by Vivian Lux
I didn’t want to frighten her.
“Um,” she said again, hesitantly feeling for the buttons of her blouse.
I reached out and grabbed her hand then, even though every fiber of my body screamed out to grab her, yank her close, sear her mouth to mine…
I kissed her hand instead. “That one’s on the house, baby,” I told her.
She looked taken aback. “Really? You don’t want—”
I let out a short little sigh. “Oh, believe me darlin’, I want. But, I’m not going to take. You’re not ready. It’s going to be so sweet when you are, that I’m willing to wait for it. I’m ready when you are, Candace, but not before then.”
Her shocked smile was almost everything I needed. “Ian…” she said softly, and kissed me so sweetly that I knew I had done the right thing. I had done what a nice guy would do with his nice girl, even though it went against everything I actually wanted.
Nice guys finish last.
If they even get to finish at all.
“I’ll see you tonight?” she wanted to know.
“Looking forward to it, darlin’.” It was the truth.
She smiled and grabbed her things, righted her clothing, and headed to the door.
I turned around, went back into the showers, and turned the cold water on full blast.
Chapter Nine
Candace
“Hey, Candlestick!” Olivia breezed into the office, fifteen minutes late as usual, and plopped her Dior handbag on to her desk. Then she did a double-take.
“Oh my God, did you get laid before work?”
“I… Well—” I blushed, as I considered. Does the most amazing oral ever count as getting laid?
“Doesn’t matter, you don’t need to answer if you’re going to get all shy about it. I can just tell these things. You have the air of someone freshly fucked.” She sat down in her chair and slid over to me. “Who was it? Oh my God, was it Ian Carter?”
I let my blush do the talking.
“Oh my God! Oh my God!” Olivia fanned herself briskly with her hands. “My sweet little Candy-girl with Ian Carter? I can’t—I'm only going to use odd numbers now, because I literally can’t even.”
“I like him,” I said shyly.
“I’d say you do.”
“I’m thinking of inviting him to dinner with my parents,” I mused.
“Really?”
I looked at her slyly. “I mean, I know there are plenty of fish in the sea, but he’s the only one I want to take home and mount.”
Olivia’s mouth was a perfect ‘O’ of shock. Then she swiveled in her chair. “Oh man, that’s freaking gold, Candace. She scribbled on her jot pad. “I am so using that, and definitely adding it to the permanent pickup line rotation.”
“You’re welcome,” I said smugly.
“But wait, didn’t you just like meet him three days ago? You really want to bring him home to meet the folks? Already? Aren’t you afraid you’re rushing things?”
I waved my hand. “It’s not anything formal. Just dinner. Why, do you not think it’s a good idea?”
Olivia shook her head, pressing her lips together. “Candy, you’re a sweetheart. That’s the best thing about you. But it’s also your biggest weakness. I just don’t want to see you getting hurt, okay? I think you might want to rethink that.”
I snorted. “Liv, you’re a cynical bitch, and that’s why I love you. But there’s no need to be suspicious about everyone. Ian’s a nice guy. I’m sure my parents will love him.”
Olivia rolled her eyes with the distinct air of someone about to launch into a ten-minute diatribe against men in general.
I was saved by the sudden appearance of Kyle Jarrett at our cubes. “So! Which one of you actually completed your assignment?”
Olivia and I both froze guiltily, like school children caught talking in class. I was the first to recover. “Oh, you mean testing the app?”
Kyle nodded like I was an especially slow child. “Yes. Your assignment was to test the app on different devices.”
“I have to say,” Olivia shook herself free of her deer in the headlights look. “I was a little disappointed.”
Kyle looked like she had reached out and slapped him across the face. “Really, Bryant?” he said, condescendingly using her last name. “And what disappointed you?”
Olivia folded her hands primly in her lap. “Well, Jarrett,” she said, matching Kyle’s condescension, “I have to say that I was disappointed in the results.”
Kyle blinked.
“Me, too,” I piped up, quick to have Olivia’s back. “For one thing, I went out on a date last night,” I turned my head away from Kyle’s zooming upward eyebrows. “And, well, he and I both had quite a lot of interest in each other.” Olivia snorted under her breath. I made like I hadn’t heard her. “Once we used the app, though,” I plowed on, “We found that our compatibility was only at twenty-percent.”
“Same situation over here,” Olivia piped up. “And the app matched me with a few guys that ended up being total duds.”
“A few?” I mouthed to her over Kyle’s shoulder, eyebrows raised.
She waved me off. “I’m wondering if we need to retool our questions.”
Kyle looked perturbed. “These are the same complaints I’ve been getting from the focus groups,” he said irritably.
