Fake Shot (Boston Rebels Book 2)

I lock my bedroom door behind me, then rush into my bathroom, shutting that door as well. When I finally make it through the bathroom and into my closet, I rest my hands on the big wooden countertop of the island in the middle of the room, hang my head, and let the tears fall.

How could I let that happen?

After literal years spent crafting a life where I was in total control, where I wouldn’t be tempted to do anything reckless—living in the same house as my siblings, owning my own business, not dating or drinking or doing anything even remotely risky—I had to go and lose control. And worst of all . . . with Colt.

I can’t even trust myself.

Being around Colt is always a mistake. I become reckless. I promised myself six years ago I’d never again have feelings for him or let him influence any of my decisions, and less than a week of living in the same house as him and I’m wrapping myself around him in an alley, practically dry humping the man!

And afterward, he looked at me with regret lining every feature of his face, his eyes panicked and his brow furrowed . . . and he fucking apologized and said it didn’t mean anything. I was just some mistake he hadn’t meant to make and wanted to forget about as quickly as possible.

Because that’s what happens when I lose control—I become someone else’s mistake.

I let the sobs rack my body, my fingers gripping the countertop and my shoulders shaking with the force of letting out my frustration and remorse. Then I glance over at the space that used to house the door from this room to the hallway—the doorway I’d found my brother and Colt standing in just a few days ago. That door’s now locked, and covered with a layer of soundproof insulation, a piece of plywood, a piece of drywall, and some decorative trim.

I’d installed and painted that the next day, determined that Colt not walk by and hear anything that I wouldn’t want him to hear coming from this room—which right now is the sound of my sobbing.

Taking a deep breath, I force myself to straighten up, and wipe the tears and snot from my face. I will not let another man make me question my sense of self-worth. I’ve been down this slippery slope before, and it’s the whole reason I don’t date. It’s the reason I don’t let myself have feelings for anyone but my family and closest girlfriends. It’s the reason I started an all-female construction company. I’m a badass on my own, and make completely stupid, reckless decisions when men are involved.

My life is much, much better this way.

I suck in another deep breath, wipe away the remaining tears, then strip off my suit and throw it over the chair near the windows. Slipping on my favorite sweatpants—which are so soft and worn they are no longer fuzzy, making them perfect for this warm evening—I tuck my tank top into the front of the waistband, and head back into the bathroom to clean up my face.

When I look in the mirror, it’s worse than I expected. My bun is loose from Colt running his fingertips along my neck and digging them into my scalp. I ignore the shiver that wracks my body as I remember the feel of his huge, warm hands on me. My lip gloss is smeared all around my mouth, and my mascara has pooled beneath my eyes, leaving sunken black circles and a dark trail down my cheeks. I look like I could be trying to pass for Harley Quinn on Halloween.

I scrub my face, wishing I could wash away the memory of the regret I saw in Colt’s eyes after he pulled away from me in that alley. But it’s still there. No matter how hard I scrub, the vision lingers just behind my lids each time I close my eyes.

The reason adult me has always held Colt at such a distance—every snarky barb pushing him further away—is that he’s the only person who’s ever driven me to be so damn reckless I almost ruined my own life.

Never. Again.

I promised myself that six years ago. Everything I’ve done since then was meant to ensure I never go on a bender like I did in Vegas. And tonight, I almost forgot.

I close my eyes, making sure I feel all the shame and regret and frustration so I can remind myself: never again.

And then, determined to distract myself from the shitshow that was tonight, I head back into my closet. There, I open the low door on the far side of the island and pull out the lift-up table inside the base cabinet that holds my sewing machine. I slide the foot petal out and set it on the floor, before opening one of the wide drawers that holds my fabric.

A few months ago, I went down an internet research rabbit hole trying to find myself a new bra that I could wear for work or lounging around the house—something that was supportive and soft, but didn’t look like a typical sports bra, or like a grandma would wear it. Apparently, supportive, soft, and cute couldn’t all exist together. And supportive, soft, and sexy? Forget it, not a chance.

So I got out my mom’s old sewing machine—the one I’d learned on, but had only used a few times since she passed away. I’d ordered a variety of types of fabric in pretty prints and played around with different styles until I found something I really loved.

And it turned out that what I really loved was my ability to create something beautiful and functional. This probably should not have come as such a surprise given my line of work, but I’ve spent my whole life working with wood and power tools, so the fact that I also loved creating something delicate like a bra actually did surprise me.

