The Game That Breaks Us (Us 3)

“That’s because we did, sweetheart.” I laugh and reach out to try to tame her hair a bit. It’s a wild mess and I selfishly love seeing it that way—knowing it’s from us fucking—but everyone else would know too.

She eyes her reflection in the mirror and wipes her smeared lip gloss off her lips and fixes her hair better than I did.

We can’t put off the inevitable, so I open the door and we step out into the hall. It’s—thankfully—empty.

Our coffee still sits on the table we had occupied and we sit back down, acting like nothing happened.

Grace raises her mug to her lips and takes a sip, her eyes shifting around the room. It’s probably catching up with her, what we did, and I don’t want her to freak out.

I take her hand and bring it to my lips, kissing the tops of her fingers.

She bites her lip and looks from our hands to my face. “Everyone knows,” she hisses.

“Nah, sweetheart. We’d be in a police car if they did.” She pales. “I was kidding,” I hasten to add.

“Oh.” Her shoulders sag in relief.

“Grace?” I say her name hesitantly. Now is the most wrong fucking time to bring this up, but I can’t keep quiet anymore.

“What?” She looks scared, and I can’t blame her: my voice shakes and I sound so unlike myself.

“What do you think about making this official? Us, I mean?”

Her eyes convey her surprise and her pouty pink lips part. “Like, you want us to be a real couple?”

I nod. I want it more than any-fucking-thing. So much so that for the last few days all I’ve thought of is Grace and hockey hasn’t crossed my mind. That never happens. Hockey has always been my sole focus, but not anymore.

She doesn’t say anything and that worries me. I start to take it back, to tell her to forget about it, when she gasps the softest, most perfect, “Yes.”

I breathe out an embarrassingly loud sigh of relief and take her face between my hands, kissing her. She smiles against my lips and lets out a quiet laugh.

“Are you sure about this?” she asks. “I know you don’t date.”

“I didn’t, but you … changed things. It’s been killing me being this close to you and having to realize it was all fake.”

“That was your idea,” she reminds me. “For me to be your fake girlfriend,” she adds like I didn’t already know what she meant.

“I know, sweetheart, I fucking know.” I press my forehead to hers, my hand winding around the back of her neck.

“By the way,” she says with a smile, “it’s worked.”

“What has?” I ask, confused.

“You using me as your fake girlfriend,” she whispers. “Look what Elle just sent me.”

She holds out her phone to me with a picture Elle snapped of the inside of a magazine. The headline reads: Meet Hockey’s New ‘It’ Couple. There are photos of Grace and I on campus, the one of our kiss at the game, and even one of me standing outside her dorm with coffee and cupcakes. The photo is out too far for me to read what it says, but from the headline, I’d say it’s pretty positive.

I smile. “Thanks for saving my reputation.” I draw her close and kiss her forehead.

She smiles. “And now it’s real?”

“It’s real.”

“I like Bennett,” my mom says, shuffling clothes around on a rack.

When she asked me to go shopping, I knew she had an ulterior motive for getting me out of the house.

“I do too, obviously,” I say, picking up a dress from the rack and holding it up to my body.