Stuck: A Secrets and Lies prequel

by Booth, Ainsley

“Some of the time.” I suck in a breath as he moves his touch up my hand and onto my wrist.

  “More?” His fingers slide onto the inside of my arm and I turn my hand over.

  Yes, more.

  He continues asking questions like he’s not molesting my skin with a melting ice cube. “And the rest of the time?”

  “Uh, he’s a storm. Well, a larger-than-life man-shaped demon surrounded by a storm. He needs to take that shape regularly, although he can be an only slightly larger-than-life man most of the time.”

  “What happens in the summer?”

  “You and your plot holes.” I swallow hard. “He’s gone in the summer. He has to travel somewhere cold.”

  “Brutal.”

  The lights flicker, and in a flash, Sam’s touch is gone. By the time the train car is fully lit again, he’s leaning back in his seat, the quintessential picture of the unconcerned man. I blink, adjusting to the brightness, and it’s almost like all of that didn’t just happen.

  “Bon soir…” The announcement apologies for the temporary power interruption in French first, and then English. “A power cable unhooked between the cars. The problem has been repaired, and your dinner service will begin shortly.”

  “No ice demon,” I say.

  Sam almost smirks, but he reins it in at the last second. “Are you disappointed?”

  I don’t answer him. Instead, I drain my wine glass.

  “Do you want another drink?” He twists around, looking for the attendant.

  I take a deep breath. “Probably shouldn’t.”

  He smiles again, a slow and dangerous grin. “Probably not.”

  A hot, needy tug pulls low in my belly.

  His gaze slides down my body as if he knows what the wolfish smile does to me inside. Then he snaps his eyes back to my face. “Do you want to play it safe, Aibhlin?”

  The inflection is more effective than a bucket of ice water on my libido. My back straightens, and I tighten my legs.

  No more languid fun. This train can get moving any time now. We didn’t even get to dinner. “Oh, Sam. Why did you have to go and say it like that? Our game was so lovely there for a hot second.”

  His face tightens up. “Is that what it was to you? Some kind of game?”

  “Of course. And it was for you, too. Obviously, with your ‘I’m Sam. Sam Preston,’ nonsense.”

  His eyes flick to the window, to the now more chaotic snow and the darkness beyond. When he looks back, his smile is more familiar. Rueful.

  Boyish, like I remember it from ten years ago.

  When he was my best friend’s boyfriend. Sam Preston. Jock, business major, all around asshole.

  He gives me a shrug that promises not much has changed. Sam doesn’t care if he hurts anyone. “You said, if you ever see me again, pretend you don’t know me. So I did exactly as requested, Hazel McLaughlin. So…who the hell are you pretending to be?”

  Chapter 2

  Sam

  “None of your business,” Hazel says, her eyes bright and challenging. “You started playing the game. I just took it to the next level. It’s a shame for both of us you couldn’t keep it there.”

  I genuinely thought I’d never see this woman again.

  I was not prepared for this evening on any level.

  And yet.

  And yet, I can still feel it. The sizzle, the connection. The what-almost-was, the what-never-could-be. To be fair to the missed opportunity, none of that sizzle had existed for ninety-five percent of the time we knew each other.

  She’d been Regan’s best friend, and no matter how complicated and childish the relationship I’d had with my college girlfriend had been, I’d only had eyes for her.

  And cards.

  But no other women.

  After it ended badly, so completely my fault, Hazel hated me for having hurt Regan. Fair enough.

  So it had surprised the hell out of both of us when one day, there it was.

  Sizzle.

  Spark.

  A connection neither of us saw coming. A mocking tone turned into a lighthearted tease in the library, and bam, I suddenly saw Hazel McLaughlin in a whole new light.

  It took her longer to admit it. Three weeks longer, precisely, until one night at the seedy club at the edge of campus, I tried to talk to her.

  Hazel hadn’t wanted to talk. But she’d been willing to kiss—right up until she had second thoughts and pushed me away.

  “This can’t happen, Sam. If you ever see me again, pretend you don’t know me.”

