Falling: A Fake Dating College Hockey Romance (North University Book 1)

A loud crash startles me out of my sleep, and I’m instantly on high alert. I reach for Wren to find she isn’t in my bed. She was basically clinging to me like a koala all night. Or maybe I was clinging to her. It’s hard to tell.

When I sit up, my heart roaring in my ears, I find her on the floor next to my bed. She’s still wearing the clothes from last night, but her tote bag is around her shoulder, and her hands are flat against the floor as she peers up at me.

“Hi,” she whispers.

“What are you doing on my floor, Wren?” I ask, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.

“I was about to wake you up, and I was rushing and tripped over my own feet, and now I’m seriously contemplating why I took up figure skating if I can’t even walk properly,” she rambles, slowly standing to her feet. She brushes her hands against the shorts she borrowed, her face pink, and her nose turned up.

God, she’s fucking adorable.

“You’re still here,” is what I end up saying after staring at her for too long.

She shrugs. “I told you I would be.” She gestures to the bedside table. “I, uh, made you a sandwich, and there’s some aspirin and water too. Sorry. I’m not a nurse, and I really don’t know what’s going to help. You haven’t eaten since before the game, so I knew you’d be hungry, and I wanted to make myself useful.”

I clasp her hand in mine. “You didn’t have to do any of that. Thank you,” I whisper, squeezing her hand, and she shrugs again like it isn’t a big deal. “What time is it?”

“It’s early afternoon, just after two. I didn’t want to wake you. You sleep like the dead.” She laughs before pulling her hands away from me, running them down the front of the shorts again. “I have practice, so I’ve got to go.”

I check my phone and then turn back to her. “Didn’t you have class this morning?”

She bites her bottom lip. “I skipped to stay with you.”

I skipped to stay with you.

“Wren, you animal,” I say with a gasp, and she rolls her eyes.

“Well, you needed me, and I didn’t want to leave you alone,” she explains, her eyes glossing over. I don’t think either of us is ready to talk about what happened last night. Part of me still thinks I dreamed it. “Don’t die on me, Milesy.”

“I’ll try my hardest,” I say, winking at her before she slips out of my room. I drop my head back onto my pillow, glancing at the sandwich she made me and the three bottles of water she’s piled on my nightstand.

She might be one of the most stubborn people I’ve ever met, but I know she has a soft side. A quiet side. A side to her that I’m desperate to get more of. When she’s not busting my balls, she’s spending the night running her fingers through my hair just because I asked her to.

I down the water and take a few pills before eating half of the sandwich. I already feel a thousand times better, but the guilt of getting into that fight is gnawing away at me. I’ve always prided myself on not being a rough or violent player. I can usually hold my own on the ice, and hockey is a violent enough sport without me needing to add any excessive force, especially when it’s banned on the ice at college level. Coach Tucker has always taught us to play clean and play fair. But what Jake was saying in the locker room got to me. I was stupid and in a vulnerable enough position to let his comments weave their way into my head.

The rest of the afternoon goes by in a blur, and I’m already feeling restless. There isn’t a practice today, so I couldn’t go watch it even if I had the energy to. Most of the guys are on campus, studying or in classes. I pulled out some work to do and forced myself to get a couple hours in and tried my hardest not to think about Wren.

It doesn’t last very long because a couple hours after she leaves, I get a text from her.

I sigh, ignoring the anxious butterflies that have appeared in my stomach. I grab my phone and make my way down the stairs, peering through the living room blinds and finding exactly what I thought I would.

I drop my head against the front door, groaning when my phone lights up with more texts.

I shut my phone off before she can continue harassing me for answers because I don’t even know how to explain it. Clara is just like this. My overprotective older sister who apparently has been protecting me too much and had kept the biggest secret from me for years.

This is not the first time Clara has turned up at my house and not come in. She’ll park on the street, listen to music in her car for hours, and I’ll watch her contemplate knocking on my door or driving away. Most of the time, she drives away. On the few times she does come in, we both pretend that I didn’t watch her have to convince herself to leave the car.

