“But I care about you, and I am sorry you’re hurting because of him. I’m more than happy to help you bury his body though.” I smile. “Did you ever find out how long they’ve been together?”
“I might have done a little social media stalking and saw on her Instagram that they met at his gallery opening a while back and hit it off.”
Harper’s brows crush together. “His gallery opening? You mean the one last year at the beginning of the season?”
I can’t help but smile. “Look at you, talking all hockey seasons and stuff.”
She blushes. “Stop it. You better not tell anyone I can talk sports now.”
We can laugh about it now, but when Harper and Collin met on a dating app, Collin dropped so many hints about him being a hockey player. Harper being Harper, not knowing a damn thing about sports, didn’t pick up on a single one.
Now I bet she can recite Collin’s stats better than he can.
“Is that the same gallery opening though?” she presses.
I nod. “The same one.”
“But that means…” Her eyes widen. “Does that mean he’s been seeing her this whole time?”
I don’t know, and I’m honestly not sure I want to know.
My gut is telling me yes though.
Based on the way Harper is looking at me, hers is saying the same thing.
She squeezes my hand again. “At least tell me he had a small dick.”
My mind goes straight to the dick I saw this morning, which was definitely not small.
I push the thought away, hoping Harper doesn’t see the blush that is no doubt stealing up my cheeks.
“Average, and there was a weird mole on the inside of his thigh that had more hair than my legs in the winter.”
She wrinkles her nose, and I laugh.
Then somewhere along the way, my laughter turns to tears, and before I know it, I’m full-blown snot crying into Harper’s shoulder.
I have no idea how long it takes for me to gather myself, but when I finally pull away, there is a definitive wet spot on her shirt.
“I snotted on you. I’m sorry.” I wipe at it with a soft laugh, and my eyes instantly drop to the ring sitting snugly on my finger.
Harper notices and drags my hand into her lap, examining the ring Rhodes slipped on last night with a promise to love me forever. It’s a simple slim gold band with a small heart engraved in the middle of it. Nothing fancy and nothing like how I imagined my wedding ring would look.
“It was something they had at the chapel,” I tell her with a shrug. “He got one too.”
“At least you didn’t get it tattooed on,” Harper comments with a laugh. “Or sleep with him.”
Just the mere mention of a naked Rhodes has my mind drifting back to seeing him naked.
On one hand, I’m glad I didn’t sleep with him last night. On the other…damn, what a missed opportunity.
Harper waves her hand around. “Okay, I know your horny face when I see it. What aren’t you telling me?”
Busted.
I wring my hands. “I, uh, might have seen him naked.”
“What! When? I thought you didn’t sleep together.”
“We didn’t, but when I woke up this morning, all I had on were my panties and Rhodes was naked as the day he was born.”
She lifts her brows but doesn’t say anything. Probably because once upon a time—before I knew what a grumpy asshole he is—I thought he was hot.
Then he spoke, and all that flew right out the window.
There’s a knock at my hotel door and I freeze, worried I conjured him up by thinking about his cock. I have this weird wave of wanting it to be Rhodes and simultaneously wanting it to be literally anybody else.
“It’s just me,” Collin says.
I exhale a relieved breath, and Harper gets up to let him in.
They stand in the door whispering for a few moments, glancing over at me from time to time. Subtlety is not their specialty.
Harper nods, then turns back to me. “We’re supposed to meet Lowell and Miller for lunch, but I’m going to stay here with you.”
“No!” I say, almost too quickly. “I mean, no. Go on ahead. I’ll meet you down there.”
Harper’s brows pinch together. “Are you sure? I don’t want to leave you alone.”
“It’s fine. I’m going to take a shower and map out the next big mistake I can make with my life.”
Her face falls, and I laugh.
I laugh because if I don’t laugh about it, I’m going to start crying again, and I don’t want to cry in front of Collin.
Especially not when he’s looking at me like he is. Like I’m some wounded animal.
I’m not wounded. Just stupid.
Really, really stupid.
“I swear, you’re out to give me a heart attack this weekend,” Harper mumbles as she crosses the room. She wraps me in her arms, and I hug her back. “We’ll figure this out,” she promises. “You’re Ryan the Lion. You’ve got this.”
I smile at the nickname she gave me in college. She was always the shy, awkward, quiet one, and I was always the exact opposite of that. She always said I was bold and brave like a lion, and the name kind of stuck.
“I’ll be fine. I’ll meet you down there in thirty,” I tell her, hoping my words sound convincing enough.
She gives me one last long, sad look, then shuffles out the door with Collin. Like the amazing boyfriend he is, he looks equally concerned about my well-being.
The moment the door clicks shut, I fall back on the bed, exhausted from last night and all the emotions of the day so far. I glance over at the clock and note that it’s only eleven. How can it only be eleven?
Twelve hours.
That’s how long I’ve been married. Twelve hours. And I remember this because we made sure to say our vows at 11:11 PM.
I thought it was romantic. Something out of a fairy tale.
