Page 32 of Fake it ’Til Fall

Chapter Five

Forrest

If emotional repression ever becomes an Olympic sport, I’m bringing home gold.

Maybe silver.

Gold would require talking about why I wanted it.

“Like I said, you don’t owe them pretty feelings,” I tell Daisy.

She blinks at me from across the table, half a sandwich in her hand and a face like she’s deciding whether to cry, argue, or throw the napkin basket at me.

“That is a terrible slogan.”

“It’s honest.”

“It would look awful embroidered on vineyard linen.”

“Only if you sell it at the gift shop,” I suggest.

This time, she almost laughs.

Almost.

I’ll take it.

The first time Daisy laughed at something I said, I looked away so fast I nearly spilled coffee. It happened back in March. Before I knew she was Daisy Thorn. Before she knew I was a Wolfcraft. Before Mom warned me that our families had made the whole thing complicated in a way only Winterberry Cove families can manage.

Which is to say, unnecessarily dramatically, and with at least three women claiming they saw it coming.

I was reading in the corner. She was restocking the romance shelf and muttering at a book with a clinch cover because the hero apparently had “the emotional stamina of a damp envelope.” I said that sounded generous. She stared at me for two full seconds, then laughed.

It was loud.

The sound had no strategy in it.

Since then, I’ve been chasing it without meaning to.

Which is a problem.

I moved to Boston for one reason.

Survival.

My PR team called it a fresh start. Cleaner that way. Easier to sell than “former league problem child relocates before the sponsors run.”

One sponsor agreed to keep me under contract if I could prove the anger-management classes weren’t just damage control.

My agent suggested coaching hockey.

Kids. Practices. Structure. A whistle instead of a contract negotiation. A second act respectable enough that people might stop waiting for me to ruin it.

Then I mentioned it to my mother.

That was my mistake.

Within forty-eight hours, she had found me an interview with the high school athletic department at Winterberry Cove.