Chapter 12

Considering my track record,it's highly unusual for me to jolt awake in the middle of the night.

So why am I awake now?

I blink into the darkness of my hotel room, heart pounding.

And then I hear it again.

A soft knock on the door. But not the door into the hallway. The door that connects my hotel room to Summer's.

Summer.

Maybe that's why I woke up so easily. Clearly, my brain has some sort of default wiring that means I will always wake up for her.

"Nathan?" she whisper-yells, her voice muffled by the door.

I stand up and shuffle over, swinging the door open to find her standing there, eyes wide, a nervous expression on her face.

"I can't believe that worked," she says. "I didn't think I'd be able to wake you up."

"Is everything okay?" I practically cringe at the sound of my scratchy voice. "What time is it?"

There's a lamp on in the room behind her, and I blink against the light, but once my eyes adjust, I don't see anything wrong with her room.

"Just past three," she says. "And I'm totally fine, but my bed is not. There's water leaking out of my ceiling."

"What?"

"Did you see the episode of Schitt's Creek where John and Moira's ceiling dripped on them? Basically just like that."

I follow her gaze as she turns, and sure enough, there's a steady drip drip drip falling from the ceiling directly into the center of her mattress.

"Did you call the front desk?"

"No one answered. But also, if they do answer, they're going to want to come up and check things out and then they'll want to move me to a new room, and by the time all of that happens, it'll be time to wake up."

My brain is still moving slowly. Does she want me to fix it? Or is there some other solution my sleep-addled brain hasn't grasped yet?

"Can I just sleep in your room?" she says.

Nope. Definitely hadn't thought of that.

"I just…really want to sleep for a few more hours, and this feels like the easiest way."

Last night, the rest of the Appies left immediately after the game to drive over to Cleveland, leaving Alec, Summer, and me at the hotel alone. After our Flex meeting in the morning, Summer will fly back to Harvest Hollow, and Alec and I will fly to Cleveland to catch the team.

That means Summer doesn't really have anywhere else to go. If the front desk isn't helping, it's either my room or Alec's, and…yeah, it has to be my room.

I don't actually worry about Alec. We may call the guy Ego, but there are lines he won't cross, and another man's girlfriend is one of those lines. Even if, in this case, the relationship isn't technically real.

Still, I don't like the idea of Summer spending time alone with any of the guys on the team. Or any guy, period.

It's stupid. And probably a little overkill to feel so protective of her. So concerned for her wellbeing. But there it is.

"Please, Nathan?" Summer says. "I know how much sleep I need to be at my best, and the longer I'm awake, the harder that's going to be."

This is a bad idea.

How can Summer Callahan in my bed be anything but a bad idea? But I can't argue with her. I'm not sure I could tell her no even if I wanted to.

And dammit, I really don't want to.

"Okay, come on," I say, stepping back and motioning her through the door.

"Thank you," she says as she breezes in. It's still winter-dark outside, but with the light pouring in from her room, and a streetlight in the parking lot outside that's filtering in through the heavy curtains, there's more than enough light for me to see Summer's outline as she moves toward the bed.

I swallow, my throat suddenly dry. She's wearing a tank top and a pair of flannel pajama bottoms, and her hair is up, giving me a perfect view of her shoulders, the stretch of skin below her collarbones, the curves of her body. She looks…perfect. Completely casual, a little rumpled from sleep, but…perfect.

And she's about to crawl into my bed.

This doesn't have to be awkward. Does it? We're both adults—adults in extenuating circumstances. And there's, what—three more hours until I'm supposed to wake up? That's basically nothing. This is nothing.

I close the door, blocking the light from her room and flooding us with darkness.

"Do you care which side I'm on?" Summer asks. "I promise I'll make myself as small as possible."

"You're fine where you are," I say, moving to the bed and pulling down the covers. "And don't make yourself small. It's a big bed."

"Got it," Summer says, her voice coy. "So you're saying I can warm my ice-cube feet underneath your butt. So glad we cleared that up."

I settle onto the mattress and pull up the covers. I'm not unaware that I'm a foot or so closer to the middle than I could be, but it's hard to resist the pull of her. It's hard enough keeping her off my mind when she isn't in the same room.

But this? Talk about futility.

