Fake Dating My Ex's Favourite Hockey Player - Chapter 52: Chapter 52
You are reading Fake Dating My Ex's Favourite Hockey Player, Chapter 52: Chapter 52. Read more chapters of Fake Dating My Ex's Favourite Hockey Player.
TESSA
My head is pounding. Like, heartbeat-in-my-skull kind of pounding.
Hours spent hunched over a computer will do that to you. When the first set of migraines hit, I grabbed some Tylenol, swallowed it dry, and threw on my reading glasses like a grandma with a grudge.
Ana from Legal? Probably curled up in bed, dreaming of spa days and balanced schedules — AKA she’s my polar opposite and has a life to live, probably tucked in bed, asleep by 12:58 AM — so she has no time to respond to my emails.
Meanwhile, I’m still here.
Alone.
Again.
Whatever.
I stretch and let out a yawn. My desk is a disaster—coffee cups, highlighters, Post-its with half-written thoughts and tomorrow’s to-do list.
1. Make amends with Emilia.
2. Contact her family’s lawyers.
3. Get her family photos copyrighted.
I seriously do not get paid enough, as a best friend and PR manager. Sometimes, it feels like I work ten different jobs at once with absolutely nothing to show for it. Well, except in the Emilia department, she’s the best person in the world when she actually tells me shit.
All the cubicles are dark. Everyone else left hours ago. But me? I’m still clinging to the glow of my screen like it’s the only thing keeping me upright.
In a way, it kinda is and that's sad as hell.
I try not to think too much about Lyle, but I can’t help it.
He’s awful. Charming, cocky, and completely toxic. The kind of man who leaves a mess everywhere he goes — and somehow, I still open the door when he shows up.
It started back when I was just the over-eager intern with too much ambition and not enough sense. One flirt turned into a kiss, then into his bed. One night became two. Then it became… something that wasn’t quite nothing, but definitely wasn’t something.
It was casual, I’m the one who caught feelings and started expecting stupid things — like him waiting to take me home — and would be clouded with an unimaginable wave of pain when I had to get articles of his countless flings and two-week-relationships taken down.
But maybe I’m a masochist and the pain is my aphrodisiac, because when he’s done sleeping around and breaking my heart, I wait, knowing he’ll come back to me when he’s fed up.
He always comes back.
And I’d let him in. Every time.
God, you’re so pathetic, Tessa.
I pull off my reading glasses and rub at my sore eyes, trying to blink the blur away. My head still hurts, and the Tylenol I took earlier might as well have been candy.
After sitting there for a few more minutes, just kind of... marinating in my feelings, I finally grab my things and start cleaning up my desk. Coffee cups, printouts, sticky notes I’ll never read again — it all goes in the trash. I thought I’d feel better once everything was tidy. Accomplished, maybe. Like I could go home and feel human again.
Nope.
Instead, the silence hits harder. Louder.
I don’t even know what I expected. Maybe someone to say, “Great job, Tessa! You get to go home to your apartment at 1AM, where no one is waiting for you. No Emilia to berate you for coming home late or make soup at past midnight just so you don’t have to eat your detrimental cooking. Just you, your cold leftovers, and the memory of a hockey player who ditched you for some leggy blonde he met at the same gala you got dragged to like a prop.”
I scowl and mutter under my breath, “Shut the fuck up.”
Because I know the voice in my head isn’t wrong.
Lyle — ugh. Even thinking his name makes my stomach twist. He’s the worst kind of beautiful disaster: the type that kisses you like you're everything and forgets your name the next day. And I let him. I always let him. Like clockwork. He disappears, and I stay put. Waiting.
It’s stupid. I know it’s stupid. But knowing doesn’t make the ache in my chest go away. Or the heat behind my eyes. Or the ridiculous fantasy where someone, anyone, loves me enough to stay.
I sling my bag over my shoulder, take one last look at the empty office, and sigh.
Then I walk out the door — quiet, tired, and still pretending I don’t care.
I’ve always been good at pretending I have it together.
