Page 151 of Faking the Goal

He doesn't even seem to realize what he just said, calmly taking another bite of ramen as though promising to cook for me whenever I want is the most ordinary thing in the world.

Heat floods my face. I duck my head, staring hard at my bowl like the noodles might have the answers to why my heart just did a weird little flip.

I recover by taking an aggressively large bite of noodle, which requires more chewing than is socially acceptable, giving me time to reboot my facial expressions.

When I finally trust myself to look at him again, I let out an exaggerated, dreamy sigh.

"Ah... the perks of being Kentaro Azuma's fake girlfriend."

He gives me an incredulous look.

"I'm serious." I twirl my chopsticks between my fingers. "You're a Division I hockey player, annoyingly smart..." My eyes drop meaningfully toward the bowl. "And now I find out you can cook too?"

I shake my head.

"Ugh. You're basically the complete boyfriend package." I take another bite before mumbling around it, "You know, once you do something about that grouchy-ass personality."

"I heard that."

"You were supposed to."

His eyes narrow at me, and I grin because there he is. That's the Kentaro I know.

I scoop up more broth and take another sip, and a quiet moan slips out before I can stop it. God, this is good. Rich, warm, salty enough to make my hungover body want to climb into the bowl and live there.

"Seriously, Ken-chan. This is real good!" I smile dreamily at him over my bowl. "Can I just keep you?"

The question slips out so naturally that I don't even realize how it sounds until Kentaro stops eating.

Oh, shit.

I wait for the scowl. Maybe an eye roll. At the very least, I expect a dry you wish for having the sheer audacity to suggest keeping him like some kind of extremely useful house pet.

Except the look he gives me is nothing like what I expect.

His eyes lift slowly to mine, dark and intent, and that familiar sternness in his face loosens into something that makes heat creep beneath my skin. The corner of his mouth curves into this lazy, almost sinful little smirk I've only started seeing lately, the kind that makes him look less like the permanently brooding goalie I know and more like a man who knows exactly how attractive he is and has finally decided to weaponize it.

"You can."

My heart gives one stupid, enormous thump.

"What?"

His gaze doesn't leave mine. "Keep me."

Oh.

Fuck.

Maybe this hangover has finally crossed into hallucination territory, because there is no way Kentaro Azuma just said that while looking at me like that.

That slow, sexy smirk pulls a little higher at one corner. "Being yours doesn't sound so bad."

Something hot and fluttery twists through my stomach.

I narrow my eyes at him, mostly because it's easier than letting him see how thoroughly he just scrambled my brain. "Okay, seriously. Are you sick? Possessed? Because you've been talking like some kind of smooth-talking Casanova since yesterday, and it's starting to freak me out."

He chuckles under his breath. "I'm trying a different approach."