"Are your feet really cold?" I ask.

"Always," she answers.

"Why not sleep in socks?"

"Because socks don't work. If my feet are cold when I put on socks, they just hold the cold in. They don't warm me up."

"That is very bad science," I say, and Summer chuckles.

"You sound like Lucy. She's a nurse, and she's always telling me I'm wrong about this. But I swear it's true. Socks don't help. My feet are perpetually, permanently blocks of Arctic ice."

"They can't be that bad."

Summer shifts, and cold snakes its way up my calf as she presses her feet against my leg.

I yelp and all but jump out of the bed to get away from her. "Geez. You weren't kidding."

Summer laughs. "I told you!"

"How do you even fall asleep when they're that cold?"

"Sometimes I lay cross-legged so I can tuck my toes behind my knees, but mostly I just…ignore it? I'm pretty used to it by now."

"I think you need to see a doctor," I say. "Here." I scoot closer to the center of the bed, turning onto my side. "Slide them under my leg."

"Nathan. You don't have to warm up my feet."

"You're liable to ice over the entire bed if I don't. Come on. I'm braced. Go ahead and do it."

"Are you sure?"

"If you take too much longer, I might change my mind."

"Okay, okay!"

As her feet nudge their way under my thigh, their coldness immediately permeates the thin fabric of my joggers. My muscles tense at the cold—you'd think as a hockey player I'd be used to ice, but her feet are something else entirely—but then she breathes out a happy sigh and my muscles relax. I'll deal with the cold all night long if it means hearing her make sounds like that.

"Better?" I ask, and I swear, the air between us changes. Like someone snuck in and cranked up the tension with an invisible knob.

She hums softly. "You're so warm."

Right now, I'd say I'm running much more hot, but I don't correct her.

She nudges her toes a little deeper under my leg, and I reach down, loosely wrapping a hand around her ankle.

She lets out a low whimper. "Mmm. Your hands are as warm as the rest of you."

I brush my thumb across her skin, slowly stroking up and down until her breathing shifts, and I wonder if she's fallen asleep.

But then she asks, "Hey, should we talk about the rules?"

"Rules?"

"Mmhmm. Like, our dating rules."

"I'm still not following," I say.

"I just mean when we're out in public and people need to think we're together. What are we comfortable with? Are we always good with kissing? Holding hands? That sort of thing."

She shifts her leg, moving it closer, and my hand slips slightly higher, inching toward her calf. Her skin feels like silk under my palm, and I suddenly wonder what my hockey-rough fingers feel like to her.

The thought almost makes me laugh out loud. In the past forty-eight hours, my relationship with Summer has gone from zero to sixty. We were friends before—sort of.

Now, the entire world thinks we're together, we've kissed, we're sharing a bed, and she knows about my brother, something I hadn't even told my teammates before the reporter brought it up and forced my hand.

I don't need a rule book with this woman, I need a survival guide.

"Okay," I say. "Rules make sense. Where do we start?"

"With kissing, I think."

"Wow. Going right for it."

"Because it's the most important one. When my older sister Audrey was faking it with Flint, they had a no-kissing rule. She didn't want to kiss him unless it was real. But you and I have already kissed, so…"

"Wait. Back up," I say. "Your sister faked a relationship too?"

"I know. Weird, right? And she did it for similar reasons. Well, sort of similar. Flint had a co-star who was causing some publicity problems, and he needed to look like he had a girlfriend at their movie premiere. So Audrey stepped in. Then they fell in love for real and got married last fall."

"Flint…do you mean…? Are you telling me your sister is married to Flint Hawthorne?"

"I…am telling you that. But he's from my hometown, so I feel like that makes it slightly less crazy. He and Audrey met a couple of years ago."

It makes sense that actors I've seen in movies have normal lives and normal families, but it still feels weird to wrap my head around one of those actors being Summer's brother-in-law. "And you're saying they faked their relationship at first?"

"Just for a movie premiere he had to attend." Summer yawns. "But honestly, they were totally in love with each other from the start, so I think they were only pretending it was fake."

"So they were faking a fake relationship that was actually real the whole time?"

"Well done. You caught on quick." She wiggles her toes. "Nathan, you have no idea how heavenly this is. I would sleep so good if I got to do this every night."