I had to be. When your best friend is a walking, beautiful disaster — who’s constantly stumbling into messes and getting her heart cracked open — you don’t get to fall apart too. You learn to stay steady. You learn to carry both of you.
That’s why I never really told Em the full story about Lyle.
She had enough going on. Enough pain. Enough secrets clawing at her from the inside. The last thing she needed was mine. So I buried it. Smiled through it. Shrugged and said things like, “There’s this hockey player I keep sleeping with and I think I like him.”
And she’d give me one of her classic looks — eyebrows raised, lips pursed, silently judging me in the most loving way possible. Then she’d move on.
She never pried. Never asked for details. Which was both a blessing and a curse.
Because truth is? I wanted someone to ask. I wanted someone to see the way my chest ached when he left. I wanted someone to notice how quiet I got when Lyle didn’t text back. How I stopped wearing the perfume he liked. How I never really stopped waiting.
But instead, I just kept it light. Kept it vague. Kept it safe.
Because if I told her the truth — how I kept letting him back in, how I was always the one waiting — I know what she’d say.
She’d tell me I deserved more.
And I think a part of me still doesn’t believe that.
So when I walk into the rink — usually locked up tight by this time of night — my heart does this stupid little flip.
Lyle’s text is still open on my phone, bold and heartless: “Don’t wait up. Going home with Tina.”
Cool. Awesome. Fantastic.
But then I see the rink door cracked open. The lights on. Ice freshly cleaned.
And for one second — just one — I let myself hope.
Maybe he changed his mind. Maybe he came here instead. Maybe he remembered I exist.
But nope. Of course not.
Because standing there, right in the middle of the rink like he owns the damn place, is Aaron freaking Cobalt.
Gliding across the ice like he’s in a music video or a dream I didn’t ask to be part of.
I can’t stop the scowl that pulls at my face. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I mutter.
Why is he always where I least want him, looking like that — messy black hair, stupidly broad shoulders, and those green eyes that somehow see way too much?
God help me.
Aaron Cobalt is on ice.
And my night just got way more complicated.
My head is pounding. Like, heartbeat-in-my-skull kind of pounding.
Hours spent hunched over a computer will do that to you. When the first set of migraines hit, I grabbed some Tylenol, swallowed it dry, and threw on my reading glasses like a grandma with a grudge.
Ana from Legal? Probably curled up in bed, dreaming of spa days and balanced schedules — AKA she’s my polar opposite and has a life to live, probably tucked in bed, asleep by 12:58 AM — so she has no time to respond to my emails.
Meanwhile, I’m still here.
Alone.
Again.
Whatever.
I stretch and let out a yawn. My desk is a disaster—coffee cups, highlighters, Post-its with half-written thoughts and tomorrow’s to-do list.
1. Make amends with Emilia.
2. Contact her family’s lawyers.
3. Get her family photos copyrighted.
I seriously do not get paid enough, as a best friend and PR manager. Sometimes, it feels like I work ten different jobs at once with absolutely nothing to show for it. Well, except in the Emilia department, she’s the best person in the world when she actually tells me shit.
All the cubicles are dark. Everyone else left hours ago. But me? I’m still clinging to the glow of my screen like it’s the only thing keeping me upright.
In a way, it kinda is and that's sad as hell.
I try not to think too much about Lyle, but I can’t help it.
He’s awful. Charming, cocky, and completely toxic. The kind of man who leaves a mess everywhere he goes — and somehow, I still open the door when he shows up.
It started back when I was just the over-eager intern with too much ambition and not enough sense. One flirt turned into a kiss, then into his bed. One night became two. Then it became… something that wasn’t quite nothing, but definitely wasn’t something.
It was casual, I’m the one who caught feelings and started expecting stupid things — like him waiting to take me home — and would be clouded with an unimaginable wave of pain when I had to get articles of his countless flings and two-week-relationships taken down.
But maybe I’m a masochist and the pain is my aphrodisiac, because when he’s done sleeping around and breaking my heart, I wait, knowing he’ll come back to me when he’s fed up.
