The Fake Zone: A Fake Dating Sports Romance (Oleander Springs Series Book 3)

My thoughts drift to yesterday as I prepare to work out with Mila. Alex grilled me the entire twenty minutes Mila took to get a coat, asking me if I respected her, my future plans, what contribution I was planning to make to the world, and more. I didn’t realize it was their own twisted brand of humor until Jon reached the bottom of his glass and couldn’t hold back his laughter.

Mila returned within minutes, sporting a look of innocence until she realized the bit was up, and then her laughter was contagious. Alex practically rolled in his seat as he apologized, and I couldn’t even be mad about it. Seeing Mila in that environment, so unfiltered and uninhibited, was addictive.

“Are you plotting your revenge for yesterday?” Mila asks, meeting me in the lobby of my dorm, dressed in a pair of navy leggings that threaten to kill me, a sweatshirt covered in a puffy vest, and her long hair already pulled up as it is most days. The lobby is practically barren with a final week of winter break left.

“Why would I be plotting revenge?” I ask, leading her outside where the sidewalk is just as empty. Bia Stadium is a short distance away, but I spend enough time there, so I lead her past the turnoff.

Beside me, Mila rubs her hands over her arms. “Why are we meeting so early?” After the warm weather yesterday, the forty-degree morning feels particularly brutal and dark.

“Because I have other things I have to do today.”

Mila looks at me as we continue walking, and I silently dare her to ask me what I need to do and where I’m going. I’m damn near catfishing her with my vague response, but over the time I’ve known Mila, one of our most pronounced unspoken rules is we don’t ask each other questions. I thought it was because she wasn’t interested, but hearing her say she doesn’t think I like her as more than an acquaintance has me rethinking every damn one of our boundaries.

She swallows and turns her attention to the darkened sidewalk.

“What’s your mom like?” Mila asks as we stop at a crosswalk, shoving her hands into her vest pockets and biting that spot on her lower lip.

It’s one of the last questions I expected. “My mom’s…” I shake my head, wishing there was a singular word significant enough to describe her. “She’s the strongest person I know. Kind and always giving people the benefit of the doubt. Evelyn kind of reminds me of her.”

Her smile grows. “I already like her.”

“She’s the reason I try so damn hard. Her entire life, she’s worked so hard to give me everything, and I want to help her out. Ensure she can retire comfortably and just relax for once.”

Mila taps the top of the sneaker against the sidewalk. “What about your dad?”

“He lives in Atlanta.”

“Do you see him much?”

I shake my head.

Hesitancy flattens her brow. “Do you guys get along?”

“My mom was eighteen when she got pregnant with me. He was thirty-two, married, with two kids. He hid it all from my mom, promising her the world until she got pregnant.”

Mila winces. “What happened?”

“He broke up with her and broke all communication. My mom couldn’t afford daycare, so she had to drop out of college. He tried to reach out to me this year, after our game against Tennessee.” We’d won, and I had arguably my best game of the season, earning me placement on highlight reels for several weeks. “But,” I shake my head. “I had no interest.”

“What a jerk. I’m sorry.”

“What about you? Do you know your dad? Your biological dad, I mean.”

She shakes her head. “I never met him. I don’t even know his name.”

The light turns green for us to walk, and we’re halfway between the intersection before I ask, “Can I ask why you went into foster care?” I glance at her, trying to read her expression. “I don’t want to come across like an insensitive asshole, so if I’m… You can…”

Mila shakes her head, a tight but sincere smile marking her face. “My mom was a drug addict when I was born. I didn’t go home with her until I was eighteen months old.”

“What happened?”

She lifts her shoulders. “I lived with her for about six months, and a neighbor called for noise complaints because they heard me crying. CPS put me back into foster care for another year. I lived with my mom again, and she was trying really hard to get clean and stay sober, but she had no money, couldn’t afford daycare, and had been fired from her job, so we were living out of her car. Someone noticed we hadn’t moved from a parking lot for a few days and called the cops, and I went back into CPS. I lived with her one final time before I was adopted.

Her words are a laceration to my chest as I imagine Mila as a child, bouncing from house to house, stranger to stranger, sleeping in the backseat of a car.

“I don’t remember most of it,” she quickly adds, swiping at a piece of hair that the wind drags across her cheek.

“They stopped giving her chances?” I ask as we stop again, the college’s track ahead of us.

Mila blows out a breath and tucks her hands into her vest pockets again. “She was arrested, and a few years later, she overdosed and passed away.”

My heart breaks, and everything inside of me demands to pull her into a hug, but as she leans back on her heels, I know that’s the last thing she wants. “I’m so sorry.”

She shakes off my apology. “A few months later, my social worker met Alex’s brother and found out how hard Alex and Jon had been trying to adopt, and she reached out to them. A lot of people have opinions about whether gay couples should adopt, which is shameful because they offer the same loving and stable environments as straight couples, and statistically, they adopt more kids like me than straight couples do,”

“Kids like you?” The words don’t sound right on my tongue, worse in my head.

Mila stares at me for a moment, imploring me to read between the lines, but I shake my head because I can’t. The space is blank. I can’t even begin to guess what she’s referencing.

“Undesirable,” she says.

I pull back, feeling the word brand my skin as another piece of her comes into view, one that doesn’t fit with the fiercely confident and stubborn woman before me. “What? Mila, no.”

“People want to adopt babies and toddlers who will acclimate easily, not kids who have abandonment and trust issues and require years of therapy.”

“But you were seven. Still a young kid.”

