The Basketball Captain's Fake Girlfriend

Chapter 1: Forty Pounds and a Bouquet The air outside Crestview Arena smelled of wet pavement and spilled beer. I stood at the edge of the media tunnel with a bouquet of white roses and yellow tulips clamped in both hands, the cellophane cutting little red lines into my palms. I didn't loosen my grip. If I let go, my hands would start shaking, and I wasn't sure they'd stop. Inside the glass dome, six thousand voices were chanting the same name over and over, a sound so loud I could feel it through the soles of my trainers. "DAKAS! DAKAS! DAKAS!" My phone buzzed in my coat pocket. I didn't need to check it. It would be the same notification I'd had all day. Balance update: £40.12. That was everything my parents left me, gone. The house in Birmingham, my mum's little hair salon on the high street, the small bit of life insurance. Eighteen months of selling it all, piece by piece, to pay for James's training camps, his physio, his boots, his train fares up and down the country. All of it had bought the thing happening behind those doors right now. "He made it, Mum," I whispered into the cold. "He's in the finals." I didn't care about the forty pounds. I didn't care that three days ago Aunt Bridget had thrown my bag into the rain outside her house in Bristol and told me I'd stolen a watch I'd never touched. None of that mattered tonight. James had thirty-two points. Crestview had won. He was safe now, and safe meant we could finally stop surviving and start the life we'd promised each other as kids, sharing sandwiches on a curb in Birmingham. The doors opened. Light and noise poured out, and camera flashes went off like small bits of lightning against the brick. I pushed toward the front of the crowd. A security guard looked at my coat and my bent flowers and put a hand up to stop me, but then the crowd shifted and I saw him. James. Tall in his navy and gold shirt, sweat on his collarbone, laughing at something one of his teammates had said. My chest went tight just looking at him. "James!" I shouted. He didn't hear me. He was already walking toward a reporter setting up for a live shot. "We're live with James Dakas, captain of the Crestview Hawks, straight through to the national finals," the reporter said into her microphone. "Thirty-two points tonight. How does it feel?" "Surreal," James said, flashing the smile my mum's savings had paid an orthodontist to straighten. "We stayed locked in and executed." "There's talk of big offers coming your way," the reporter went on. "And I hear there's someone special celebrating with you tonight?" His smile changed. It went soft in a way that looked practiced. "Yeah," he said, turning toward the shadow beside the camera rig. "She's been my rock through this whole season. I wouldn't be here without her." My breath caught. Warmth rushed through me so fast it chased the cold right out of my body. He remembers. He's going to say it. He's going to tell them about us. I pushed forward, lifting the crushed bouquet. "James—" A girl stepped out from behind the rig. She was beautiful in a way that had clearly cost money. A beige trench coat, dark hair in waves down her back, diamonds in her ears catching the studio lights. My feet stopped moving on their own. James took her hand and pulled her gently into the frame. "Everyone," he said, his voice carrying out through the microphone to the whole country, "this is Jemima. Jemima Vanterpool. My partner, my inspiration, and my future wife." The cameras went off in a burst of clicking. Jemima smiled at the lens and rested her head against his shoulder. James put his arm around her waist and looked straight into the camera like a man who owned everything in front of it. My heart didn't break. It just stopped. The crowd noise turned into a dull hum in my ears. The ground felt like it had tilted. Vanterpool. Richard Vanterpool's daughter. The Titans' biggest sponsor. "James?" My voice came out barely a whisper. Then something in me broke loose, and I was moving before I decided to, past the barrier, ignoring the guard shouting behind me. "James!" I was in the light now, in the shot, my flowers held out in front of me like they meant something. "Whoa—back up, love," a crew member said, reaching for my arm. "James, look at me," I begged. "I came from the train station. I sold the house. I gave you everything, every penny I had—" He turned his head. For one second, I saw real fear cross his face. Then it was gone, replaced by something colder. "Security," he said, smooth and clear, right into the microphone. "Can someone get this fan off the set? I've never seen her before in my life." He didn't look at me the way he used to, back when my mum dried his hair with a towel after school. He looked at me like something that didn't belong on the floor. "James, it's me," I said. "It's Aima. You promised—" "Look, love." He stepped slightly in front of Jemima, his voice heavy with a pity that felt worse than anger. "I get it, Crestview fans are passionate. But you need to get some help." "Get her off the set!" someone shouted. Hands closed around my shoulders and pulled me back out of the light. I didn't fight them. I couldn't feel my own legs. My fingers came open on their own, and the bouquet dropped onto the wet ground. A cameraman stepped forward for a close-up of James and Jemima and crushed the flowers flat under his boot without even looking down. "Go home," the guard said, not unkindly, and pushed me through the gate. It clanged shut behind me. I stood alone under a flickering streetlamp. The wind cut through my coat, but I didn't feel that either. I took out my phone with fingers that had stopped listening to me. The screen was already full. A fifteen-second clip was moving faster than I could read the comments under it. Crestview's James Dakas introduces his fiancée live while a stalker fan crashes the set with flowers. Who is the flower girl? She really said she bought his whole career, that's crazy. The view count climbed while I watched. Fifty thousand. Then more. I had forty pounds. I had nowhere to sleep tonight. And right here in this city, a video of the worst moment of my life was turning me into a joke for people who would never know my name—while the boy I had built out of nothing stood under the lights and let them believe I didn't have one.