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8. Fake It Till You Make It

8

FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT

brISTOL

I can’t get Lila out of my head. I can’t believe she had the nerve to put on that stupid show. I’m not the type of person who gets jealous easily. I’m secure in myself. I was secure in my relationship with Summit. But last night was the first time I ever felt far from it.

The whole night was a disaster. And that comment she made about eating in front of the cameras— fuck . I could say anything in this world about how beautiful she is, and she wouldn’t believe me. I care about Lila. I don’t think I ever stopped caring about her. And when you care about a person, you feel this inexplicable need to take care of them.

I’m not okay with any of this. I’m not okay with being Lila’s self-proclaimed sworn enemy. I’m not okay seeing her with other guys. This whole operation has gone up in flames before it’s even begun. I have to be a different breed of stupid if I thought I could win her back and we’d go skipping off into the sunset together.

I sit across a boardroom table, watching helplessly as the CEO of Kitty’s Catwalk uses all the air in the room to yell at me and Lila. This is like a Coach-equivalent type of debrief. And having an older woman screaming at you doesn’t make it any less terrifying.

You fucked up? Say hi to the penalty box—or in my case, the corporate penalty box.

“You two made quite the splash last night,” Ester says. She turns her laptop toward me and Lila, and a huge headline is projected across the screen, one that’s bound to incite mass speculation over the now arguable quality of professionalism in the studio.

UPCOMING MODEL LILA PERKINS AND RIVERSIDE REAPERS’ brISTOL brENNER SPOTTED GOING HEAD-TO-HEAD IN A FRIENDLY PDA COMPETITION. TROUBLE ON THE CATWALK, ANYONE?

Lila’s pictured in that stupid dress that drove me crazy all night as she’s getting acquainted with Glifford’s non-PG areas, and I’m staring her down with the rage of a thousand burning suns as what’s-her-face clings to my arm like a barnacle. I didn’t know her, alright? I didn’t engage in conversation with her. This random chick came up to me after Lila stormed off, commented on how lonely I looked, and then proceeded to fabricate a bunch of lies about how she’s a big fan of mine and loves the Riverside Rangers.

I’ve been called a lot of things in my life—a shit-for-brains captain, a talentless hockey player with the appeal of a disease-infected testicle, a lying son of a bitch (Lila), a cum-hungry demon bastard (Lila), but I’ll never, EVER accept someone calling me a “ranger.”

So, while Lila was rubbing herself all over Glifford like he had a Slim Jim in his pocket and she was a feral cat who hadn’t eaten in days, I was watching everything go down from afar, trying to refrain from choking the ever-loving life out of him. I wasn’t going to partake in whatever dick-measuring contest was going on with her. I wasn’t going to play her twisted battle-of-the-sexes game.

Oh, and boyfriend my ass . I’ve seen more chemistry between two slugs mating on the porch.

Her back is rigid against the hard, uncomfortable meeting chairs, her leg keeps shaking underneath the table, and she looks surprisingly apologetic for someone who fired the first shot. It doesn’t help that we’re seated so close to each other, either. That aromatic, jasmine perfume of hers smothers me in a cloud, reminding me just how intoxicating her scent is—how I inhaled it every time my mouth was on her neck, how she’d spritz it on her ankles so I could smell it when her legs were on my shoulders, how it would linger for days and kick my sleeping libido into high gear. But even as incredible as it smelt, nothing smelled better than that perfect fucking pussy of hers.

I know it’s unprofessional to be thinking about something like that in the middle of a meeting—especially a meeting where we’re both getting reamed—but I can’t ignore the pencil skirt she’s wearing right now. How the hem is slowly riding up her thighs from the tightness, highlighting those long, tan legs that are defined in all the right places.

She’s torturing me with her absentminded teasing, and I watch as, little by little, more of her thigh is exposed and the mauve-colored material covering her crotch rucks into a thin line. She doesn’t fix it, and it’s not because she knows I’m ogling her. She’s too entrapped by the admonishment still happening.

Lila opens her mouth slightly, shame burdening her shoulders. “I’m so sor?—”

“You two do realize this makes Kitty’s Catwalk look like some classless institution, correct? People are going to start believing that we let our models do whatever—and whomever —they want,” Ester spits, glaring pointedly at Lila. “Our models are not easy . And frankly, Ms. Perkins, that show you put on last night was tasteless and downright humiliating.”