“So you know we’re not bullshitting you then,” Olivia clarified.
“Well,” Kyle spread his hands. “How do we fix this, ladies?”
Olivia was silent, but a sudden idea struck me. “I think,” I began. “I think the algorithms are slanted much too hard to focus on perfectly matched interests. After all, who wants to be with a clone of themselves?”
“Besides Kyle,” Olivia said, just under her breath.
“I heard that,” Kyle said. “Go on, Candace.” He looked intrigued.
“The saying is, ‘opposites attract,’ right? Perhaps we ought to be focusing our algorithms not on people who have completely matching interests, but on interests that oppose each other. Your introvert with your extrovert. Your sports lover with your homemaker. People who, instead of matching each other, complement each other. Fill in the gaps to make a whole, rounded person.” My parents, for one, I thought. But also… “People that can introduce their partners to new and exciting things, instead of the same old, same old they’ve already done.”
Like hockey practice and locker room oral.
Kyle’s bushy eyebrows were wiggling like particularly unappealing caterpillars. “Hunter,” he said, “that is exactly the kind of feedback we need to differentiate this service from all the other dating apps out there. Brilliant.”
I beamed, and even Olivia look impressed.
Then he dropped a bomb in my lap. “I’m putting you in charge of implementing these changes. As of this moment, you are the head of development.”
He walked away, leaving us both stunned.
“Did that seriously just happen?” I asked Olivia.
“Holy shit!” Olivia gasped. Then she raised an eyebrow. “Am I allowed to swear in front of you, boss lady?
“Oh fuck off,” I laughed. Then I clapped with glee. “That’s kind of awesome.”
“How did you even come up with all that stuff?” She paused. “Wait, don’t tell me. You are particularly inspired these days?”
“Ian actually did help me test it,” I confessed. “Oh my God, I have to tell him! I owe this all to him.”
“You don’t owe him anything. This is your own brilliance and dedication,” Olivia corrected.
But I was already reaching for my phone. “I can tell him at dinner, with my parents there, too,” I sighed happily, already picturing the scene. My parents were always worrying about my dating life and my career. If I walked into their home on the arm of my strapping new boyfriend and announced my new promotion, there was no way they could worry about me anymore.
Olivia leaned over. “Candace…” she said warningly.
“Stop
,” I held up my hand. “I promise you, he’ll be happy to hear from me.”
The phone rang. I waited to hear his smooth baritone again. A tingle of expectation traveled down my spine and settled heavily in my core.
The phone picked up. “Again?” Ian answered on the first ring. “Stop calling me so much. Have some goddamned dignity.”
Then he hung up on me.
Chapter Ten
Ian
“Carter! Take five!” Coach Randall shouted. His face was weathered like an old baseball glove, but when it crinkled into a smile and it was the best thing you ever saw. He regarded me with that fond smile that always made me stand up straighter. “Actually...make that fifteen, son,” he said.
I nodded, smiling inwardly to hear him call me ‘son.’ He didn’t do it often, I guess to not make things weird with the rest of our teammates. But even though I was twenty-six years old and long since grown up from the sad, angry teenaged boy he took under his wing, I still treasured it every time said it.
I skated to the bench and sat down heavily, then poured some Gatorade down my throat.
Just when my breathing returned to normal, I heard my phone start buzzing.
The number was not one I recognize, but I decided to answer it anyway. Maybe it was Candace’s home number?
“Hello?”
“Ian,” the female voice on the other end said.
It felt like someone reached out and grabbed my heart with his hand and squeezed as hard as he could. I didn’t recognize the number, but I sure as hell recognized that voice. “Why the hell are you calling me, Lisette?”
My ex gave a small, nervous laugh. “Just wanted to hear your voice, that’s all.”
“Well, here it is, my voice telling you goodbye and to never call me again.”
“Wait, Ian!”
I swallowed hard, my hand hovering over the end button. “What?” I asked her.
It was funny, I hadn’t even thought about her in weeks. But just the sound of her voice was enough to completely derail whatever progress I had made. Instantly my body was on red alert, and my brain started skipping like a slideshow on repeat. My hand on the doorknob, the sound of her moans filling my ears, her naked body wrapped around him… Whoever the fuck he was, he didn’t even matter, because all I saw was her. Her eyes shut tight, her lips parted as she fucked someone who wasn’t me, while the engagement ring I had given her six months before still sparkled on her finger.
“I was hoping we might get a chance to talk.” There was a little wobble in her voice, that slight, helpless tremor that so excited me once upon a time. “I miss you.”
“I’ve got nothing to say to you,” I growled.” If Brad were here right now, he would snatch the phone out of my hand, then maybe knock some sense into me. You don’t need to take her calls! he would thunder at me. You’re being too goddamn nice.