Sewing has become a bit of an addiction, and my new form of stress relief at the end of a long day now that I no longer have a whole family around to cook for. Which, now that I think about it, was also probably a creative outlet for me since I rarely followed a recipe and was always trying new combinations of ingredients.

I pull out the softest knit lace fabric I’ve ever found and pin the pieces of the paper pattern to it. It’s one of the patterns I’ve created based on what I deemed most supportive while still retaining a little feminine sex appeal. And as I cut out the pieces that will form the bra, the feelings fade away.

I’m not thinking about Colt, or what happened between us in that alley, or how uncomfortable everything will be now that we crossed that line—I’m lost in the feel of the fabric, in the visions of what it will become, in the little decisions I’m making about what type of stitch I’ll use to bind it together, and whether I should use black ribbon as straps to match the delicacy of the black lace, and if I want to try making a front closure on this one.

I’m so lost in what I’m doing as I arrange the cut pieces of fabric on the table in front of me, pinning them together where I need to create seams in preparation for sewing, that I don’t notice the knock until it’s become a loud pounding, followed by the sound of Colt’s voice saying, “Jules, open the door.”

I rush out of my closet, shutting the door behind me, back through the bathroom, shutting that door for good measure, and open the door to my bedroom.

Colt’s eyes are a bit panicked, but I don’t miss the way they change as he looks at me—the way they soften at the edges, and how the golden flecks in his light brown eyes practically disappear as his pupils grow.

I’ve read enough romance novels that I’ve heard phrases like “his eyes darkened with longing,” but I never understood what that looked like until now. And I wish I hadn’t seen that, because it’ll just be another Colt-related thing for me to hyper-focus on—some other piece to add to the “Who is Mathieu Coltier?” puzzle I’ve been putting together in my mind for years.

I fold my arms under my chest. Never again, I remind myself.

“Did you get lost on your way up to your place?”

He reaches out, gently running his thumb under my eye. “You’ve been crying?”

Shit. My eyes water again at the concern in his voice, and the gentle way he’s touching me. I take a small step back and his hand falls away. “It’s allergies. My eyes have been itchy, so I’ve been rubbing them.”

He swallows like he’s trying to stop himself from commenting on how my eyes weren’t red and swollen in the alley—he was certainly close enough to have noticed. But he gives me some grace and doesn’t comment on that. Instead, he says, “We have a problem.”

I’m so tempted to make a flippant, deflective remark, but I refrain because he does actually sound worried.

“And what’s that?”

He turns his phone to show me a text from Zach Reid. And as I click on the picture of an online news article to enlarge it, I think I might throw up.

Boston Rebels Goalie Engaged! the sizable headline screams. There’s a photo of the back of us, Colt’s arm wrapped around my shoulders as we leave the restaurant. And then the article begins below it.

Mathieu Coltier, long-time goalie for the Boston Rebels hockey team, is well known around town for the frequency of his late-night partying and the string of broken hearts he leaves behind. But he’s apparently a changed man because tonight at the tapas restaurant La Gallina, a well-known hot spot on Newbury Street, he interrupted what appeared to be an altercation between a beautiful blonde and an older businessman. Loudly telling the man to “Take your hand off my fiancée, or I’ll remove it from your . . . body,” Colt then left the restaurant with the woman in question tucked under his arm.

The screenshot cuts off whatever the rest of the article might say, but this is enough to know the situation is bad. Like really, really bad.

I stare at the phone for longer than necessary, afraid to look up at Colt. Afraid to acknowledge that we’ll have to figure out what to do about this. Afraid that we’ll need to talk about what happened in order to work through this.

“How long do you think it’ll take them to figure out who I am?” I ask, staring down at the way my fingers are gripping Colt’s phone like it might jump out of my hand and attack me if I let go.

“I guess it will depend on whether there are better pictures than the one they’ve currently got in the article. But honestly, I expect they’ll be able to figure it out tonight.”

My shoulders sag as I sigh.

“We need to decide what to do here,” he says.

“Can we rewind time and go back to that restaurant so you can not say I’m your fiancée? What the fuck, Colt?” I finally meet his eyes. “Where did that even come from?”

He shakes his head, his lips pressed together. “I have no idea. I was just so  . . .” He looks beyond me, toward the bathroom, like he’s searching for the right word, and the possibilities fly through my mind. Angry, worried, pissed, frustrated, jealous . . . but none feel quite right, especially the last one. Though why else would he act in such a possessive way, like Jerome was touching something that was his, if he wasn’t jealous? “. . . pissed off about how he was treating you.”