"And I would wake up a lot easier," I say before I can think better of it.

"Mmm," she says sleepily. "A match made in heaven."

It would be so easy. So easy to reach out, to pull her against me, tuck her body into my side and run a hand along the curve of her hip.

I can't do it.

For her sake—and mine.

I might have gotten caught up in my emotions yesterday, compelled by the intensity of our kiss and the unexpected feelings triggered at the press conference. But after the game, once I finally came back to earth and considered how I really feel, I had a very serious conversation with myself.

I get that Summer is what my career needs right now.

But long term, I'm not what she needs. And I have to do my best to keep the lines from getting blurry.

Instead of reaching out for her, I loop a finger through my father's Stanley Cup ring and take a steadying breath. My teammates think I wear it to honor him. Like a talisman or a good luck charm. I get why they think that. My dad killed it on the ice. Stanley Cup winner. NHL Hall-of-Famer.

But that's not why I wear it.

I wear it to remind me of everything I don't want to be. To remember the damage he caused so I'm never tempted to do the same thing.

Summer yawns beside me, wiggling her toes to get my attention. "Did you fall asleep on me?"

"No, I'm good," I say. "I'm awake."

"So, here's my thought," she says. "Since we already kissed once, I think it's okay if we need to kiss again. If people are watching, if we really need to sell the relationship, it's okay with me if it's okay with you."

"Sounds good to me."

"Obviously, that means holding hands is fine. And hugging, and just generally being affectionate with one another."

"Obviously," I repeat. "That all sounds reasonable."

"And I assume, aside from your friends, we're just going to let the rest of the team think it's real?"

"Malik already does, so…yeah. Do you really have the form we need to file?"

"Only because Parker emailed it to me."

"So you weren't kidding about dating your way down the roster."

Instead of responding, Summer plops a pillow onto my face.

I huff and toss it aside. "Did you just throw a pillow at me? Is that your thing now?"

"You deserved it," Summer says, laughter in her voice.

"Oh, you're getting it now."

I reach for her, my hand skimming over her arm as she shrieks and scrambles to the other side of the bed. I'm a lot bigger than she is, so it only takes a moment to catch her and tug her into the center of the mattress. She laughs and laughs, her fists raining futile blows against my chest until I capture her wrists and loosely pin them above her head. I'm not actually holding her in place. One tug and she'd be free of me. But she stays where she is anyway.

"Okay, okay," she says through her laughter. "I surrender. You win."

It's too dark for me to see more than her outline, but my other senses are making up for it. I hear her breathing, feel it as I hover over her. I smell hints of vanilla in her hair, something citrusy on her skin. Every single part of me feels tuned into her every movement, her every breath.

"I loved watching you play tonight," she says, her voice soft. "You were great."

I don't tell her that knowing she was watching, having her in the stands, made me play harder and faster than I have in months. I've rolled my eyes at guys who fawn over their girlfriends while they're on the ice, but when I saw her standing behind the glass, I understood the appeal. I may be morally opposed to relationships on principle, but it did feel good knowing there was someone at the game just for me.

"I loved knowing you were watching," I admit, and Summer takes a stuttering breath.

She tugs her wrists free, and I immediately shift away, giving her room.

"Okay, I have one more rule," she says. She moves up the bed, shifting, then tugging the covers into place. This time, she's definitely not close enough for me to warm her feet.

I lay down on my side of the bed, one arm lifted over my head. "Okay. Shoot."

"If we're faking, then we're faking. I don't want to wonder if every touch or every look means something that it doesn't. So let's just decide that it doesn't. We're doing this to make things easier on you and Parker. Unless we explicitly tell each other differently, we assume there are no actual real feelings involved. Is that fair?"

I'm not an idiot. I know what she's doing, and I understand why she's doing it. She's protecting herself. Setting boundaries that will keep all this from getting confusing. She's respecting what she already knows about me, acting on the assumption that I don't want anything real. And she's right to do that. Even though the tension and pull between us are more real than anything I've felt before, it still doesn't change my resolve.

"Yeah," I finally say. "That sounds fair."

It's the smartest path forward.

It's logical. Practical.

It's exactly what I want.

So why do I feel so disappointed?