My Hockey Boyfriend Kept Me a Secret, So I Went Public with Someone Else Chapter 11

My Hockey Boyfriend Kept Me a Secret, So I Went Public with Someone Else Chapter 11

[Amelia’s POV]

Logan threw his arms around me. Then he let go immediately.

“Sorry, I —”

“We don’t know each other that well yet. But let’s try?”

He held my hand so tight, for so long, my palm got sweaty.

Looking at this guy with zero confidence — my “boyfriend on a trial basis” — I sighed and gave in. I took his hand and used his phone to snap a photo of our fingers laced together.

“If you want to go public, you can —”

Too late. His Instagram story was already up.

The photo was there. With the caption: “Two people, three legs, one heartbeat.”

Early the next morning, my roommate shook me awake.

“That guy…” She pointed at the window. “He’s been sitting outside all night.”

I pulled the curtain back and peeked out. Chase was on the steps across from my dorm. His suitcase was next to him. There were cigarette butts on the ground.

He must have felt me looking, because his head snapped up. I dropped the curtain.

“Your boyfriend?” my roommate asked. “Did you fight?”

I shook my head. “Not anymore.”

I found out later that when Chase saw Logan’s story, he lost it. He posted twenty Instagram stories in one night, shouting into the camera, “@millie.hartwell, I’m not dead yet! Who said he could take my place?”

He deleted them fast, but people had already screenshotted.

I just laughed.

He was the one who’d always warned me: if we ever went public, we were done.

Now Chase started showing up everywhere. He found my class schedule and attended my lectures more faithfully than his own.

One day I was leaving the library in a downpour. Logan came to get me. We ran right into Chase and Rosie walking the other way.

We stood in the rain, four pairs of eyes.

Rosie glanced at our joined hands and smirked. “So Reddit was right. Chase, you’re the only one crying here. She’s already —”

Snap.

Before I could say anything, Chase closed his umbrella and dropped it at Rosie’s feet. “Go back by yourself.”

Then he turned and ran into the rain.

Rosie glared at us, picked up the wet umbrella, and chased after him.

The rain fell. Logan and I stood under one umbrella.

I asked him softly if he was upset. Chase had been hanging around a lot. It didn’t bother me, but it had to bother Logan.

He just wiped the rain off my cheek and said, “You’re that good, Millie. Of course he regrets it.”

I looked at him, so gentle, and felt like something was off.

—

## [Chase’s POV]

I missed my flight back to school.

I was in duty-free, picking things up for Rosie, and I grabbed a really expensive perfume for Millie too.

The salesgirl asked what kind of scents my girlfriend liked. I had no idea. I just told her to give me the most expensive one.

That’s when it hit me. I didn’t put half as much into her as she put into me.

I was used to Millie being around me. All I had to do was show up, and she’d come running. Why waste time learning what she liked?

Before takeoff, I texted her my flight info like always. No matter how late my flight landed, she always came to get me.

This time would be the same.

I turned my phone off and went to sleep, smiling to myself.

The plane landed at dawn. I waited in arrivals for a while. Then longer. The luggage carousel stopped. She still wasn’t there.

I turned my phone on.

One transfer. One message. “Debt cleared. We’re done.”

What?

I called her. She hung up. I called again. Blocked.

I didn’t care if I woke people up. I called everyone who knew her.

No one had seen Millie. No one knew where she was.

Then Violet sent me a flood of crying texts.

I opened one. My eyes went wide.

“My crush is taken,” she sobbed. Attached was a screenshot of an Instagram story. Two hands, fingers locked.

I knew that hand. Pale, slender, a small red freckle on the outside of the thumb.

I’d kissed that freckle a hundred times.