“And that led to you calling me your fiancée, how exactly?”

“I don’t know.” He releases his own huge sigh. “Probably because I felt like I needed a reason to explain the insane rage I was feeling and it needed to be something that would convince him to get his hands off you, and because we’d just been at Drew and Audrey’s engagement party, so . . . I don’t know. I guess maybe the whole ‘engaged’ thing was just in my head? Honestly, I’m not sure why I said that.”

He gives me a shrug and a sheepish smile, both of which are just so quintessentially Colt that it pisses me off. His happy-go-lucky, no-one-can-stay-mad-at-me-because-I’m-just-so-damn-likable routine has no place in this situation.

“You didn’t need to step in, and I wish you hadn’t. I had that situation fully handled.”

He steps closer, and I tilt my head back to look up at him. “Did you, though? Because you might have been standing your ground, but the look on your face was . . . I don’t even know. It looked like you were terrified.”

Did it really? God, I hate it when I lose control of my own emotions. I can rein them in 98% of the time, but when I can’t, I really can’t.

“What happened?” he asks.

I don’t say anything for a moment, wondering how to explain why I froze up like that in the restaurant, and why I couldn’t breathe in that alley. I don’t want to get too personal, but he also deserves an explanation. If I hadn’t reacted that way, he may not have felt the need to step in and we might not be in this situation. Or maybe we still would be. It’s impossible to know.

“I’m terrified when I’m not in control,” I say, my voice weak and quiet.

“Tink.” He grinds out the nickname like the thought of me being scared is pure anguish for him, then he cups my cheeks in his hands and tilts my face up so I have to look at him. “Why?”

I can’t tell him the truth. He’ll feel guilty, and it’s not his fault that he didn’t have feelings for me and that I handled the realization so badly.

That’s on me.

“I just hate the feeling of not being in control.”

His thumbs sweep across my cheeks softly. “Is that why you almost had a panic attack in the alley.”

Fuck. He is way too perceptive. And with his eyebrows lowered as he gazes down at me, studying me, he doesn’t look like he regrets what happened between us at all. In fact, he looks like he’s about to make it happen again.

I step back quickly. “I wasn’t having a panic attack.”

He steps forward just as quickly. “Bullshit.”

“Colt, I’m fine. I was just”—I shake my head, trying to quantify how I was feeling an hour ago so I can convince him he saw something other than what we both know he really saw—“frustrated about what happened. I was mad at myself for how I froze when he grabbed my wrist, instead of fighting back.”

“You weren’t breathing.” He takes another step toward me, and I step back. But it doesn’t stop him from advancing. “In fact, I don’t think you started breathing again until I kissed you.”

I take another step back. “Colt,” my voice warns. He looks like he might try it again, and I don’t know if I’d have the willpower to resist him if he did.

“Yeah, Tink?” His voice is low and seductive, and I force myself to think about that text from earlier today. The one that reminded me he’ll never change—just another man in my life who refuses to grow up.

“You should probably go call Bambi back.”

His head rears back like I threw cold water on him, but then he focuses those eyes back on me again. “Can’t. I’m busy.”

“Busy doing what?”

“Busy trying to figure out why you’re wound so tight you’re about to explode.”

Oh, I’m wound tight alright. A shiver of desire snakes its way through my body, from my tailbone, up my spine, and to my shoulders, radiating forward so my core and my nipples feel the ripples of longing.

No. Never again.

I don’t understand why my body doesn’t remember that we’re not doing the whole longing for Colt thing anymore, we’re doing the protect Jules at all costs thing—and the two are entirely incompatible. My mind will just have to keep reminding my body.

When I take another step back, my ass hits my dresser, and there’s nowhere for me to go as he comes closer.

“I thought we agreed that you were going to stay out of my space?” I say, raising an eyebrow as he stops inches from me.

“I’m not so sure I can do that,” he says.

“And why not?”

“Because I’m worried about you.”

His pupils have almost taken over his irises and his eyebrows dip low over his eyes as he gazes down at me. “You don’t look worried.”

He looks like I always envisioned he would if he wanted me.

“Trust me, I’m worried.” And then he takes the last, tiny step so his body is flush with mine, wraps his hands around my hips, and lifts me onto the top of the dresser. Planting his hands on either side of me, he leans down so his face is directly in front of mine, and says, “Now, tell me what the fuck is going on.”