“I’m sure,” he said. His old, tired eyes crinkled a little as he smiled. “And all jokes aside, I like seeing you like this. I don’t know about her yet, but at least she’s making you happy. You deserve that.”
I grinned. “Thanks, Doc. You old softie.”
He batted me away. “Don’t push your luck. I’m going to go back and change the speakers from the music to the TV.” He paused, watching me a moment more before he started walking toward the back. “You should invite the girl over for a family dinner. I want to get to know her more.”
“Maybe I will,” I said, pulling my photo from my pocket and swiping to Gemma’s contact. “But for now, I’ve got another date in mind.” I shook my head as I typed out the text. “We’ll see if she’s still talking to me after this one.”
“You can’t just take her out to dinner and a movie, can you?”
“Come on, you know that’s not my style,” I said with a scoff. Once Gemma texted back confirming I could see her after work on Wednesday, I smiled. “Go big or go home. Always.”
Doc shook his head, disappearing into the back office. “Good luck, kid.”
I tucked my phone away, floating back onto the cloud I’d been on since I left Gemma’s that morning. We’d been texting all day, and now that I had another date lined up, I felt like I was floating even higher.
I didn’t know how long I had her, how long she’d stay put without letting her past talk her out of whatever she was feeling. But I knew I wanted to peel back her layers, I wanted more, I wanted to know who hurt her and how to make that pain go away. But first, I had to gain her trust, and the first step in doing that was helping her face her fears.
Starting with heights.
Gemma
“I can’t do this.”
I watched in horror as the family who had waited in line ahead of us for the Tilt experience laughed and squealed in joy as they were leaned out over the city of Chicago. Tilt was a relatively new addition to the 360 Observation Deck, and approximately number four on my list of Things I Will Absolutely Never Do, Ever — right behind get a tattoo, eat oysters, and go hunting.
It was a death trap.
Here you are, in this perfectly stable building — although, up too high for my liking, if I’m being honest — and instead of taking in the beautiful view of the city from the normally safe vertical viewing window, you opt to instead be tilted out not once, not twice, but three times until you’re at a thirty-degree angle looking practically straight down.
No, thank you.
“You can do it,” Zach argued, massaging my shoulders like I was the quarterback about to go into the second half of a losing game. “It’ll be all of two minutes, and then it’ll be over.”
“Exactly. Why did we even pay for this again? If you wanted to scare the shit out of me, you could have just jumped out at me from behind a wall… for free.”
He chuckled, taking my weight into him as I watched the family be tilted forward even more. They shrieked happily as I said a Catholic prayer under my breath.
I wasn’t even Catholic.
“I’m not trying to scare you. I’m trying to help you face a fear. You said you wanted to, right?”
I nodded. “No.”
“You’re going to feel like such a badass after this,” Zach promised on another light laugh.
“Or,” I argued, holding up one finger. “I’m going to feel like throwing up and kicking you square in the groin region.”
Zach winced. “Please don’t do that.”
As much as I was terrified of what was about to happen, it was nice, standing there in Zach’s arms. It’d only been a couple of days since the game, but in a way, this felt like our first real date — he asked me to come, came to my apartment to get me, we walked together, ate dinner beforehand.
And, I wasn’t trying to make him think I didn’t want him. That was a nice change, too.
I opened my mouth to retort to his comment, the ease of our banter comforting me marginally, but it was too late. The family ahead of us was already being tilted back up to standing, so any smart-ass comments I had died in my sticky throat at the realization that we were next.
“Oh, God, Zach,” I panicked. “I really don’t think I can do this.”
“Hey,” he said, turning me to face him while the family dismounted. “Look at me. We are perfectly safe. Nothing is going to happen other than you getting an amazing view of the city you love, okay? And I’ll be right beside you the whole time.”
I whimpered.
“Do you really want to walk away?” he asked, eyes searching mine. “If you really think you can’t do this, I’ll leave with you. We just have to turn around and weave back through the line. We can bail.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
Zach sighed, his shoulders deflating a little, but he smiled in understanding. “Okay.”
But as he grabbed my hand in his, turning to the family behind us to let them know we needed to squeeze by, a tinge of guilt and something else settled low in my stomach. Perhaps, determination?
Damn competitive side.
Or maybe it was that Zach had planned this date for us, had listened to me tell him one of my fears and now here he was trying to help me face it.
And I was being a wuss.
“Wait,” I said, bouncing a little as I ran my hands through my hair. “Gah, okay, I can do this. I can do this.”
A smile split his face and he smacked my ass. “Atta girl!”
I’m not sure if I blacked out or if it really did only take a few seconds before we were standing on the little platform, hands braced on metal handles on either side of our respective windows as we looked out over the city. The windows were floor to ceiling, just like the ones in my apartment, except we were seventy-four floors higher and the windows were three times as large.
I swallowed.
“Holy shit,” I breathed, scanning the city as the sun set over it. It was really a breathtakingly beautiful sight…
If only I didn’t feel like my heart was coming out of my butt.
“Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit,” I said again, over and over, breathing so hard I thought my chest was going to explode.
