Fake Dating My Ex's Hockey Star Brother (Maya Scott) novel Chapter 270

Epilogue 5

JUSTIN’S POV

“Okay, baby. I’ll be there soon,” I say into the phone.

“Blow me a

Ss,” Allison demands.

I glance up at Bryce. He’s grinning like he can hear her through the line while Jin stands beside him, both of them whispering and pulling the same ridiculous faces they always make when I’m on the phone with Allison.

Children. Absolute children.

Still, she’s busy and apparently waiting on her kiss.

I make the kiss sound directly into the phone and don’t break eye contact with Bryce while I do it.

“I love you.” I add.

I barely hear her response over the loud outburst of laughter and stomping from Bryce and Jin. The call ends and I shove the phone in my pocket, watching them hug themselves and make exaggerated sounds.

“Blow me a kiss, baby.” Bryce clutches his chest and bats his eyes at Jin. “I love you, sweetheart.”

Jin grabs his face and plants a loud, dramatic kiss on his cheek. “I love you more, pookie.”

They start laughing again.

“Pathetic,” I mutter, brushing past them.

“Bro.” Bryce falls into step beside me, still grinning. “You blew a kiss out loud, in a parking lot.”

“I did.” I don’t look at him. “Because I have a fiancée. Something you single asses clearly know nothing about.”

“Single by choice,” Jin says from my other side.

“Yeah, whose choice? Yours or every girl you’ve ever asked out?”

Bryce loses it again and even Jin snorts, which means he knows I’m right. The man has the worst track record I’ve ever witnessed up close. He has this habit of locking in on women who have made it visibly clear they find hockey players insufferable, and then dedicating himself to the project of changing their minds. It has never once worked.

“All I’m saying,” Bryce says, recovering, “is that the rizz is supposed to be silent. You don’t perform

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“That’s how you know it’s real rizz.” I unlock my car. “Amateurs.”

They’re still laughing as we pile in, and I let them have it. In twenty minutes they’d be standing at

Allison’s movie set with their mouths open, so they could get it all out now.

When Allison booked that role, I remember how crazy that day was the call, the screaming, and the way she kept asking me if I was serious when I told her she deserved it. It’s also the day I

proposed to her.

Then it got crazier when she sat me down one day and walked me through the actual scope of the thing. HBO, which already meant something, but the production budget was in a different atmosphere entirely. One hundred and eighty million for the first season alone, spread across a filming schedule that touched six countries and counting. She said the number and I just looked at

her for a second.

The filming schedule has been the harder part. She spent the last month in Japan, and I spent my time trying not to visibly wilt every time a teammate asked how she was doing and I had to say‘ she’s great, she’s in Tokyo filming a psychological romcom, and I haven’t seen her in three weeks.‘ I said it enough times that it started to sound like something I was reciting rather than something I actually felt fine about.

But she’s back in LA now and I had a game in the city too, giving me time to see her. Bryce and Jin, who’ve been begging to visit the set, have exactly one window: now, before we fly out tonight for the Tampa game. Luckily, Allison pulled some strings and got production to approve it.

So here we are.

The drive takes about twenty–two minutes, and Bryce spends most of it talking about his new hookup as we pull up to the lot.

“Bro,” he says, for what has to be the fifth time since we left.

I park and we climb out. The lot entrance is all security checkpoints and badge scanners, crew

members moving in and out.

I pull out my phone and call Allison.

She picks up on the second ring. “Hey, you’re here?”

“Yeah, we just parked. You done?”

“Literally just finished the last setup. Give me ten minutes.” She says. “Wait at the front gate, the one with the blue awning. I’ll have them put your names down.”

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“Got it.”

“All three of you?”

“All three, unfortunately.”

I hear her laugh before she hangs up.

“She’s coming out,” I say, pocketing the phone.

Jin straightens immediately. “Do you think she’d sign something for me?”

Bryce turns to look at him.

“What? She’s famous. I want an autograph.” Jin insists.

“She has one film in her filmography.” Bryce counters. “Don’t you think that will make her feel

awkward?”

“That was before the HBO show.” Jin fires back. “She’s different now.”

“She’s the exact same person-”

“I’m getting the autograph.”

I leave them to it and find the blue awning. True to her word, our names are at the gate, and the security guy barely glances at us before waving us through to a waiting area just inside.

It’s nothing fancy: a few benches, some equipment cases stacked against the wall but even from here you can feel the scale of the thing. The sheer amount of infrastructure required to make something this size run.

Bryce has gone quiet. That’s how I know he’s actually impressed.

We wait maybe eight minutes before I see her coming down the path toward us, still in a partial

costume.

I close the distance before she reaches us and she makes a small surprised sound when I lift her off the ground, her arms coming around my neck automatically.

“Hi,” she says into my shoulder.

“Hey baby.” I set her down and kiss her.

She pulls back and looks up at me, a smile spread across her face. “I literally just finished.”

“Thank God.” I exhale. “I was worried we were gonna be standing here watching you do another forty takes.”

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“There were five scenes today. And it was eleven takes, not forty.” She turns past me and her

expression shifts to something that is almost but not quite a glare. “Hi, boys.”

“Hi Allison,” they say, nearly in unison.

She tilts her head. “I heard both of you laughing when Justin called me.”

Bryce opens his mouth.

“The kissing sounds,” she says. “Very creative.”

Jin coughs and Bryce is fighting a smirk but losing.

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