  And she’d been right. It couldn’t happen. Not then.

  When she sat down across from me tonight, I did my best to respect that decade-old request. I let her work in silence, only looking at her when her head was down.

  I could pretend I didn’t know her. I couldn’t stop myself from looking at her. From stealing hungry, consuming glances when it was safe to, when she was lost in her work. I had to absorb the shock of her reappearance—temporary, fleeting, precarious—in minuscule slices.

  Her hair is longer. Darker, too. More mid-range honey blonde, with lots of brown underneath. She has heavy bangs now, which suit her. Everything about her seems right, as much as I can say that about a woman who didn’t want me anywhere in her life.

  I shouldn’t have traced the lines of her body as she curled up across from me. She’d worn a light, puffy parka over yoga pants and a hoodie for the train, and every inch was soft and touchable—by someone other than me, so that trick with the ice cube was offside.

  Living up to the fantasy role of an untamed beast.

  I’m a beast, all right.

  And Hazel…

  We couldn’t be more different.

  She seems, as she always did back in university, relentlessly real. She makes me feel like a fool for wearing business clothes on an evening train in the middle of a snowstorm.

  She makes me feel like a fool because I’d forgotten how beautiful she is, exactly as she is—and now she’s so much more so than back in the day.

  I want to get to know this woman. I want to know why she dreams of ice demons, and what else makes her shiver.

  I want to apologize for way back when, and convince her I’m worth knowing now, although I blew our game, so maybe I’m not.

  That’s as good a place as any to start. “You win,” I say plainly. “I couldn’t keep up. I forgot, for a second, that I’d made you that promise. But I’d remembered before that. I remembered when you sat down, and that was hard, because the second I realized it was you, after all these years, I wanted to say so much. I wanted to jump up and spill my guts out to you.” I hold my arms wide. “And frankly, that is not something I’m entirely comfortable with. Even now. What the fuck, Sam. She doesn’t need to hear your story. That’s what I told myself. So I kept my mouth shut, and if we hadn’t stopped, I’d have kept it shut. I remembered my promise, if that’s worth anything.”

  Her eyes flit back and forth, assessing me. Then she shrugs. “It’s a weird night.”

  That’s it.

  I dump all that on her, verbal spillage of the worst sort, and she just shrugs and says it’s a weird night. “You’ve changed.” I say it with all the honest admiration I can muster. I like her. I like her bite, her snap, her strength.

  She nods. “It’s been a long time.” Another short, spare statement. “Have you changed?”

  I exhale roughly. There it is. My opening. “Yeah. A fair bit. I realized I’m an addict.”

  She looks immediately to the drinks between us.

  I’m used to that. I don’t shirk away from the unspoken question. “Not booze, although I don’t drink a lot. I don’t need another addiction in my life. But I don’t like the stuff enough to use it in that way. No, I’m a gambler. I’ve been in recovery for years.”

  Her eyes go wide. “Cards?”

  And how. At university, my poker games were legendary. And they came first, before Regan, before sports, before anything I should have valued. “Cards, horses, mo
ney. I…” I gesture to my suit. “I don’t actually do any of the investing part of being an investment banker anymore. Crashed and burned hard a couple of years ago. Got my brother in a shitload of trouble. We came out the other side of that bruised but better. Now he manages the investment side of things, and I make house calls on our more eccentric clients who like that I’m a wild boy.”

  She laughs gently. “That makes you sound like a gigolo.”

  “Not far off,” I say gruffly.

  “Is that why you’re going to Ottawa tonight?”

  He nods. “We have a client there. I’ll come home tomorrow morning.”

  “You’re going up for one night?” Her eyes sparkle. “Are you literally a gigolo? No judgement.”

  I smile. “No, but I was going to spend the night with her.” The look on Hazel’s face is incredible. A little twist of jealousy, which I enjoy, but it’s almost all curiosity. “Because she’s a night owl. We usually have a late dinner, and then spend the night pouring over her accounts before having breakfast together. Sometimes we finish late in the night and I grab some sleep, other times it’s an all-nighter until I head back to the train.”

