Hat Trick (Fake Boyfriend 5)

I want to ask him something, but I’m scared of what his answer will be. I’m even more scared he’ll see right through it and know what I truly mean. I sit up and wrap my arms around my legs as I bring them up to my chest. “Do you still love him even though you know you shouldn’t?” I don’t know if I want him to answer a yes or no here.

I still love Harley … I think. I don’t know. It’s been over for months, but there was a part of me that always had hope. Especially when, even though we were technically broken up, we were still sneaking nights together.

Soren makes the heartache lighter. He makes me think a life without Harley is easy and possible. Whereas when Harley—or more specifically, the label and his manager—ripped out my heart, all I could think was I’d never recover.

“I don’t love Bryce. I don’t think I have for a while,” Soren says softly.

I stare at Soren over my shoulder and wonder if this is unfair to him. Me being here. In his bed.

Soren sits up too, and his warm, large arms wrap around me from behind. “But it’s perfectly okay if you still have feelings for Harley. And it’s understandable. First loves are always hard to get over, and I’m not under any delusion that I could make you move on so fast.”

“That’s just it. I don’t think Harley was my first love …” Fuck, that did not just come out of my mouth.

“W-what do you mean?”

I turn in his arms.

Soren’s expression is guarded, and I don’t know if he’s reading into what I said or if he’s genuinely confused.

“Don’t freak out,” I blurt. So not the right way to start this. “You were the first guy to show me what love could be.”

Soren groans. “God, don’t tell me that after I treated you like shit.”

“You didn’t treat me like shit. At all. Yeah, you should’ve told me you still had a boyfriend when we met up in Tampa, but hey, you were able to pull back when you needed to. The asshole thing to do would’ve been to fuck me again and then tell me about Bryce. Definitely wouldn’t be the first time someone’s done that to me.”

He goes to open his mouth again, but I cut him off.

“Hear me out, okay? I wasn’t in love with you. We’d had one night together, and I’m not some delusional, naïve kid who thought that meant anything more than it was. But it was the first time I’d been with anyone where I said to myself, This … this is what it’s supposed to feel like. I’d hooked up with guys before, had pseudo-relationships with closeted guys back in Tennessee, but it all felt empty. That night with you showed me what an actual connection was like, so when I met Harley and experienced something similar, I always thought it was you who taught me how to love that way. Even if what we had was only a taste of the possibility.”

Soren’s hand cups my face. “Jet—”

“I don’t mean anything else other than what I’ve said.” I can’t look him in the eye. “I just … Even though we will walk away from here and go our separate ways, I thought you should know that.”

“Thank you for telling me,” he whispers.

“And that doesn’t have to change this. What we’re doing here. This”—I run my hand over his taut shoulder—“is fun in Fiji—”

“Title of our sex tape.”

I laugh. “Oh God, no. No sex tape.” Luce would kill me. The NHL wouldn’t be happy with Soren either.

“Okay, no sex tape, but I want to say something.”

My gaze flicks up to meet his.

“With Bryce and me, I tried to make it work for so long, but looking back, I think I know the moment it was doomed to fail.”

“When?” My throat feels like sandpaper.

“The morning after Tampa. I felt it too. Everything you did. I thought we could be so much more than what we had. You know what I told myself three years ago when you walked out of that hotel room in New York after you’d told me to call Bryce?”

I shake my head.

“That even though I’d rather be calling you, I was making the right choice. You were about to chase your dream. You were young, and I didn’t want to stand in your way. For that whole year, I watched your band and following grow, and I knew I’d done the right thing. But then in Tampa … I realized watching you play and hanging out with you was more fun than anything I’d done with Bryce in the previous twelve months. I wanted you when I shouldn’t have, which made me run away. And then I stayed with Bryce out of guilt. He knew it too. Guilt over coming out for him, guilt over screwing him around, but worst of all, guilt over leading you on.”