by Amanda Cowen
He catches it with ease and sits up on the edge of the sofa. His approving grin shines in my direction, and I really wish he’d put some damn clothes on. He runs his hand absentmindedly through his lush honey hair and stands up. I swallow the lump in my throat and turn away from him.
“Ready to order me around?” I ask over my shoulder, and walk into the kitchen.
“Always,” he says, and I can hear the smirk in his voice.
I place the bags on the counter and begin to unpack the groceries. Cash sits on the stool next to me, bare-chested with only a pair of running shorts on. I can’t stand how good he looks, sitting there watching me.
“You look like crap,” I say, admiring his five o’clock shadow and messy honey hair.
“So do you.” He smiles and glances down at my breasts, all perky in my white tank. “I’m almost embarrassed for you.”
“I’m that hideous?” I ask.
“Repulsive,” he says with a wink.
I look away with a shaky breath, and Cash clears his throat.
“What’s that?” He stares at the bottle of fish oil capsules and the container of powdered turmeric.
I smile. “I am going to make you a drink.”
He raises a brow. “The whiskey is in the cupboard.”
I place my hands down on the counter. “Not that kind of drink. I’m making you an all-natural concoction to treat your concussion.”
“How can I be sure you’re not trying to poison me?”
“I’m not the untrustworthy one here.” I cross the room and pull open a cupboard. “Where do you keep your cups?”
I feel him behind me, reaching over my head to retrieve a cup from the shelf. I freeze, fingers gripping the edge of the countertop, before he pulls away and I finally relax. I stiffen again when he leans his chest against my chest.
“Here you go,” he says, bending to say the words against my hair.
He smells so good and his body is so warm and inviting that I have to step away before he can feel that I’m trembling. Pushing back, I turn on the tap and fill the cup with water. Cash walks back over to his stool and takes a seat at the small island. Without meeting his eyes, I break open the fish oil capsule and add a table spoon of turmeric powder into his cup, then mix it with a spoon.
When I look up, he’s watching me. Amusement flickers in his eyes and I slide the cup across the counter.
Cash lifts the cup up to his nose and sniffs it. “It smells terrible.”
“On my way to the grocery store, I did some research on natural remedies to help cure a concussion.”
Cash takes a cautious sip. I smile when he coughs a bit from swallowing his first gulp.
“What the hell is in this water?” He wrinkles his nose and then takes another gulp. “It tastes like crap.”
“It’s a secret.” I unpack the groceries onto the counter and rinse a bunch of kale at the sink, watching Cash struggle to swallow down his drink.
“Don't be drinking that on account of me,” I say, nonchalantly and shake out the wet kale, then place it down on the cutting board in front of Cash.
He lifts his chin the tiniest bit, running his tongue over his bottom lip. “I'm not. I'm drinking it for me. I’m fully aware that I need to recover from this blow. And I really do appreciate you looking out for me.”
We stand there for a moment— his hand outstretched and covering mine, my face flush from his gentle contact— before Cash seems to remember we’re not together anymore. He pulls away and I feel the absence of him immediately. My arms fall to my sides and I watch as he reaches for his cup and takes another sip.
“I’ve been thinking about what Dr. Henderson said.” I start chopping up the kale. “I really think that if you get enough rest and take care of yourself, you’ll be surprised at how fast you recover. There's no sense in dealing in absolutes.”
“There is one thing that I am absolute about,” Cash breathes out. “You. After everything, you’re still here for me, taking care of me.”
“Yeah, I am,” I say thoughtfully. “And I’m here because I want to be, okay?”
______________
After forty minutes of Cash ordering me around in the kitchen, I’ve successfully made and served us a kale Caesar salad topped with grilled salmon. I’m easing up and getting use to this new version of us—a cross somewhere between friends and necessity —as I join him on the sofa to eat dinner. He turns on the television and clicks through various show choices on his streaming device. When he finally finds a Game of Thrones rerun, he looks over at me with a knowing smile. We watched last season together when we were a couple. It’s so strange being with him like this again, eating in companionable silence and having it feel so . . . normal. But this is what I have to remember: Cash hurt me, and right now I need to be here for him, as nothing more than a friend.