I don’t know why she does. Why she has to make this so fucking awkward for the both of us. I know our relationship has changed over the last few years, but making a big deal out of it doesn’t help matters. This is the first time she’s done this since she told me about Mom’s affair.

I slip on some shoes, make my way over to the car, and knock on the window. My sister has her curly hair loose to her shoulders, her tanned skin glowing as she expertly eats a taco and drinks a Diet Coke while watching a YouTube video on her phone.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I shout, and she yelps, turning to me.

She swallows what’s in her mouth, her big brown eyes wide as she rolls down the window. “What the fuck happened to your face?”

“Nothing,” I say immediately. She raises an eyebrow. “Just hockey stuff.”

“You’re not on the team.”

“I am on the team, I’m just… taking a break.”

“You’re benched.”

“It’s a break.”

“They’re the same thing,” she argues.

“You’re trying to distract me, and it’s not working,” I say, and she shrugs, taking another bite of her food. “What are you doing here?”

“I came here to talk to you,” she says.

“Yeah? Well, my girlfriend left hours ago, and she saw you, and you’re still here,” I say, crossing my arms against my chest.

“Girlfriend?” Her jaw drops open, as dramatic as ever, and I sigh. “Okay, we have a lot to catch up on.” Then her facial expressions change, a crease forms between her eyebrows, and she points at me. “No, we don’t. I’m mad at you. That’s why I’m here to talk some sense into to you.”

“What have I done now?”

“Miles, you’ve not spoken to me, or Mom and Dad in months. We’re worried about you,” she whispers, checking the street like she doesn’t want anyone to hear.

“Well, stop worrying. I’m fine,” I say, my voice rough.

“Yeah, I can see that,” she says, gesturing to bruises on my face. She heaves out a sigh, and we just stare at each other for a second. “Get in the car. I’m going to talk and drive. That good?”

She gives me a stern look, and I know better than to say no. She’s my sister for God’s sake, and I’m still a little terrified of her. I’ve spent way too long avoiding her and my problems at home. She’s done nothing but stick by me, even when she dropped that bombshell.

We barely make it out of my neighborhood before she says, “I didn’t tell you about Mom because I was trying to protect you.” I guess we’re going straight into this. She glances at me, and I nod for her to continue talking. I know she doesn’t want to talk about this as much as I do, but the fact that she’s here is more than what I would have done if I were in her situation. “I found out in the worst way possible. I was going into the school to surprise her for her birthday, like we had planned the week before. I had just started college, and you were still at school, so we planned that I’d go in with flowers and chocolates, remember?”

I swallow, nodding. To me, that was just a regular tradition that we did every year. “I remember.”

“Well, when I got there, she was kissing him. You know, Jean Claude. I guess they forgot I was coming, and I didn’t even recognize him at first. I thought maybe Dad had gotten a new haircut or something, and I realized it wasn’t him when I got closer.”

Her hands tighten on the steering wheel before she lets out a breath.

“What did you do?” I ask, my voice a lot smaller than I thought.

She shrugs. “I did what any eighteen-year-old who had just caught their mom cheating would do. I burst through the door and yelled at her. She told Jean Claude to leave, and she sat me down. I was furious, so it took me a while to process it, but she apologized and told me that it wasn’t Dad’s fault, and it wasn’t any of our faults either.”

I nod, but I say, “That doesn’t explain why you didn’t tell me.”

“I didn’t want to, Miles,” she sighs, dropping her shoulders and resting her head against the headrest. “Mom told me to. She said that I could tell you if I wanted and she wouldn’t hold it against me, but I chose not to. I know you, baby bro. I knew it would crush you and set you back. You were only a kid, and I didn’t want you to spend the rest of your life hating her. Not like I did.”

That last part is the only thing I remember. I remember when they’d argue constantly and they’d go days, and sometimes weeks, without speaking to each other. I was told that it was just because Clara had moved out and it was regular teenage daughter stuff.

