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But then Mabel saw this same girl talking to her friends, and it wasn’t quite as tongue-in-cheek. It was something else. Something warm, that at the same time filled her with the weight of expectation.Would it be so bad to just do it for a little while until it’s reasonable that we dump each other, she asked herself.Just so lasses like this don’t have to wake up to a knew-it-would-turn-out-to-be-a-disappointment kind of thing?
And her brain actually answeredMaybe.
Though she couldn’t quite bring herself to go with it to Alfie.
“So are you seriously suggesting we pretend? That’s what you want to do?” she asked instead. In a scornful way, too.
A way that made him sigh heavily.
“It’s not that I want to, Mabel. It’s that the other options are all so foul they make me want to sick up. And I didn’t even do that when Michael Henrique went for my legs and turned my right ankle into spaghetti.” He shook his head, clearly remembering the incident in question. “Bone was poking out and everything. Three of my teammates started crying. One of themhad to have therapy. But I didn’t even so much as burp my dinner into my mouth.”
And nowshewas remembering it.
Much to her extreme discomfort.
“I know. I’ve seen the footage.”
“So you get it, then.”
“I get that.” She pointed one way. Then the other. “I don’t get this.”
“But why don’t you, though?”
“Because there are worse things than being thought of as too hideous to date a football player,” she said. And it felt good when she did it. It was a solid point. Plus, she hadn’t taken on any of their sentiments, or gone with any of the specifics. So the specifics weren’t there to make him mad all over again.
Only somehow, he still looked mad anyway.
Or at least, more mad than usual.
And just a little bit pained, too, in a way she didn’t understand. Until he said: “Maybe. But there aren’t many worse than knowing you’re terrible at the one thing you’ve always wanted to do, mostly due to being humiliated by a lot of people. Then hoping that maybe hiring a ghostwriter would at least put you back to square one, help you open up and get used to sharing things, only to have to tell all the people who took the piss that you hired one.”
Then suddenly she was mad and pained, too.
Because he’d said it out loud, he’d admitted it.
And not in a way she could just gently receive and reassure him about.
In a horrible way that she couldn’t even deny was the case. The whole situation would seem like that, she knew it would. It would hurt him to have to do it, and even if it didn’t—nobody was supposed to know. They weren’t supposed to tell anyone. Heck, she’d signed an NDA thatdemandedshe never tell anyone. She could be sued into the middle of the next century just for vaguely trying to explain what the real situation was. And sure, Alfie would probably try to stop it.
But Alfie wasn’t the only one involved.
Harchester and her agent and his manager were all in the mix.
So where did that leave her?In jail, wracked with guilt over causing him some terrible blow to his emotional well-being and sense of self, she thought. Then winced so hard at the idea it was a struggle to get words out.
“Okay, in my defense that did not occur to me,” she said.
To which he did a good job of pretending it wasn’t a big deal.
“Why would it? You only guessed about five minutes ago.”
“Yeah, but I should have realized straight away. I mean, it’s obvious.”
“It doesn’t feel obvious. Feels absolutely bonkers that I thought I could ever.”
“Well, actually, I’ve been thinking how not bonkers it is. Considering how good you are with words. And how cool that thing you said was,” she said, and silence followed. An uncomfortable one, which she kind of wished she hadn’t prompted. After all, it had only been five minutes since she’d vowed never to mention his description of her. And with good reason, because now here it was, in the room, making a mess of them both.
She felt as if she was bracing hard enough to hold herself in a roller coaster without a seat belt. He looked like he wanted to die rather than have this conversation. Plainly, at the very least, he regretted saying the things he had. Or wished he’d gone less hard about it. Even though it was okay, it was fine—she understood it hadn’t meant anything. That he was simply being nice.