“Thanks for dinner,” he says once we’re done eating and wipes his mouth with a napkin. “It must have been all my ordering around that made it taste so good.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re always so modest.”
Cash lets out a laugh, takes my empty plate, and carries the dishes into the kitchen. I sink further into the sofa, grab a blanket, and toss it over my legs. Cash reappears, yawning and running his hand through his hair.
He smiles down at me. “Mind if I rejoin you?”
“Not at all.” I lean my head back against the couch.
He sits down beside me and drapes his arm along the back of the sofa, letting out another yawn. “I feel pretty drowsy, but I really wanted to watch another episode of Game of Thrones with you. I never actually ended up finishing the season.”
“Yeah, me neither.” I take a deep breath, but it chokes halfway through. “I didn’t even bother trying.”
I couldn’t bring myself to watch it without him, even though Aiden religiously watched it alone on our sofa every Sunday night.
“Yeah, I know what you mean. I couldn’t watch it after you left. It didn’t seem right.” Cash shifts on the couch, leaning closer to me, “Although I tried to watch it once,” he admits, and I feel something tighten in my chest. “But I didn’t want to experience it without you. It just wasn’t the same, you know?”
“I do know,” I say, and without realizing it, I place my hand on his knee, squeezing it. His skin is warm beneath my palm. I move to pull away, but he reaches out, taking my hand in his while he casually studies it.
“I’m thinking two days is more than enough time to burn through an entire season,” he says.
“This may sound weird,” I murmur. “But I’m kind of glad that jackass Jenkins body-checked you.”
Cash laughs, and I rest my head on his shoulder. We fall into another comfortable silence and watch episode after episode, until my eyelids become heavy and I drift off to sleep on the sofa with Cash at my side.
__________
I’m not a light sleeper. I never wake up in the middle of the night. Which is exactly why I’m surprised when my body is startled awake out of a peaceful sleep. It’s like I could sense his warm body missing from mine. I’m alone. I sit up on the edge of the sofa hearing nothing but silence. The living room is dark, the television is off, and the only light I can see is faintly coming from under the door of Cash’s bedroom. Could he be awake?
I tiptoe down the hallway and push open his door a crack to see him sitting on the edge of his bed, an empty glass in one hand, and a picture frame in another. I clear my throat to alert him of my presence. He turns his head and lets out a defeated sigh. His eyes darken as I take a cautious step forward. He clenches his jaw and glances back down at the picture frame when I sit down next to him. I follow his gaze to a photo of him and Cory sitting on the front steps of their home in Newfoundland.
“Everything okay?” I ask, cautiously.
“I couldn’t sleep.” His voice sounds weary, and a little low, uneven. He looks at me with an intense gaze. “Watching you sleep with your head on my shoulder...I just couldn’t.”
I freeze when whiskey blows off his breath. I stare down at the empty glass in his hand.
“Have you been drinking?” My voice is stern.
His gaze is dark and distant for a moment. He nods and clenches his jaw. He stands up, moving away from me, and puts on a shirt. It’s several tight, pounding heartbeats before he says something.
“We need to talk,” he breathes out and closes his eyes, jaw tight. When he opens them again he continues, “I feel terrible seeing the hurt in your eyes and knowing I'm the one that caused it.”
I wince, looking away, and he takes a step closer to me before stopping. I want so much to reach forward and put my hands on his face and kiss him. I miss him, despite how angry I am that he lied to me the way he did.
“Cash, you should be resting. This isn’t good for your concussion. We don’t need to talk about this now.”
He can see the anxiousness in my expression, and he drops his eyes drop to the floor, running his hands through his hair.
“Quinn…” He looks at me and I can see the conflict in his eyes.
This burden he’s carried is so enormous that it’s destroyed everything between us, our relationship torn and shattered by his past. My heart turns over, pounding so hard it’s no longer a safe rhythm. He’s going to tell me everything. And I’m ready to know.