Excuse me? What the fuck did she just say to her? Lila didn’t do anything wrong. She’s not easy . And just because she was dancing on some dude doesn’t make her easy. Ester’s saddling Lila with all the blame when in reality, she wouldn’t have acted out if it wasn’t for me being a colossal jackass. If I wasn’t a nonconfrontational person and bound by a contract, I’d respond with something along the lines of I know you have some outdated preconceptions about women since you’ve been around since the Salem Witch Trials, but in modern day, slut shaming only makes the person doing the shaming look tasteless.

But I can’t say that, so I settle for something less hostile. “With all due respect, Ms. Sterling, it’s my fault Lila was in that position in the first place.”

Lila’s head immediately whips around, and she doesn’t have a look of gratitude on her face. No, she has a look of indignation gnarled into her features, the cerulean rings of her irises a shade alarmingly darker, like the deep, endless blue of the ocean’s midnight zone. She also kicks me under the table with the toe of her heel, and I wince.

Ester’s overplucked eyebrows pinch together. “Enlighten me, Mr. Brenner. How could you possibly be responsible for Ms. Perkins’ actions? She’s a grown woman. She needs to start taking responsibility for herself, especially being the new face of Kitty’s Catwalk.”

“I was antagonizing her, and then I made things worse by causing a scene.”

Ester clasps her hands behind her back, stalks around the front of the table, and knots her red lips into a frown. “Is this true, Ms. Perkins?”

Lila shrinks further into her seat, her throat working with a swallow as she nods. Each one of her heavily guarded defenses come tumbling down—a fissure of truth cracking a hole open in her lie—and her entire face flushes at my guilty admission.

I should’ve knocked Glifford’s teeth out and made him fucking swallow them. I don’t condone any man shamelessly groping a woman in public, but I especially don’t condone it when it’s my woman.

Fuck. I need to stop saying that. Get it through your head, dude! She’s. Not. Yours.

“I see. I admire you for coming clean, Mr. Brenner, but outbursts like that are unacceptable. Whatever emotional baggage you two are dealing with must be left at the door when you enter a public space, especially when news outlets are scavenging for the slightest scrap of drama,” Ester explains.

“I’m truly sorry,” Lila murmurs, as if the five syllables had to be hooked, lined, then yanked from the base of her throat.

She’s shrunken in on herself like a dog with its tail between its legs, and the tiny plot of lip she’s chosen to gnaw on darkens with a smear of blood.

“One more stunt like that and we won’t hesitate to replace you, Ms. Perkins,” Ester threatens.

“Got it.”

I knew how important that night was to Lila, and I had to go and pick a fight with her over every little jab. Even though she’s responsible for what she did with Glifford, I still harbor some of the blame. I can’t push every single one of her buttons and be surprised when she retaliates.

I know I’ll probably regret this, but I reach out and gently brush Lila’s hand, reaffirming our boundaries but toeing the line just a little to see how much of it gives. And she glances at me, fleetingly, with a softness in her eyes that I haven’t seen since we were together together. That girl I know is still in there, forced beneath the surface to make way for someone colder…someone who only exists because of my ill-doing. A hollow husk of the pe rson she once was, stripped bare of the vulnerability she trusted in my hands. And I ruined her every time I kissed her, every time I told her how much I cared about her, every time I dangled a future in front of her and tore it away in the same breath.

But Lila’s softness does not flourish. It disintegrates, and it calls home a steel edge that I’ve cut myself on prior. There are three other people in the room right now, and none of them dare to cross the impasse between either of our stares.

Ester tsks disappointedly, pulling her associates aside to discuss with them. They leave me and Lila in stifling silence, back to evading the other’s line of sight, back to keeping a measurable distance between our bodies. It hurts me not to hold her hand—not to swallow up every lingering bit of pain still tormenting her.

After a one-minute debrief with her colleagues, Ester turns her attention back to us, clinically cold as she discloses the next plan of action. “I’d like to implement a new strategy to help boost the campaign. A foolproof strategy that will ensure something like this doesn’t happen again in the future.”

The last thing I’m thinking about is this stupid campaign. All I can think about is Lila. This girl’s crawled underneath my skin, burrowed into my bone marrow, and infected every inch of my brain with the melodic sound of her laughter, the irresistible way she smells, the big, beautiful smile of hers that makes her eyes crinkle. I can’t escape her. She’s going to kill me, and that’s the only way I want to go.