Her lips quirk to one side. “Those formative years are pretty damn important.”

The light turns, and Mila looks both ways before crossing the street. I follow her, wanting to ask a hundred more questions, each more personal than the last.

“I don’t want you to feel sorry for me or think differently of me because of this. I hate pity, which is why I don’t tell most people about this part of my life. Alex and Jon are amazing parents, and I literally want for nothing except to know how to punch someone in the face.” She lifts a shoulder and quirks her lips with a smile I know isn’t genuine.

“How long do you think it will take before I can beat you around the track?” she asks.

I scoff. “I run four miles a day. Minimum.”

“That doesn’t mean I won’t be faster than you.” Challenge shines in her eyes.

“Your legs are still sore,” I point out as I begin stretching.

“Less sore.”

I smirk, shaking my head.

Her confidence wavers, but only for a second. “Okay. I’ll bet you that in a month—”

“You’ll need more than a month if you plan on standing a chance.”

She rolls her eyes. “In a month, I can beat you taking one lap.”

I shake my head. “I’m not betting you.”

“Don’t you want to hear the stakes?”

I raise a single brow.

She places a finger against her chin and purses her lips. The need to kiss her feels like a barbell against my throat, suffocating me slowly. Painfully. “You have to invite your Highgrove friends over to meet us.”

“And when I win…”

She makes a show of rolling her eyes.

I smirk. “You have to stop referring to me as an acquaintance.”

Her blue gaze narrows, and I know the look is caused by doubt rather than sarcasm. “Are you accepting the bet?”

I shake my head. “No, but I want you to stop referring to me as your damn acquaintance. If you ever call or text, I’ll be there. Not because I’m Hudson’s friend but because I’m yours.”

Her eyes cross my features again, and then she offers her hand to me.

We stretch in silence and then run the same two-and-a-half-mile stretch we’ve built up to.

“Let’s cool down with the walk back, and then we can stretch upstairs. I’ve got a jump rope for you to take home.”

Mila staples her hands to her sides, her breaths heavy. “Jump rope? How much longer until you teach me how to hit someone?”

I grab her wrists and pull her hands to the top of her head. “This helps open your lungs.” She looks up at my hands wrapped around hers, the motion stretching her back and pushing her chest out slightly. Suddenly standing this close, holding her like this feels dangerous, erotic … tempting.

I release her and step back. “You’re not ready to shadowbox yet. We haven’t even started working on balance.” I turn toward campus.

Mila walks beside me, hands shoved into the pockets of her vest again. “Is there an expeditious training cycle?

“This is it. Trust me. I will get you there.”

When we make it to the dorm building, my blood is still too fucking hot, and it burns hotter as we step into an empty elevator together.

I’ve learned over the years that I have a Mila scale, which allows me to be around her for durations of time and not act on impulses that would challenge my friendship with Hudson or the rest of our group. That scale should have a couple of days left before I’m so distracted by the ache left by lust and arousal that I have to avoid her for several days.

Perhaps it’s that damn cursed kiss or the way she’s slowly showing me sides of her I’ve only been able to see from a distance, or the flush of her cheeks as she stretches her neck and closes her eyes that has me swallowing and imaging her astride me, under me, her knees pressed up as I bury my face between her thighs and feed this hunger that has been gnawing at me, at my bones, for years.

I’ve ignored the desire and never tempted it until kissing her.

Mila pulls up the sleeves of her sweatshirt and unzips her vest.

Because it’s hot, I remind myself.

The doors open on the fourth floor, and I lead Mila down to my room, where I unlock the door and flip on the lights.

Mila steps inside, returning her hands to her pockets as she peers around. Camden made a significant investment with this building, providing dorms that are bigger than most one-bedroom apartments, equipped with a living room, kitchen, dining room, bedroom, and private bath. I have a corner unit, giving me the benefit of a bigger living room and additional windows.

I have a lot of pride in my space, knowing how damn hard I worked to get here.

“It would look better with a black wall,” Mila says, a sly smile curving the corner of her lips and making me consider an entirely new challenge involving how quickly I could transform that tease into a plea and then pleasure.

I smirk and grab the plastic bag with the jump rope that I’d meant to bring downstairs this morning and hand it to her.

“After you stretch tomorrow, jump rope for five minutes, and then do your run.”

Her shock is barely visible, a drawn brow and beat of hesitation as she accepts the bag. “We’re not meeting?”

I shake my head. “I’m going to Highgrove for a few days.”

She nods as she takes a step back, her teeth catching the inside of her cheek, and I swear I see disappointment in her blue eyes. “To visit family and your friends?

I nod. “Cole has a fight tomorrow, and I need to fix a window at my mom’s.”

Mila nods a couple of times. I can smell the vanilla scent of the lip balm she applied while we walked here, and my gaze sits heavily on her lips for several long seconds, the desire to lean forward and kiss her that same damn barbell suffocating me.

I take a step back, and Mila does, too. I run a hand over my hair and glance at the clock, realizing I’m going to be late meeting Cole again. “We’re still on for Topgolf?”

Mila licks her lips and then bites that damn spot, though she doesn’t allude to what has her nervous, and a part of me wonders if it’s me. If she feels the same damn fire under her skin whenever she’s near. “Yeah.”

“Thanks for the jump rope.”

I don’t move, knowing that if I do, I’ll do something stupid like ask her to stay and lose today to bliss and pleasure. “I’ll see you later this week.”

Mila nods, and without another word, she leaves. I can’t help but think that later isn’t soon enough.