Fake Dating my ex's Hockey Rival

Chapter Three

Cole pov

I watched the clip at 7 AM on a Tuesday. I sat at my kitchen counter. A protein shake sat in front of me, but I had not touched it.

I did not care about the girl. I want to be clear about that. What actually happened was simple: I saw Ryder Holt’s face during that three-second camera swing. I saw a man caught completely off guard. I saved the video because I had been saving information about Ryder for months. I tracked his weaknesses and the cracks in his perfect image. I watched for every moment his charm failed and his real self showed through.

The girl did not matter to me at first.

I watched the clip twice. Then I looked up the online news. There was a lot of coverage. The internet loves to watch people suffer when they are young and attractive. Her name was Nadia Calloway. She was a sports journalism student at Thornvale University. She had dated Ryder for more than a year, so she knew his secrets. He had humiliated her in public, so she had a reason to want revenge. She also had a media badge, which meant she could get into events.

I pushed the protein shake away and started to think.

"You have that face," Theo said from across the counter.

He had been sitting there the whole time, eating his cereal fast. He watched me the way he always did, like he was trying to see if anything about me had changed.

"I don't have a face."

"You have about six faces," Theo said. He counted them on his fingers. "Your regular face. Your pre-game face. The face you make when your dad calls. The face when a teammate messes up. And that one. That is the face you make when you are planning something secret." He went back to his cereal. "So, what are you planning?"

I turned my laptop toward him. The screen showed Nadia’s profile photo. A gossip blog had posted it overnight. In the picture, she had dark hair and hazel eyes, and a media badge hung around her neck.

Theo looked at the screen, then at me, then back at the screen.

"No," he said.

"You don't even know what I am going to say."

"You are going to say she is the perfect way to hurt Ryder," Theo said. He pointed his spoon at me. "She has a media badge. She was with him long enough to know his secrets. Right now, everyone on the internet feels bad for her, so anything she does will get attention. You want to use that."

He was right. Theo is usually right, and it is annoying.

"I am not using her," I said. "It is an agreement that helps both of us."

"You haven't even talked to her yet."

"That is just a minor thing."

Theo pushed his cereal bowl away and faced me. He became completely calm. I knew that look. It meant he was about to tell me the truth without hiding anything. I braced myself.

"Explain the logic to me," he said.

"Ryder has spent months trying to fix his public image," I said. "His team wants him to look like a good guy and a great player. His next contract depends on teams thinking he is stable and trustworthy. This cheating video hurts his plans." I pulled the laptop back toward me. "If people see me with his ex-girlfriend in public, it will become news. It will ruin his image. It will remind every team that he is unstable and cannot be trusted."

"And what does the girl get?"

"A different story. Right now, people laugh at her. If she is seen with someone else, she stops being the girl who got cheated on. She becomes something else." I paused. "It helps her."

"You do not care if it helps her."

I did not answer.

"Cole," he said my name quietly, which was worse than him saying it loudly. "She is a real person. She was with him for a year. She is not a game piece."

"Everyone is a piece in a game. The only difference is whether you know what game you are playing."

He looked at me for a long time. It was a look I knew. He did not look angry, just sad. He looked at me like I was showing a bad side of myself without knowing it. He had looked at me that way only three times before. The first time was when I told my father I did not want to be team captain. The second time was after the trouble with Ryder. This was the third time.

"This will end badly," he said.

"Most things do."

"You have not met her yet. She might not be the person you think she is."

"I saw enough."

Theo picked up his bowl and took it to the sink. I could tell by his back that he would let me make this mistake. But he would still be there to help me when I failed. That is what Theo does. He speaks his mind, and then he helps anyway. It is annoying, but he is the only person alive I trust.

"I am just saying," he said. He kept his back to me as he washed the bowl. "You only saw a short video and a photo. You decide who she is based on what helps you." He turned off the water. "Maybe she is more than that."

I closed the laptop. Outside, the first snow of December fell over Thornvale. The flakes were big and slow. They hit the windows and melted. I watched the snow because I think better in the cold.

She had been with Ryder for over a year. She had given up a job for him. I read that in a news story online, and the writer made it sound like a warning. She studied sports journalism, so she knew this world. She was not naive.

The plan was ready. The press event was today. I would meet her, talk to her, and make sure she knew my name. Ryder had a charity party in a few weeks. If I showed up with Nadia Calloway before then, the photo would be on every sports site. His team would see it, and his public image would be hurt.