I believe in love, and I believe in fairy tales, but this?
This is no fairy tale.
It can’t be. Not when it makes me feel this way, sick to my stomach with dread.
Maybe that’s just the alcohol though. I should probably eat something, but just the thought of food makes me want to hurl.
A bath—that’s what I need. If I’m quick, I can take about a fifteen-minute soak to let all the tension out of my body.
I’m just about to push up from the bed when the sound of a key sliding into the electronic lock stops me in my tracks.
I’m sure it’s just Harper checking in on me. We always make sure to exchange room keys just in case, but this is the first time I’m regretting that choice.
I just want to be left alone. I want to sit in a tub of hot water and think about how the hell I’m going to get out of this mess I’m in. Hell, maybe I’ll order room service and charge it to my husband’s room. I can do that, right? What’s his is mine and all that.
The door opens, and I sigh. “I told you, Harper, I’m fine.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not. We need to talk.”
It’s not Harper. It’s Rhodes.
And he doesn’t look happy.
“Got a moment to chat, wife?”
6
RHODES
“I don’t know where she is. She said she’d meet us here, but she’s not answering her phone.”
I know because I tried it too.
Is she trying to bail on me?
“Give her some space, man. Maybe she just needs time to process.” Collin places a hand on my shoulder, and I shake it off.
I also needed time to process, but Collin had no issue with dragging my ass down here for lunch with Lowell and Miller. If I have to be here and face everyone right now, she damn sure has to be here too.
We both fucked up last night. I’m not going to let her hide just because she’s too embarrassed to own up to her mistakes.
Without another word, I spin on my heel and head for the elevators. Harper calls out after me, but I don’t both
er stopping. I’m a man on a mission, and it’s time I had a chat with my wife.
I take the elevator up to the thirty-fifth floor and let myself in with the key card I have.
I hear her sigh as I push open the door.
“I told you, Harper, I’m fine.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not. We need to talk. Got a moment to chat, wife?”
I say it just to test her, and to her credit, she doesn’t flinch.
Nor does she look all that surprised to see me.
“How did you get in here?”
I hold up the card. “You dropped this in my room.”
That’s a lie. The first thing I did when Collin finally left my room was go to the front desk and get a replacement. They really have some shitty service in this hotel. I barely had to talk my way into getting it.
“How convenient.”
“Sure was.” I shut the door behind me. “We need to talk.”
“You already said that.” She pushes off the bed with a sigh, heading into the bathroom.
She gathers her long, honey blonde locks and twists them up into a messy bun and then bends over the garden tub. She hits a few contraptions and switches on the water. She reaches for a bottle of bath salts sitting in the corner and dumps the entire thing into the bottom of the tub. Another bottle of the stuff is emptied, and before I know it, she’s hooking her thumbs into the waistband of her skirt and tugging it down her legs.
Her shirt is lying on the floor next to it before I can even grasp what I’m seeing.
“What are you doing?” I finally manage to ask.
“What does it look like? I’m taking a bath.”
She says it so calmly, like she’s not just undressing in front of me and slowly killing me.
“Nothing you haven’t seen before.”
“I told you we didn’t sleep together.”
Quite frankly, it’s pissing me off that she thinks I would take advantage of her when she was drunk. I might have been shit-faced too, but that’s not the kind of man I am.
“We might not have slept together, but I clearly undressed in front of you at some point last night, so unless you’re unable to handle seeing some boobs…”
Some boobs? She says it like she doesn’t have an incredible rack.
I try my damnedest to look away when she reaches behind her back and unsnaps her bra, but like a flustered eighth-grader who is seeing tits for the first time, I look at the mirror, as if that’s going to magically change anything.
She doesn’t back down, doesn’t call me out on it.
Our eyes collide in our reflections as she drags her bra down her arms and drops it to the floor. She’s back to the same state she was in when she was straddling my waist this morning.
And just like then, my cock springs to life.
Her perky tits are hanging free, her nipples hard and in perfect proportion to the rest of her boob. Fuck, I want to taste them. So damn badly. I had to fight so hard not to reach up this morning and pull her breast into my mouth.
Just like I have to fight the urge right now.
She’s beautiful. There’s no denying that. I thought it the first moment I saw her.
But it’s more than just her looks that make her beautiful. It’s the unabashed confidence she has in herself. The way she presses her shoulders back and meets my stare head-on, almost daring me to touch her.
I admire that about her.
Her watchful gaze skates across our reflections and lands on the one thing I hate the most—my scar.
It’s only then that I finally turn away from her and not-so-subtly adjust my hard dick.
She turns off the water, and I hear her step into the tub.
“You wanted to talk, so let’s talk.”
I face her again just as she sinks under the bubbles, covering everything I so desperately wish I could see again.
Leaning against the bathroom counter, I cross my arms over my chest, watching her. Her eyes are closed, and to most, she might look at ease. But I can see the way her jaw is tensed and how her lips are tugged down in the corner just the slightest bit.
