Total pages in book: 132
Estimated words: 125213 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 501(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125213 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 501(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
“Need to get drunk to face the truth?”
“That I’m stuck in a high-rise condo with my fake fiancé with a hurricane barreling toward us?” She stood, a saccharine smile on her tight lips. “Um, yeah. Drunk is the bare minimum.”
She stormed past me and into my kitchen, and I took a deep breath, letting it out as slowly and calmly as I could as I folded my hands together and rested them on top of my head. I stared up at the ceiling, debating converting to the first religion I could think of just to see if there was a god who could save me.
Mia needed to drink to get through this, and I needed to sit on my fucking hands.
Because she wanted to hit me, and I wanted to kiss her.
And with the two of us forced to stay together for the night, I had no idea how the hell I was going to keep up the charade of anything I felt for this woman being fake.
Be A Good Boy
July — Three Months Earlier
Aleks
My phone was burning a hole in my pocket as the team’s media relations manager attempted to burn a hole through my head with his murderous glare.
Strings: Call me. It’s important.
Strings was the nickname I’d given to my only friend in the world back when I first met her. We were just sixteen then — she, an awkward girl with a guitar glued to her hand, and I, a broody asshole with a hockey stick glued to mine.
I knew her as Mia Conaway, my best friend.
The world knew her as Mia Love, world-famous pop star.
Mia’s text came through just as I was shoved into the conference room where half of our public relations team, along with our General Manager, were ready to lay into me. I’d had no choice but to put my phone away and wait to respond until after my lashing.
But where I should have been focused on the threats being thrown my way after I’d fucked up — yet again — all I could think about was her.
Despite how close we were in high school, our lives had gone in separate directions over the last eight years, the two of us living on different coasts, and practically in different worlds. Every now and then, our paths crossed — she’d get to come to a game of mine, or I’d catch one of her gigs. Sometimes we’d find ourselves reunited with her parents for a holiday. But for the most part, about the only time we communicated was through a text or a smart-ass comment on social media.
So the fact that she’d asked me to call her, that she’d said it was important…
“You’re bleeding,” Dan Kilman said, rolling his eyes as he fished a tissue out of the box in the center of the conference room table. He handed it to me with a flourish before he was pacing again.
I dabbed at the corner of my lip where it had split, not the least bit fazed.
I was a hockey player, for fuck’s sake.
Bleeding was like breathing for me.
“You also don’t seem like you’re taking any of this seriously,” he added. I’d never seen him look so stern. His pale bald head was glistening from a sheen of sweat as he paced the room, his dark brows furrowed together in frustration. Usually, Kilman was a bright smile and an assuring nod as he sent you to an interview you didn’t particularly want to do but had no option to refuse.
Right now, he looked ready to split the other side of my lip.
“I’m sure Mr. Suter is taking this all very seriously,” our General Manager assured Kilman. Richard Bancroft — known affectionately as Dick — reminded me of a mall Santa. He wore a jubilant smile nearly one-hundred percent of the time, his eyes twinkling, belly jiggling with each little laugh he let loose.
Even now, when I knew he was also fed up with my shit, he looked like nothing more than a proud father ready to defend his son at the principal’s office.
“Listen. I understand. Tensions run high when you’re a man with as much testosterone as you have running through those veins of yours,” Dick said with a guffaw, thumping the table across from me with one large hand. “But… this is going to be your last warning to keep the fights on the ice.”
“Last warning,” I repeated, monotone as ever, one eyebrow arching into my short hairline as I assessed him along with the rest of the team. Kilman and Bancroft were taking the lead, the other two staying silent, jotting notes down every now and then. One was Kilman’s assistant and the other was head of our social media. I was pretty sure they weren’t actually writing anything of merit, but rather avoiding eye contact with me. “That sounds like a threat.”