Zach folded his hand over mine from where he stood to my right, holding me tighter to the railing. Someone tried to get me to turn around for a photo, but I couldn’t.
They snapped a photo of me freaking out from behind.
“Breathe, Gemma. Look at me,” Zach said.
“I can’t.”
“Look at me.”
Sighing, I did as he said, and when I did, my heart flitted in my chest.
God, he was handsome.
The orange and blue glow from the city sunset highlighted the strong features of his face while casting the rest in shadows, and he smiled, that little dimple popping on his cheek as he squeezed where his hand laid over mine.
“I’m right here,” he said, eyebrows lifting. “Okay? Take one deep breath for me, and then we’re doing this.”
I nodded, and took a breath, but it was tiny and labored. Zach kept his eyes on mine, taking deep breath after deep breath and waiting until mine matched his. Once we’d gotten in a solid, long inhale and exhale, he smiled again.
“Here we go.”
I turned back toward the window just in time for the first tilt.
And then I screamed holy murder.
None of the words that flew out of my mouth even made sense, and they were punctuated with F bombs instead of exclamation points. Zach squeezed my hand tighter, laughing, and somehow, by the time we were tilted again, I was laughing, too.
Tears sprung at the corners of my eyes, but not from fear. I couldn’t catch a breath, but not because I was scared. No, all the anxiety had turned to joy, all the screams to laughter. And as I scanned the buildings, the lights, the river — everything that made Chicago the city I loved — I didn’t find a single regret for stepping out onto that ledge.
In fact, I wanted to stay there long
er.
“This is incredible!” I screamed, laughing even harder as they tilted us one last time.
“I told you!” Zach squeezed my hand.
“Stop trying to make this moment about you, Zach Bowen.”
He laughed at that, and before I could even take it all in, we were already being tilted back to standing, the experience over.
As soon as we were upright, I leapt into Zach’s arms, and he caught me, spinning as the attendants ushered us out of the way so the next group could step up. They said something about picking up photos in the gift shop, but we barely heard it over our excitement, both of us talking over one another.
“I did it! Zach, oh my God, did you see that?”
“I knew you could.” He laughed, shaking his head as I pulled back, my legs still wrapped around his waist. “And how do you feel right now?”
“Like I could run a marathon,” I breathed, eyes wide. “Or like I just took heroine.”
Another laugh shot out of Zach as he lowered my feet to the ground, and he tilted my chin up with his knuckle, lowering his lips to mine.
“I am so proud of you,” he said, and when his lips pressed into mine once more, I inhaled him as deep as I could — his scent, the feel of his hands on me, the sound he made as he deepened the kiss.
I wanted to bottle it all up and keep a stash of it in my purse, just in case I ever wanted a shot.
I was still jittery, hands shaking like I’d had too much coffee as we made our way back across town to my condo. It was only a half-hour walk, and though October had spread the full fall spirit in Chicago, it was still warm enough to walk without being uncomfortable. If anything, I liked the walk more with the brisk breeze sweeping between the buildings, chilling my nose and hands.
“I still can’t believe we did that,” I said, looping my arm through Zach’s. “Thank you. And also, I’m sorry, because you might have just turned a scaredy cat into an adrenaline junkie.”
Zach chuckled. “As long as you take me along for the ride.”
“No promises.”
“I can’t believe you’ve never been up there before,” he said. “I mean, I know it’s a little touristy, but you’ve been in Chicago your whole life. How have you never gone?”
I shrugged, taking a deep breath as we stopped to wait for a traffic light. “I don’t know. I mean, like I said, my parents were always gone, and my grandpa, he was more of a country kind of guy. He used to have me stay with him out at his little farm house outside of the city rather than coming into the suburbs to watch me at my parents’ house.” I smiled, the memories resurfacing. “You wanna talk about a man who loved to help me get over fears. He once locked me in the little barn with all the chickens to prove they wouldn’t attack me when I went to feed them.”
“Sounds like my kind of guy.”
“Oh, you would have loved him,” I said as we started walking again, and my stomach twisted. “Honestly, I think he would have loved you, too.”
Zach pulled his arm from where I held it, draping it over my shoulder and pulling me closer to him, instead. “You think so?”
“I do.”
“Why’s that?”
I leaned into him more. “Because you’re persistent, and you don’t take life too seriously. He was the same way.”
“I’m honored that you would even put us in the same category,” he said. “Seems like he meant a lot to you.”
“He really did.”
We fell silent, Zach rubbing my shoulder as we walked, both of us taking in the city around us. And maybe it was that energy, the buzz of the lights, of another evening being lived by everyone around us, or maybe it was the high still surging through me from Tilt. Whatever it was, something shifted in that moment, with me tucked under Zach’s arms, and my next words slipped from my mouth before I could even consider stopping them.
“I was married.”
Zach didn’t miss a step, but his arm stiffened where it held me against him, and I glanced at his throat as his Adam’s apple bobbed once, hard and strong. My eyes drifted back to the sidewalk, watching my sneakers as I tried to figure out what to say next.
“We were college sweethearts, got married not too long after I graduated,” I said, not sure what to say about Carlo now.