He always comes back.
And I’d let him in. Every time.
God, you’re so pathetic, Tessa.
I pull off my reading glasses and rub at my sore eyes, trying to blink the blur away. My head still hurts, and the Tylenol I took earlier might as well have been candy.
After sitting there for a few more minutes, just kind of... marinating in my feelings, I finally grab my things and start cleaning up my desk. Coffee cups, printouts, sticky notes I’ll never read again — it all goes in the trash. I thought I’d feel better once everything was tidy. Accomplished, maybe. Like I could go home and feel human again.
Nope.
Instead, the silence hits harder. Louder.
I don’t even know what I expected. Maybe someone to say, “Great job, Tessa! You get to go home to your apartment at 1AM, where no one is waiting for you. No Emilia to berate you for coming home late or make soup at past midnight just so you don’t have to eat your detrimental cooking. Just you, your cold leftovers, and the memory of a hockey player who ditched you for some leggy blonde he met at the same gala you got dragged to like a prop.”
I scowl and mutter under my breath, “Shut the fuck up.”
Because I know the voice in my head isn’t wrong.
Lyle — ugh. Even thinking his name makes my stomach twist. He’s the worst kind of beautiful disaster: the type that kisses you like you're everything and forgets your name the next day. And I let him. I always let him. Like clockwork. He disappears, and I stay put. Waiting.
It’s stupid. I know it’s stupid. But knowing doesn’t make the ache in my chest go away. Or the heat behind my eyes. Or the ridiculous fantasy where someone, anyone, loves me enough to stay.
I sling my bag over my shoulder, take one last look at the empty office, and sigh.
Then I walk out the door — quiet, tired, and still pretending I don’t care.
I’ve always been good at pretending I have it together.
I had to be. When your best friend is a walking, beautiful disaster — who’s constantly stumbling into messes and getting her heart cracked open — you don’t get to fall apart too. You learn to stay steady. You learn to carry both of you.
That’s why I never really told Em the full story about Lyle.
She had enough going on. Enough pain. Enough secrets clawing at her from the inside. The last thing she needed was mine. So I buried it. Smiled through it. Shrugged and said things like, “There’s this hockey player I keep sleeping with and I think I like him.”
And she’d give me one of her classic looks — eyebrows raised, lips pursed, silently judging me in the most loving way possible. Then she’d move on.
She never pried. Never asked for details. Which was both a blessing and a curse.
Because truth is? I wanted someone to ask. I wanted someone to see the way my chest ached when he left. I wanted someone to notice how quiet I got when Lyle didn’t text back. How I stopped wearing the perfume he liked. How I never really stopped waiting.
But instead, I just kept it light. Kept it vague. Kept it safe.
Because if I told her the truth — how I kept letting him back in, how I was always the one waiting — I know what she’d say.
She’d tell me I deserved more.
And I think a part of me still doesn’t believe that.
So when I walk into the rink — usually locked up tight by this time of night — my heart does this stupid little flip.
Lyle’s text is still open on my phone, bold and heartless: “Don’t wait up. Going home with Tina.”
Cool. Awesome. Fantastic.
But then I see the rink door cracked open. The lights on. Ice freshly cleaned.
And for one second — just one — I let myself hope.
Maybe he changed his mind. Maybe he came here instead. Maybe he remembered I exist.
But nope. Of course not.
Because standing there, right in the middle of the rink like he owns the damn place, is Aaron freaking Cobalt.
Gliding across the ice like he’s in a music video or a dream I didn’t ask to be part of.
I can’t stop the scowl that pulls at my face. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I mutter.
Why is he always where I least want him, looking like that — messy black hair, stupidly broad shoulders, and those green eyes that somehow see way too much?
God help me.
Aaron Cobalt is on ice.
And my night just got way more complicated.
End of Fake Dating My Ex's Favourite Hockey Player Chapter 52. Continue reading Chapter 53 or return to Fake Dating My Ex's Favourite Hockey Player book page.