“The world thinks I’m some great hockey player with a perfect life full of money and women and things.” His voice drops to barely a whisper. “No one knows I grew up with nothing in some dead-end town. No one knows my father abandoned us and never looked back. No one knows the reason I worked my ass off so hard on the ice was because I knew it was the only way I would finally get out and see the world. No one knows that I’m the reason my brother Cory didn’t reach his nineteenth birthday or that he never got to marry the love of his life. No one knows that the real reason I spun out of control with my drinking, partying, and drug use was because a few years after I lost my brother, I lost my mother to cancer…the only person I had left. And no one knows I’ve taken care of Daniela financially for years, or that I let her talk me into some green-card marriage. Even though we never knew our father, he was an American and Cory and I had dual-citizen ship.” He steps closer and searches my eyes frantically, pleading. “You have to understand that the thought of losing you was my worst fear. You found parts of me I didn’t know existed, and in you I found a love I never knew I could feel. You deserved the truth.”
His whiskey breath is still warm on my cheek as my brain frantically searches for the right way to respond. I’m furious that he’s been drinking. I want to scream at him. Tell him he needs help, but I don’t. He’s finally about to open up to me. I can’t risk having him pull away.
“I found an old album in the spare bedroom,” I say. “I saw a photo of you, Cory, and Daniela on draft day. And I saw an engagement ring on her finger…”
“Daniela was engaged to Cory.” He stops, and suddenly realization dawns on me. “She was the love of his life.”
“And yet she ended up marrying you,” I note.
“Quinn, I’ve known her my entire life. She was like family to me. Daniela grew up down the road from us in Thompson. She was an only child raised by her mother. Her father passed away from a brain aneurism when she was a baby. From the moment she met Cory they became inseparable. And she became the daughter my mother never had. She was Cory’s first kiss, first love, and first girlfriend. Everybody knew Cory and Daniela would end up together.”
As we stare at each other in the muted light provided by the lamp on his nightstand, the enormity of this conversation only grows more tangible. This is real.
He scratches his jaw and then tilts his chin to me. “The night of the draft…that picture you saw. It was the night he asked her to marry him.”
My stomach flips. “Okay, but I still don’t understand how -”
“The year I was drafted, the draft was held in Montreal, Quebec,” he interrupts in a tight whisper. “I flew them down to attend because he wanted to propose. She thought she was coming down to see me get drafted, but that afternoon Cory proposed to her in Old Montreal on a horse and carriage ride.”
I close my eyes. This is what I’ve wanted him to confide in me from the beginning and what I’ve been most afraid to hear. I pull my lip between my teeth biting down before I bravely ask, “How many months later did he pass away?”
“Six.” He winces, dragging his hand through his hair. “Their wedding was supposed to be in July.”
I nod, swallowing what feels like a bowling ball in my throat.
“When I crashed into the ditch, my blood alcohol level was high,” he says in a whisper, and from the slight shake in his voice, I can feel the years of guilt weighing down on his shoulders. “I saw my brother, lifeless, crushed and swallowed up by the vehicle. Blood everywhere. I shook him. I tried to wake him up…” Cash’s voice trails off. He takes a deep breath regaining control. “My agent, publicist, and the league worked with the police department to bury the fact that I had been drinking. They successfully hid the entire accident from the media. Like it never even fucking happened.” He takes a deep breath, and his bottom lip trembles. He blinks away and looks down at the floor. “My mother was destroyed. She could barely look at me, and it was never the same between us. Within months her cancer came back, and Daniela was the only person who stood by my side even though she was as broken inside as I was, if not worse, after suffering through the loss of my brother.”
He closes his eyes, rubbing his forearm across his face. My hands are shaking, my pulse racing, and Cash finally looks up at me.
“Together we learned how to grieve his loss, and my mother and I felt like I owed Daniela the world. Especially after my mother passed, I realized she was the only person I had left. Financially, I was her everything. Emotionally, I was her rock. When I left Newfoundland, she was devastated but continued to run her dance studio in Thompson. She asked me if I would marry her so she could live and work in the States as a dancer to be closer to me. I agreed and moved her to California for a while, until she found a job in Las Vegas working in a club as a dancer. She’s obtained random jobs on the side and has worked as a choreographer on large Vegas productions. And like I told you, she’s now a backup dancer on a world tour.”
