Fake Dating My Ex's Hockey Star Brother (Maya Scott) novel Chapter 250

Chapter 0110

ALLISON’S POV

It’s been four days since Braydon’s dad got sentenced and life has been…one long party.

I mean, what better way to celebrate the downfall of a man who nearly killed my best friend last semester? He’s genuinely evil, and thinking about everything he did gives me the creeps.

Even though I’m really happy about the whole thing, it doesn’t come close to Braydon and Katy, who’ve been laughing and joking about it nonstop. Some of Braydon’s teammates are here too, just hooting and hollering like it’s the best week of their lives.

“Are you checking it now?” Katy’s voice breaks into my thought, and I lift my gaze to her.

“Yeah,” I say, dragging my laptop onto my thighs and my stomach immediately does that horrible thing

where it tries to escape through my feet.

I’d almost forgotten about the feedback for one of the two commercial auditions I submitted last week in

the chaos of celebrating the sentencing, which honestly felt like a blessing. The less I thought about it, the

less it could hurt me.

Except now I have to look.

“Which one again?” Katy slides off the couch toward me.

I tilt the screen slightly away, like that’ll do anything. “The skincare one.”

She sits at the edge of the couch beside me. “Alls, open it.”

“I’m working up to it.”

“You’ve been working up to it for ten minutes now.”

“These guys have been distracting me.”

That’s not entirely a lie. But the truth is I’ve been scared because this would be… I stopped counting after a while. I’ve submitted a ridiculous number of tapes in the last two months, and the rejections have all blurred together, each one leaving the same small dent in the same tired place.

I don’t want to crack open a fresh one in the middle of everyone else’s happiness and let my deflation leak all over the room.

“Come here.” Katy closes the distance between us, pressing her shoulder to mine. “We’re checking it together.”

“Katy-”

“Together, Allie.”

The sound of footsteps padding out from the kitchen cuts through before I can argue. Luke appears with a help. The sob that breaks out of me is loud, messy, completely unstoppable and I don’t care. I genuinely don’t care.

All those emails. All those rejections and the ones that never even got back to me. I’ve submitted so many that I started mixing them up, only realizing after I’d already hit send.

And now this.

“Ailie.” Katy’s voice cuts through the haze as she steps in front of me, cupping my face in both hands.”

Allie, you got it.”

“I got it,” I whisper.

I let out a laugh that’s mostly a sob. “I just got called into a meeting, Justin. I haven’t actually booked anything yet-”

“Okay, but-”

“Like they could still change their minds and I could go in there and completely bomb it and-”

“Allison.”

“I’m just saying, a meeting isn’t the same as actually-”

“Hey.” Braydon steps forward and fixes me with a look that is somehow both deeply annoyed and completely soft. “Do you know how many people submit tapes and never even hear back? Never get a single meeting?” He raises an eyebrow. “If booking the role was easy, everyone would be doing it.”

My chin wobbles.

“Stop it,” I tell him.

“I’m just saying facts.”

“Braydon, I’m going to cry again-”

“Then cry.” He opens his arms. “Come here.”

And that’s it. That’s what breaks the dam completely open. I walk straight into Braydon’s arms, and then Katy’s arms appear around me from the side, and then there’s more weight, more warmth, and I realize that it’s everyone just closing in until it’s one big tangled pile of people holding me up.

Someone is patting my head, someone else is swaying slightly and Katy might be crying too.

“We’re so proud of you,” she says into my hair.