“Last night was—”
“A huge mistake? Like monumentally huge? The biggest regret of my life?”
Even though I’m harboring those exact feelings, there’s something about the way Ryan says it that cuts just a little bit.
Could it be because she’s embarrassed by me? That out of all the people she could have done this with, I had to be the guy?
“Yeah, that.”
She lets out a humorless laugh and sinks lower into the tub, keeping her eyes closed. “We’re trending on Twitter, you know.”
Fuck. Of course we are.
Which means it’s as bad as I thought.
“What are we going to do?” She whispers the words, but I hear them just fine across the bathroom.
“I think we should stay married.”
Just as fast as the statement leaves my mouth, she’s scrambling around the tub, completely shocked by it.
I’m shocked by it too.
“Are you insane? We cannot stay married.”
The way she says it makes it sound like she’s disgusted by the idea, which just pisses me off.
“We barely know each other, Rhodes!”
“I guess you should have thought about that last night before you said I do.”
“I was drunk.”
“So was I, but you don’t see me running from my mistakes.” Probably because I’m an idiot, but…
She shakes her head. “You’re nuts. We can’t stay married.”
“Why not?”
“Why not? More like why should we?”
Marriage has always been something important to me. It’s not like I’ve ever been in any rush to get down the aisle, but it’s never been a thing I’ve not taken seriously either—at least not until last night.
I’ve seen other guys in the league not take it seriously too many times to count. They screw women all over the country and show off that Instagram-worthy life at home, pretending they aren’t sticking their dicks in anything that walks the moment they are away. It’s a joke to them.
But not for me. It means something, a lifetime of sticking by someone who complements you in all the best ways. It’s a true, honest commitment. It definitely does not mean a quickie in Vegas with an Elvis impersonator at the ready to help you exchange your vows. We didn’t go that route, thank fuck. Apparently even drunk we have some class when it comes to a Vegas elopement.
I’m already that guy with the ugly scar. I can’t also be that guy who got married in Vegas.
And more than that, I don’t want to be that guy.
“Because you need me, and I need you.”
“I don’t need you.”
I laugh darkly. “Oh, but you do need my help. I might have been drunk last night, but I distinctly remember you telling me about losing your job and your troubles about your grandmother’s assisted living situation.”
Her mouth drops open. “I told you about that?”
“Yes. How you’re barely hanging on paying for it and you want nothing more than a Prince Charming to come and save you. Ring any bells?”
It’s clear that it doesn’t.
But I remember it very well.
She cried for a good twenty minutes about it. I remember because if there’s anything in this world that I hate, it’s lady tears. Well, I also hate having to block shots going a hundred miles an hour on the ice, but I fucking hate lady tears too.
I’ve only seen my mother cry in a handful of instances, and it has about killed me every one of those times.
“Is that…is that why we got married?”
“I…”
Fuck. Collin asked me the same thing.
Why’d we do it?
As sad as it sounds, I don’t know.
I know I was upset about Brittney. I know I wanted to forget her engagement to Colter and maybe even show her I was over her. But I don’t think that’s the rea
son we did it. It doesn’t feel like the reason we did it.
But I was drunk, so what do I know.
I just know that try as I might, I can’t remember, and I’m not sure whether that’s a good or bad thing.
“I, uh… Well, I don’t actually know the exact reason we got married.” I rub at the knot forming at the back of my neck. This shit is stressing me out. “I don’t remember much leading up to it.”
She seems sad yet relieved to hear that. “Well, at least we’re on an even playing field there.” She shakes her head. “I can’t believe I told you about my grandmother. Not even Harper knows the full extent of it.”
“Well, believe it. You did. And I can help you with it if you help me with my problem.”
“What problem?”
I wave my hand between us. “This. There’s an expansion team coming in out west, and I don’t want to be on the chopping block for it. If I’m doing stupid shit like this during the offseason, it’s not going to look good. I’ll be a liability and they won’t keep me, and I’d really like to stay.”
It’s not a lie at all. Everyone knows they’re on thin ice this upcoming season.
“Not to mention it’s already out there in social media land and everyone knows the internet is forever,” I continue. “I’m sure the entire Comets organization knows about it already, so I’d have to deal with that shitstorm too. And then there’s the whole letting-my-parents-down thing that I’d really like to not do.”
“You can’t be serious about this.”
I don’t say anything because as much as I don’t want to be, I am serious.
Her face falls, and it finally dawns on her that I’m not kidding at all. “Rhodes…”
She clamps her mouth shut, rolling her lips tightly together as she studies me, mulling it all over in her head.
I wait. I wait for her to tell me to go fuck myself. I wait for her to leave me high and dry to deal with this myself.
I wait for her to tell me she can’t possibly imagine being married to a man like me.
Her lips pop free and I brace myself, ready for it.
“Okay.”
I balk at her response. “Okay?”
She nods. “I’ll do it. But we need to make a plan.”
“A plan?”
Blind Pass (Carolina Comets) Page 4