I want to reach forward and place my hands on either side of his face. But I’m still so angry at him, and yeah since the moment I attended the Tornadoes Dark Room I’ve want to hit him with something so hard it would cause him as much pain as he’s caused me. But I do care about him and I want him to tell me everything no matter how much it hurts.
“She’s fragile and she’s never fully healed from losing Cory. I don’t love her Quinn. I’ve never loved her, and I don’t want to be with her. I’ve been so blinded by guilt and trying to make it right for her that I never saw the repercussions of our arrangement. During those years I was so drunk and high half of the time, nothing mattered to me. I never thought…” His voice trails off.
“Cash, you should have told me.”
“My love for you came without warning, Quinn.” He takes a steps forward and runs his thumb along my cheek. “You had my heart before I even realized how tangled up I was in the mistakes of my past. I’m so sorry for hurting you. And I swear I’m going to make it up to you. I love you.”
“See, my problem is that as crazy as that sounds, I believe you.” I shake my head. “I believe you when you tell me something that absurd and crazy then finish by saying you love me.”
My chest squeezes at the earnest vulnerability in his expression. Being near him is so confusing. From the distance of Boston, it was easier to forget the hold he once had on me. Now, having him touch me, even if it’s just my face, makes me feel like crying. I was so scared he was not going to be okay. I’ve missed him. Everything about him. I’d be lying if the idea of being this close to him again wasn’t something I wanted.
“I broke your heart a thousand different ways, and, God, I am sorry for that. But s
omething changed once I met you. Me. And I know how to love you now. That man you always wanted me to be, I am that man. And I can give you everything that we were always meant to have. And maybe I'm too late, and maybe I should just move on, but I can't. I've tried like hell since you left for Boston, but all that ever happens is that I only get better at lying to myself. I don't want to do that anymore. You and me, Quinn. That's how it's supposed to be. You know that. I want you. Whether you’re in Boston, New York, Paris, or even with me here in Santa Anna. I promise Daniela will be out of my life. I will do anything to make it work between us. I need you.”
I tear my eyes from his and look down at my bare feet on the floor, letting the heavy drumming of my heart take over my senses for a beat. I’m relieved, terrified…but mostly I’m confused. He just told me everything. Everything I’ve been begging him to confide in me since we met. I’m so uncertain and maybe it’s my fear again, that I can’t trust him, can’t let it go, and that I’m going back to Boston in forty-eight hours.
“Do you think you could ever”—his forehead tightens into a frown— “forgive me?”
“Cash—”
“Don't answer me now.” He pulls me closer, my head resting against his strong, hard chest. He runs a gentle fingertip along the side of my face, and then picks me up like I weigh nothing and carries me to his bed.
“I need you to lie here with me.”
With my head on his shoulder, he pulls me up his body as he turns and lies down on the bed, resting his head on the pillow, legs stretched out behind me. Cash positons me with my legs twined with his. I arch my neck and his fingertips skim along my collarbone, strong but gentle. He pulls me in closer to him. Our bodies curled around each other, he tenderly runs his fingers through my hair until I fall asleep.
Chapter 12
Cash
Quinn’s feet shuffle out of my bedroom exactly thirty-six minutes after I wake. I’m already sitting at the kitchen island, two cups of steaming coffee in hand. I thought once I poured my heart out to her and told her the truth about my relationship with Daniela I would be able to get some sleep. What I didn’t take into consideration was the effect Quinn’s warm inviting body had on me, or my nagging mind swirling that even though I knew where I stood on ending things with Daniela, the reality of Daniela letting me go without a fight was an entirely different dilemma. Quinn walks through the living room and toward me, dressed in light-blue jeans and a faded gray tank top. The same labradorite pendant she wore at my bedside in the Dark Room is around her neck. She lets out a tiny yawn and smiles over at me, before sitting down on the stool next to me.