OFF LIMIT FOR THE HOCKEY CAPTAIN

I ripped the flyer off the wall before the bell could ring, which did absolutely nothing, because forty people had already seen it, and at Cedarfield, forty people seeing something was the same as the entire school knowing by the end of the day.

"Who did this?" I said, crumpling it in my fist.

"I don't know," Dylan said, and for once I believed him, because he looked as blindsided as I felt, jaw tight, eyes scanning the hallway like the answer might be standing there watching us. "But I have a guess."

"Stephanie."

"Or Amber. Or Vanessa. Doesn't matter which one held the tape. It's the same source."

"This is insane." My hands were shaking, and I hated that they were shaking, because it meant this had gotten under my skin faster than I wanted to admit.

"She heard a rumour that wasn't even true and turned it into a poster with my face on it in under two hours."

"Welcome to Stephanie Colton," Dylan muttered. "She doesn't do slow."

The bell rang. Neither of us moved.

"This isn't going to stop," he said. "You know that, right? Whatever she thinks is happening between us, she's going to make your life miserable over it. Cheer tryouts included."

My stomach dropped, because he'd said out loud the exact thing I'd been trying not to think about since lunch. Stephanie ran that squad like her own personal kingdom, and I'd just become, through no fault of my own, a problem she wanted gone before I ever set foot on the floor Thursday.

"So what," I said. "I just don't try out? Let her win before I even show up?"

"No." Something shifted in his face, calculating now, like he was working out a play on the ice. "You go in with backup she can't argue with."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning if she thinks you're with me, actually with me, she backs off. Steph doesn't fight fair, but she doesn't fight people who matter to me either. Not directly. She's smarter than that."

I stared at him. "You want to fake date me."

"I want to help you make it onto that squad without spending the next two years dodging landmines. And yeah. Fake dating gets Steph off both our backs at the same time. She's been circling me since lunch like nothing ended, and this ends it clean."

"Why would you even want that?"

"Because she doesn't quit, and I'm tired of it." He shoved his hands into his pockets, and the easy, practiced Dylan disappeared for a second, replaced by someone more tired than I'd seen him. "You get the squad. I get Steph gone. Everybody wins."

It should have been an easy no. It would have been an easy no, twenty-four hours ago, before the hallway, before whatever this thing was that kept happening between us that I didn't have a name for yet.

"Why would I help you?" I said, mostly to buy myself time to think, because some smaller, quieter part of me had already started doing the math on what this would cost me and what it might get me back.

"Because I know how bad you want to get on that cheer squad," he said, and it landed like he'd reached into my chest and pulled the truth out without asking permission. "I saw your face when Steph brought it up at lunch. That's not a hobby. You want this the way I want the captain's C, and you and I both know Steph's about to make sure you never get it unless something changes."

I hated that he was right. I hated more that I was actually considering it.

"If we do this," I said slowly, "it's fake. Completely fake. You don't get to treat it like it's real just because it's convenient."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

"And it ends the second I make the squad. No dragging it out."

"Deal." He held out his hand like we were closing a business contract, which, in a way, I supposed we were.

I shook it. His hand was warm, and I let go faster than necessary.

"We should probably look convincing," he said, and there was something new in his voice now, something testing the water. "Steph's still in the building. If she sees us together right now, arguing over a flyer, that's not exactly selling it."

"What did you have in mind?"

He didn't answer with words. He stepped closer, slow enough that I could have stopped him, close enough that I had every chance to step back, and I didn't, and then his hand was at my jaw and his mouth was on mine, softer than I expected for someone who did everything else in his life like a performance.

It lasted three seconds. Maybe four. Long enough that when I opened my eyes, Stephanie was standing twenty feet away at the end of the hall, frozen mid-step, her face doing something complicated between fury and disbelief.

Dylan pulled back just enough to murmur, "Convincing enough?"

I couldn't answer. My whole body had gone warm and stupid and entirely too invested in something that was supposed to mean nothing.

I told Maddy everything that night, sitting cross-legged on my bed with my phone buzzing uselessly beside me, because I needed someone to tell me I hadn't lost my mind.

"You kissed him," Maddy said, delighted and horrified in equal measure. "For fake dating purposes."

"For cheer squad purposes."

"Uh huh." She grinned. "Does Ryan know?"

"Absolutely not, and he can't. Not yet. Not until I figure out what I'm actually doing." I grabbed my pillow and pulled it against my chest like it might protect me from what I already knew was coming. "Promise me, Mads. Not a word."

"I promise." She held up three fingers, solemn as a scout. "But Gin. For a fake thing, you're blushing a lot."

I

threw the pillow at her, and she laughed, and neither of us said what we were both thinking, which was that fake had a way of turning real when nobody was paying close enough attention.