hands rest on the steering wheel, the line of his jaw in the dashboard glow, his left leg propped up slightly, reminding me of his knee pressed to mine at the coffee shop just this morning.
How was that less than twelve hours ago—
“Can I ask you something?” His voice cuts through my spiral.
I answer way too quickly. “Sure.”
“The bowling. You were incredible tonight. How did you get so good?”
Oh. That’s not so bad. Safe territory.
“College,” I say, relieved. “Freshman year. My roommate dragged me to league night, and I was surprisingly not terrible.”
“What position?” He sounds genuinely curious. “Or is that not how bowling works? I clearly have no idea.”
“Anchor. I went last.”
“Of course you did.” Something changes in his tone. “Most pressure. Most responsibility.”
I glance at him. He’s watching the road, but there’s this expression on his face—understanding, maybe. Like he just puzzled something out.
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “I guess.”
We stop at a red light. He looks at me.
Really looks.
Not the performance look from the party—the one designed to convince my family we’re madly in love. This is different. Searching. Like he’s trying to see past all that to whatever’s underneath.
My throat tightens.
“Why bowling?” he asks. “Out of everything you could’ve been good at?”
And there’s the real question.
I could deflect. Make a joke about how I have a secret passion for rental shoes and polyester bowling shirts.
But I’m so tired. And he’s looking at me like he actually wants to know.
“I needed something that was mine,” I hear myself say. “Something I could be good at without—without comparisons.”
The light turns green. He drives.
He doesn’t push. Just lets it sit there.
“Maya’s good at everything,” I continue, and I don’t know why I’m still talking, except maybe my exhaustion has obliterated my filter.
“Always has been. Beautiful, successful, confident. And I’m just the little sister who tried but didn’t quite measure up.
So bowling was weird enough that nobody cared.
I could just be good at it without anyone comparing me to her. ”
I stop. Bite my lip. That was too much. Way too much. Next time, I should save myself the trouble and just turn over my diary.
“Sorry,” I add quickly. “That was—I’m tired. I shouldn’t have—”
“Don’t.” His voice is firm. “Don’t apologize.”
We drive in silence for another minute. Two. I’m staring out the window again, mortified, wishing I could go back and just say I liked knocking down pins like a normal person.
“Can I ask you something else?” Brody says finally.
Oh no. Here it comes. “I think you’re reaching your contractual limit soon, so choose wisely.”
He chuckles, his lips quirking in that very Brody way. “I don’t remember that in the contract.”
“Ah, well, it’s in the fine print. I had my people add it in,” I say, waving a hand flippantly.
“Oh, I see. Well then, I’ll try to keep that in mind.”
“What’s the question?”
“Your family.” He pauses, and I can feel him choosing his words carefully as the mood changes again.
“Your parents. The way they—” He stops. Starts again.
“Your mom redirected every conversation back to Maya tonight. Five times during dinner. Your dad barely acknowledged the decorations you did. And you just—took it. Like you’re used to it. ”
My chest constricts.
“How long has it been like that?”
I still, my heart lurching into my throat. I don’t know what’s worse—the fact that he noticed it, or that I’m so used to it I didn’t.
“My entire life?” And now I sound pitiful.
Just toss my pathetic bones on the pile of unpaid bills and send me off in a blaze and call it good at this point.
“It’s not intentional. Patricia is my stepmom.
My real mom died when I was three—car accident.
I don’t even remember her. Dad married Patty about a year later, and she came packaged with Devon and Maya, who were in elementary school.
Devon was already playing hockey. Maya was in ballet, then drama and…
you know, a star. I sort of tagged along behind. ”
“Chloe.”
The way he says my name—it’s suddenly too much. We’ve jumped off the deep end, from the safe shallows of bowling and fake dates into a deep, dark drop-off. And I so want to trust him. But this is too much too soon, and he’s not my boyfriend. Not really.
“Really, Brody, it’s okay.” I aim for a gentle shutdown. “I’ve gotten used to being a little…invisible.”
The car rolls to a stop, the red from the traffic light pouring through the windshield, and Brody looks at me, his lips pressed tight. “You are not invisible.”
My throat closes up completely.
“Not to me.”
The light turns green, and Brody drags his gaze away as we start moving again, and I try to jumpstart my brain back into survival mode. Air, Chloe. You need air to live.
“What about you?” I manage finally, desperate to change the subject before I do something mortifying like start crying. “What about your family? You never talk about them.”
He stiffens slightly. I notice because I’m hyperaware of everything about him right now.
“Not much to talk about.”
“That’s not an answer.”
He glances at me, surprised. Then almost smiles. “Fair enough.”
Another long pause. I wait.
“My mom died when I was fourteen,” he says finally. “Cancer. My dad’s—” He stops. “Well, I told you all about his stuff. We’re not close.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Not your fault.” He pulls up to a stop sign, then continues through the quiet neighborhood. “Point is, I get the family stuff. I get wanting to be someone other than who they made you.”
The words permeate the air between us. We’re both carrying family wounds, just different shapes.
The car slows as he pulls up in front of my building.
He parks. Turns off the engine.
Silence fills the car in that heavy, fuzzy way. Like Christmas snow falling. Meaningful but somehow completely ordinary. We stay like that for a minute, neither of us willing to end the moment.
“I’ll walk you up,” he finally says, his voice soft.
“You don’t have to—”
But he’s already out, coming around to my side.
The cold hits me like a slap when I step out of the car. Fifteen degrees, maybe less. My breath comes out in visible puffs, and the snow is falling harder now—light flurries catching in the porch light above my second-floor door.
We climb the exterior stairs together. His hand hovers near my back—not touching, but close enough that I can feel the warmth.
I fumble with my keys. My hands are shaking, and I’m telling myself it’s the cold, but we both know that’s a lie.
“Chloe.”
I look up.
He’s standing close. Too close. Our breath mingles in the frigid air between us, little clouds of white that disappear as quickly as they form.
His eyes meet mine.
And then he leans in.
Time stops.
His gaze drops to my lips. And then—
He stills, lets out a resigned sigh. His lips brush my cheek. Soft. Quick. Over before I can fully process it’s happening.
“Seven o’clock Monday,” he murmurs.
Then he’s gone, taking the stairs two at a time, and I’m standing on my doorstep in the cold, frozen, one hand still clutching my keys, the other touching my cheek where I can still feel the ghost of his lips.
I hear the car engine start. See the taillights disappear down the street.
Finally—finally—I get my key in the lock and stumble inside.
Warmth hits me. The smell of cinnamon candle and coffee. Jessa’s on the couch with her laptop, working late as usual.
She looks up. “How was it?”
I close the door. Lean against it.
“Dangerous.”