“To steer this… unwanted …publicity away from the rumor mill, it’s heavily advised that as our leading models for Menoulé’s campaign, you two come across as…intertwined,” Ester explains slowly.

Lila and I both stare at each other, and Ester doesn’t need to spell it out in big, bold letters to get her point across. Oh, the point is across alright. It’s across the goddamn ocean, speeding sixty miles straight toward me to capsize my entire world.

“You two need to be a couple,” she finishes with a deadpan look, completely oblivious to the internal panic hailing down around me.

Dear God. Does Ester realize what she’s just done? She’s thrown me into the lion’s den with only the clothes on my back, and news flash, I’m about as edible as a chicken wing slathered in barbecue sauce. No way will Lila ever agree to something as farfetched as this—at least, not quietly.

“Excuse me?” Lila croaks, a bright pink blush puddling in her cheeks.

Ester slams her palms against the surface of the table, leaning threateningly over us, permeating the cramped boardroom with mothballs and Mucinex. “The public doesn’t want to see headlines about our lead models getting cozy with their significant others. The public wants to see headlines about our lead models getting cozy with one another . People need a connection to be invested in something—it’s human nature. And what better way to drive sales than with a blossoming workplace romance?”

Right now, my nerves are running around in endless circles, screaming bloody murder while my whole world goes up in a ball of flames. Lila’s frozen, uncharacteristically at a loss for words, looking like she’s seconds away from puking all over the tabletop.

I try in vain to clear my throat, but all that comes out is a weak gurgle. “You want us to pretend to date?” I rephrase.

“Precisely,” one of Ester’s associates says, hugging a classified binder to her chest. “Past campaigns have shown that sales skyrocketed when our lead models were involved with one another.”

The anxiety that Lila’s been running on this whole afternoon empties within a millisecond, and she shimmies down the hem of her skirt, halting the habitual spasm of her leg. She glares at me from beneath her lashes and runs her tongue over her teeth like she’s trying to get the rancid taste of my name out of her mouth. “ Bristol doesn’t date.”

Every eye zeroes in on me, all those Lila-specific butterflies transforming into disgusting moths that eat away at my gut. A reassuring response evades me in my moment of need, and I’m left scrambling to pick up the fallout of the giant truth bomb Lila just dropped on everyone.

Ester turns her nose up judgmentally. “Is this true, Mr. Brenner?”

I’m going to kill myself. Seriously. I’d rather drag my nut sack across broken glass than have this conversation, and the I told you so look on Lila’s face doesn’t make it any better. She’s all smug with her lips stretched into a gloating smirk. She thinks she has me backed into a corner, but if anything, this situation’s given me incentive to prove her wrong.

“It is true,” I admit. “I’m not a relationship type of person, but I am a team player, and if a relationship is what’ll drive sales, then I’ll do whatever I can to make this plan believable.”

See, Lila? Two can play this game. And four years in the NHL has taught me to never back down from a challenge. Bristol Brenner—yes, I’m referring to myself in the third person—doesn’t lose. And he’s not going to start now.

Lila sputters, searching for something to retaliate with, but Ester cuts her off with a dramatic flick of her hand. “Perfect. Then it’s settled—you two will put on a show for the cameras as long as the campaign’s still active. Do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal,” I say, now flaunting the same smug smirk that’s since faded from Lila’s face.

“Ms. Perkins?”

Lila’s jaw is clenched like she’s hell-bent on uprooting a crown, throbbing veins section off her neck, and there’s this scary, crazed twinkle gleaming in her eyes—which is the equivalent of a bull pawing his hoof against the ground before charging.

“I…understand,” she grits through her teeth, refusing to glance my way. She’s probably plotting my murder as we speak.

I know I wanted to fix things in a bit of a more… natural …way, but Kitty’s Catwalk is offering me a second chance on a silver platter, and I know better than to pass it up. Lila will have no choice but to give me the time of day, and that’s when I’m going to work my Bristol magic, prove to her how sorry I am, and show her just how much she still means to me.

A little bud of hope finally sprouts inside me, planting its roots in nutrient-dense soil, and Operation How You Get the Girl is off to a wonderful, wonderful start.

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