  “Long round trip. Why don’t you fly?”

  I grimace. “I, uh, can’t.”

  Her eyes go wide and her voice softens. “Phobia?”

  “Insider trading.”

  Her mouth falls open and a small squeak comes out. “Huh.”

  “Yeah.” I clear my throat. “It’s not universal. I can get on planes. Just not the ones operated by the two companies I put in financial peril. In hindsight, it was dumb to piss off both domestic airlines like that.” Then I grin, because I know it could be way worse. It had been, for a couple of years. It had been brutal, and a mess entirely of my own making. Now, my life was back on track. “It’s an inconvenience, but I’m in no place to complain. I could be in jail and I’m not.”

  “That sounds like quite the story,” she says, her eyes still wide. “I don’t want to pry, though.”

  “Pry away. Part of the twelve steps is taking responsibility and coming to terms with what I did.”

  “So I’ve heard, but I’ve never seen it represented quite that honestly before.” She pauses as the food cart rattles towards us.

  “Festive turkey, salmon, or lasagna, miss?”

  “Lasagna for me, please.”

  I take the same.

  She looks at me curiously as we dig into our food.

  “Ask your questions,” I finally say.

  “You’re for real.”

  “It’s not like you’re a stranger,” I say under my breath. “You knew me at my worst.”

  “That was your worst? And you ended up doing…” She licks her lips. “Something that got you banned from airplanes?”

  “It was part of the agreement. It’s almost done. I’ll be able to fly to Ottawa next year, although I’m sure I’ll have a hassle the first few times.”

  “You seem chill about that.”

  I laugh hollowly. “I’ve adjusted to the surreal nature of my predicament. And again, it’s entirely of my own making.”

  “You added that caveat again.”

  I always do. I take a deep breath. “I ruined my life before it really got started. I don’t want to make that same mistake. In general, I believe in ruthless honesty. It’s humbling.”

  “But you didn’t mind when I gave you a different name?”

  No, I really hadn’t. I was more curious than anything. “You had your reasons.”

  She hesitates.

  “Didn’t you?” I arch one eyebrow. I don’t really care. She doesn’t owe me anything.

  Slowly, she smiles. “Ruthless honesty?”

  “It’s a good policy.”

  She licks her lips, the tip of her tongue pink and nimble. “Okay. So, the thing is, Aibhlin…that is my name now. In some ways. I’m a writer. It’s a pen name.”

  “What do you write?”

  “Words strung together in sentences. Lots of them.”

  I suppress a chuckle. “How mysterious.”

  “Mmm.”

  Her eyes are definitely sparkling now, so I take a gamble. “Were you enjoying our game until I ruined it?”

  She purses her lips, then nods. “Yes.”

  “Damn. So was I.” I think about her ice demon story. “You’re a wonderfully deft storyteller. I’d love to read something else that you’ve done. Anything.”

  Her cheeks turn pink. “Do you like dinosaur erotica?”

  It’s damn good I didn’t put that bite of lasagna in my mouth before she said that, because it would have launched right back out.

  “There’s a first time for everything.” I ignore the rough gravel in my voice suddenly.

  “Oh, good.” She blinks innocently.

  “Do you—” I reach for my glass, wait a beat, and when she doesn’t help me out, I swill back the last of my rye. “Uh, is that what you write?”

  “No.” She winks. “But I really enjoyed that exchange.”

  “All right, funny girl.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with dinosaur porn, Sam.”

  “There’s a difference between porn and erotica, Hazel.”

  She freezes. “Yes,” she says slowly. “There is.”

  “Are we still joking around?”

  “Yes.” But she licks her lips. “No. I write erotica. That part was legit. No dinosaurs yet, or ice demons.”

  “That’s a shame.” My pulse jacks up at the thought of Hazel writing anything erotic.

  Above our heads, the speaker crackles to life. “Our apologies for the long wait, folks. Unfortunately, due to weather and other circumstances, we are returning to Toronto. We should be back in the city by ten o’clock. If Toronto is not home, and you need assistance for the night, please see the ticket agents in the station for accommodation options.”