Had he passed before I found out he was unfaithful, I would have had nothing but amazing things to say about him. I would have bragged about how strong he was, how handsome, how funny. I would have celebrated his accomplishments in the technology industry, told Zach about the apps Carlo helped make. Maybe I would have told him that Carlo liked simple things, like reading the newspaper on Sunday even though he worked in technology, or like holding the doors open for others.
But I wondered now how much I actually knew about the man I was married to.
“I loved him,” I said, because at least that was still true.
I knew I should say more, but I was suddenly all too aware of the bomb I’d just dropped. Silence weighed on us, the wind cooler now, harsher as it nipped at our noses.
Zach cleared his throat, and it was as if that brought him back to the moment, like he’d had to step out of his own body to process what I’d said and now he was back again.
“What happened?” he asked.
I pressed my eyes closed hard before letting them flutter open again, my heart dipping into my stomach. “He died.”
This time, Zach did stop, pulling me to a halt with him when we were just a few blocks from my apartment. His mouth hung open, eyes shielded under bent brows as they searched mine.
“Gemma…”
“It’s okay,” I said quickly, tearing my gaze from his. I shoved my hair behind my ears and folded my arms over my chest. “Really. It’s been almost a year now.”
“I…” Zach paused, shaking his head as another thick swallow grazed his throat. “I just, I don’t even know what to say. I’m sorry sounds so weak and… nowhere near accurate for how I feel right now.”
“I’m sorry works fine, Zach. That’s a normal reaction.”
He shook his head more vigorously, stepping into me as his fingers hooked through the loops on my jeans. “It’s not enough. I wish I had the right words.” A long exhale left his lips. “Gemma, I hate that you had to endure that. I can’t even imagine what that was like, and I’m just sorry that you had to experience it.”
“It’s okay, really,” I said again, and I tugged him forward. “Can we just, can we keep walking? I’m cold, I want to get inside.”
“Of course,” he said, pulling me into his side.
I wanted to say more, but I think we both knew in that moment that I was spent. All the adrenaline, the rush from before, it had passed through me like a ghost or a high-speed train, and now I was weak and tired, and more vulnerable than I’d ever been.
I wasn’t ready to tell him more. For now, this was all I could give.
“Thank you,” he whispered into my hair as we walked, pressing a kiss to my head. His arm was tight around my shoulder, and it seemed his breaths were as pained as mine. “For telling me that.”
I nodded. “Thank you for making me feel like I could.”
When we made it back to my place, Zach rode the elevator upstairs and walked me to my door, but didn’t ask to come inside. In a way, I wanted him to, wanted to lose myself in him physically so I could get out of my head. But I was also exhausted, and more than anything, I just wanted my bed.
“Thank you again for tonight,” I said, shaking off the weight of what I’d told him and forcing a smile. “It was… terrifying.” I chuckled. “But amazing, too.”
Zach smirked. “I’m honored you spent the night with me.”
“You know, I’d love to see you in your element sometime,” I said. Zach just quirked a brow, so I explained further. “Football. I’d love to watch you play.”
“Ah,” he said, one hand reaching for the back of his neck. I noticed the way his smile fell, his cheeks blushing. “Well, kind of hard to watch me since I don’t p
lay anymore, but maybe we could play catch or something. Before the away game next Sunday?”
“I’d like that,” I said. “A little birthday present for me.”
At that, Zach frowned. “Um, what?”
“Sunday is my birthday.”
“Sunday is your birthday and you’re just telling me now?”
I laughed. “It’s not a big deal.”
“You’re turning thirty.”
“Don’t make a big deal of this.”
“But, you’re turning thirty.”
“Zach,” I warned, and I pulled out a finger gun, threatening to poke him. “I want hot dogs, football, and beer. Not necessarily in that order, but all three are required. Past that, I don’t want anything else. No cake, no frills, no balloons or crazy signs. I just want to watch the games and enjoy a normal Sunday.”
Zach’s face scrunched up like it pained him to agree to anything I’d just said, and I raised one brow, advancing my finger like I was going to poke him.
“Fine,” he conceded, letting out a big breath. “But I’m getting you a gift.”
“No.”
“It’s non-negotiable,” he said, and before I could argue more, his hands slipped into my hair, framing my face as he pulled me in for a kiss. His lips warmed against mine, a sigh leaving both of us as we melted into each other, and he dragged his hands down my shoulders, my arms, my hips, his palms smoothing over my back before he dropped them lower and gripped my ass firmly.
I wasn’t tired anymore.
But he just gripped hard, another longing sigh on his lips before he pulled back, smacked my butt, and winked. Then, he started walking backward toward the elevator with a devilish grin.
“See you soon, birthday girl.”
I stood there, gaping.
“That’s just mean, Zach Bowen.”
“Payback is a bitch, isn’t it? At least you don’t have to watch me leave with another girl.”
I gritted my teeth, but couldn’t fight back the smile. “Okay, fine. That’s fair. But this isn’t over.”
The elevator dinged, and Zach smiled even wider as he slipped one foot inside. But he paused, hanging half-in, half-out of the box as his eyes found mine.
The Wrong Game Page 20