I don’t have the energy in me to make a snarky comment. To make it out like it’s her fault when clearly that isn’t the case anymore. If I found out then, I would have hated her. I would have held onto it, used it against her in any way I could, and I still wouldn’t be over it.

When I know something, it consumes me. It becomes all I think about, and there’s no way of telling when I’d get over it.

I clear my throat, and she looks over at me when we get to a stop sign. “So how did you do it? How did you forgive her?”

“It helped that I was at college. If I still lived at home, I don’t think I would have done it so easily,” she explains. “I just had to let go. I had to move on with my life. I had goals that were bigger than this one setback. At the start, I was angry, and I wasn’t sure when I’d stop thinking about it, but I had to. It was the only way I’d be able to move on with everything else in my life.”

“I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to let things go,” I admit, running my hands through my hair.

She gives me a sad smile. “I know you don’t, and that’s why I couldn’t tell you. Do you remember that one action figure you had? The one with the interchangeable outfits?” I nod, and she continues. “You had it with you all the time. At one point, I tried to tell Mom you needed to go see a therapist. You had it in your stroller, you held onto it while you were potty training, and you brought it with you to your first day of kindergarten. It was old and moldy by the time you were nine, and do you remember what happened when Dad tried to throw it away?”

I hold back my laughter. “I screamed at him and said I’d run away if he didn’t give it back to me.”

“Exactly, because you couldn’t let it go, Miles. You convinced yourself that you needed it to survive, that you wouldn’t be able to do anything without it, but when you got a new pair of skates, you moved on, and that became your new obsession. Or hyper-fixation.” She shrugs, waving her hand about before turning a corner. “That’s why I thought if I waited to tell you, you’d be more open to forgiving her. I thought you’d find it easier to move on, but with Carter… I understand that things are hard for you right now, which is why I want to be there for you. I don’t want you to push me away because of some stupid decision I made when I was eighteen.”

I nod because it seems like the only thing I can do to stop myself from crying. “I want you to be here for me too,” I admit, and she smiles. “Do you think that’s why I can’t get back on the ice without thinking about Carter? It feels like the entire team has moved on and I haven’t.”

“I think that’s a completely different thing, Miles. Losing someone is a very difficult thing to go through, and everybody deals with it in different ways. I don’t think you need to worry about how long it takes you because it’s not something you just wake up and move on from,” she says softly.

“Everyone else has, Clara. I can’t even put on my helmet without feeling like I’m suffocating,” I whisper. I don’t know when the tears started to fall, but any time I even think about him, it all wells up inside me, and I’m one nice comment away from breaking down. I swipe at them furiously, and Clara notices.

“Oh, Miles, fuck. Let me pull over,” she says, checking her mirrors before pulling off to the side of the road. She opens her car door, and my eyes widen. Is she crazy? She rounds the car, opens the passenger side, and almost knocks me out when she wraps her arms around me. “You looked like you needed a hug. You told me once that I give the best hugs.”

“I was five,” I grumble, melting into her embrace.

“It still stands,” she whispers. “Please tell me you’ve been talking to someone about this and you’ve not been keeping it inside.”

“The team has a counselor we speak to once a week, but other than that, it’s just Wren,” I admit. Even she doesn’t know the extent of my pain because I can’t even put it into words, and I shut down each time I say his name out loud. I’ve never felt more helpless than I did when I broke down at the rink, but just being around her makes me feel less alone.

Clara pulls from me, smiling wide. “I’m guessing Wren is the girlfriend.”

I nod. “She is, but she’s…” I trail off, laughing at myself. How could I even begin to describe her? How could I possibly explain that she’s taken over every single thought in my brain since the moment I met her? That she’s the only thing I can think about sometimes, her stubbornness and all. “God, Clara. She’s everything.”

Clara grins. “Wow. We really do have a lot to catch up on.”