Page 349 of Faking the Goal

I called Conrad less than fifteen minutes ago.

I told him Kentaro and I had broken up. Told him I had no one else to call and needed help getting home from the hospital.

He arrived so quickly it feels as though he had already been somewhere nearby, waiting for the chance to be needed.

The thought has barely finished crawling through my mind when the door opens and Conrad steps inside wearing the same familiar smile I used to find comforting.

My body reacts before I can stop it.

I flinch.

It's small, barely more than a sharp pull of my shoulders, but I feel it all the way down to my bones. For one terrifying second, I'm no longer standing in a hospital room under bright fluorescent lights. I'm back on the pavement with blood in my eyes and a bat coming down toward my head.

Then Conrad crosses the room and wraps his arms around me.

Every muscle in my body locks.

His chest presses against mine, his arms closing around my back with an easy familiarity that makes bile rise into my throat. I want to shove him away so hard he hits the opposite wall. I want to scream Kentaro's name and watch him come tearing through the door. I want to claw at Conrad's face until there is nothing left of the mask he has been wearing for the past year.

Instead, I force my arms to lift and return the hug.

Barely.

Just enough to make it believable.

"I'm so glad you called," he murmurs against my hair, holding on a second longer than he should. "You have no idea how worried I've been."

His voice is warm. Gentle.

Exactly the way it has always been.

Only now I can hear what hides underneath it.

When he finally releases me, I have to fight the urge to step back so quickly it would give everything away. Conrad studies my face, his gaze lingering over the fading bruises and the bandage near my temple, and something almost pleased flickers in his expression before concern settles neatly over it.

"How are you feeling?" he asks.

"Like I got beaten half to death."

The words come out flatter than I intend, but he mistakes it for exhaustion and reaches for my arm as though he has every right to steady me.

"I'm sorry I couldn't come sooner," he says. "I wanted to, but right after I left you that night, my girlfriend called."

His whole face changes when he says it.

The smile comes too quickly, too brightly, stretching across his mouth with a kind of smug satisfaction he doesn't even bother hiding.

"She wanted to get back together."

A shiver crawls over my skin.

Now that I know what I'm looking at, I can't understand how I ever missed it. The way his eyes sharpen whenever he talks about this imaginary woman. The way pride swells through him when he believes he has been chosen. The barely contained excitement under every carefully measured word.

Conrad—the sweet, dependable bouncer who always watched out for the girls at the club—never existed.

He was only a costume Charlie learned to wear well enough that none of us thought to look underneath.

I force a smile despite the nausea twisting my stomach.