  Hazel makes a sad face as the train begins to move back in the direction we came from. “Well, that’s too bad.”

  I refresh my Twitter search. No update on the collision. “Yeah.”

  “Will you try to get on one of the trains tomorrow?”

  I shake my head. I’m already emailing my client. “This meeting will be rescheduled to the new year. You?”

  “I’m going on holiday, and have reservations I don’t want to cancel, so I’ll head out again in the morning. Hopefully the rooms they find us aren’t too far away from the station.”

  My eyebrows shoot up. “You don’t live in Toronto?”

  She shakes her head. “Stratford.”

  I wouldn’t have pictured her as settling in a small town. “Fascinating.”

  “Is it?” She laughs. “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” I’m smiling now, too.

  “Where did you think I’d ended up? Not that I’m assuming you thought of me.”

  “I did think of you. From time to time.” My throat gets tight, thick, as I think about the reckless years after graduation. Luke’s ascent to the pinnacle of Bay Street trading, our launch into our own boutique firm. I should have thought of Hazel more often. Remembered the derision she felt for me and taken a lesson from that, instead of learning it the hard way, after risking everything. “I don’t know. I wondered what you were up to. I didn’t think about where, though. In a lot of ways, I froze us in that moment.”

  “That night?” She breathes the two words, and heat crawls up the underside of my skin.

  “Yeah.”

  She blinks slowly, and God damn it, I’d kill for us to be alone on this train right now. For there to be a dark nook somewhere we could replay that night, have another chance at a dirty kiss to test that still very-much-there sizzle. “What do you remember?”

  My balls pull tight against my body as I drop my gaze to her mouth. “I remember wanting to talk. It was too loud, and everyone we knew was there, so you didn’t want to get too close right there on the dance floor.”

  She licks her lips. “Do you remember what you wanted to talk about?
I’ve been trying to figure that out. How that night started.”

  “Regan had started dating someone else,” I said slowly. “And that was good. I was happy for her, but it was bittersweet because I’d fucked up and lost a good thing with her. Even if we weren’t meant to be forever, I regretted not being a better boyfriend while we dated. So I was feeling sorry for myself, and her, and then you showed up. You were just…you. Bright. Happy. I couldn’t stay away. And I wanted to find out if you knew about Regan’s new boyfriend. Which is, as I say that out loud right now, an incredibly immature set of thoughts. I know that, but there it is. Welcome to the mind of a twenty-one-year-old shithead.”

  “I didn’t know, actually. Not until the next day.” The words slide out like silk, soft and secret.

  An unsettling thought burns in my mind. Would it have made a difference? But there’s no point in retracing old ground. “Without putting too fine a point on it, when I’ve thought of you over the years, it’s always fondly as the one who got away.” I smile. “And it’s for the best that you did. It took me years to sort myself out.”

  “Really dodged a bullet?” She winks. “I’ve thought about you, too. Not as the one who got away.”

  “I imagine not.” I say it dryly, but with affection.

  “But that kiss…” Her voice drops to a sweet, husky note. “I’ve thought about that. Where it would have taken us. And never in all of those permutations did I guess at this.” She spreads her hands wide.

  “How many permutations?”

  Another slow blink. Were her eyelashes always that luscious dark brown tinged with blonde tips? How stupid was I a decade ago that I never noticed? She smiles. “There were some elements of that evening that I’ve used over and over again in my stories. The way you…” She trails off and looks at my hands, then back up to my face.

  And she blushes.

  But I don’t find out what it was—the way I what?—before the steward returns to collect our dinner trays.

  Once we’re alone again, she changes the subject. “Who have you kept in touch with from school?”

  “There are people who stayed in the city and got into the business world. I see them from time to time. I stayed in touch with some of the guys until everything imploded. Did a few bachelor parties to Vegas, that sort of thing. But that’s all in the past.” Except for one person. “And I hadn’t been keeping up with Regan, but I wrote to her last year. Part of making amends, the process of repentance, is an honest reckoning of the hurt I’ve caused. She wrote back and wished me well.”