Nice.
That’s why she did it, cheating on me like that. Because I was too nice to her. “I needed some danger,” she’d cried tearfully, her naked body stilled entwined in the sweaty sheets. The dude, whatever his name was, had already fled, shouting that he didn’t know he was fucking Ian Carter’s girl, and that he was sorry, so sorry…
But none of that mattered.
I had resolved, then and there, that nice wasn’t what worked for me.
Nice guys clearly finished last.
“Fuck you, Lisette,” I growled. She gave a little gasp at my cruelty, and I liked that. I wanted her to hurt. She deserved it. “Fuck you and your lies. I don’t want to hear from you. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want you in my life in any way, do you hear me? No more Mr. Nice Guy. We’re done with that. We are done.”
She hiccupped a little, and then took a deep breath, ready to ignore everything I had just told her, ready to railroad me, like she always did, into being nice to her again.
I snapped the phone shut.
Then it rang again. I didn’t even need to look. Fucking bitch, couldn’t take a hint. “Again? Stop calling me so much,” I sneered into the phone. “Have some goddamned dignity.” I stabbed the phone to off and then immediately went into my recent calls to block Lisette’s number.
But instead of Lisette’s number at the top, it was Candace’s.
I stared at my phone in an open-mouthed daze. No matter how I tried to piece it back together, it came right back down to…
Candace had called.
I swore at Candace.
Hung up on Candace.
Fuck.
I’m fucked.
She was too nice to treat badly, even if it was a mistake. This was too new to fuck up so thoroughly, even if I had an excuse.
I held my phone like a drowning man holds a life preserver, as if I could will it to travel back in time and erase my blunder.
“If you are done with all your personal phone calls,” Randall rumbled from the ice. “The rest of the team is waiting for you.”
I tamped down my terror and hurled my phone back to my pack. “Sorry Coach,” I said, jamming my helmet back onto my head with more force than necessary.
Randall gave me that look, the same disappointed one he wore when Brad and I had been caught setting fires in the abandoned warehouse in Austin. “Ian,” he said quietly.
I swallowed, shame burning through my body like wildfire. Randall didn’t know about what happened with Lisette. I never told him—couldn’t bring myself to admit it. No one knew, except for Brad. Getting cheated on is not something that is easy to bring up in conversation, especially not with your erstwhile father/coach. All he knew was that my engagement ended abruptly, and within a few weeks I had turned into the biggest manwhore on the planet. He hated it. He’d want me to fix things with Candace, he’d expect me to have the balls to admit my mistake and accept whatever consequences there were because of it.
“Yeah, Coach,” I barked, doing my best to keep my voice even.
“You making good decisions?”
Good decisions. Bastard knows exactly how to hit me. “Yeah,” I grunted. Then my shoulders slumped. “No…”
“Well, I have faith you’ll make the right choice,” he said, and turned to walk away.
The right choice.
There was no doubt in my mind about what that was. I wanted to see Candace again—no, needed to see her again. I needed to apologize for letting my anger with Lisette spill over into her life. And I needed her to know that what we had was more important to me than just some quick finger fuck in the locker room. When she smiled at me, I felt a twinge of pride. The same pride I felt when Coach Randall called me son. It was the pride that came from knowing I was a better person than most people believed me to be. Coach Randall knew I was a good guy. Maybe not a nice guy, but a good one.
Candace seemed to think so, too.
“I’ll be there in a sec, guys,” I shouted out into the rink.
Then I grabbed my phone again.
Chapter Eleven
Candace
The sound of a toilet flushing echoed through the tile restroom. I turned my face so that Marissa from HR couldn’t see me.
Olivia leaned over, deftly shielding me with her body. “How’s it going, Marissa!” she called loudly.
The very pregnant HR director smiled wanly. “I’ll be happy when this baby comes out and stops dancing on my bladder,” she smiled ruefully. I could see her face reflected in the mirror, but she couldn’t see me.
Which was for the best. My face was completely swollen and streaked with red. My puffy eyes glittered with as yet unshed tears.
I was a hot mess. On the outside, and definitely on the inside.
“Clear,” Olivia hissed as the ladies’ room door banged closed.
I responded by loudly blowing my nose into toilet tissue. “This is pathetic,” I pronounced.
Olivia didn’t say anything, only handed me another square.
I honked my nose again. “I mean, really, you were right. I should have listened to you. Why didn’t I listen to you?”
“A question for the ages, darling,” Olivia said soothingly. She ran some paper towel under the faucet. “Fix your mascara,” she ordered.
“I mean, I just met him,” I went on. “But we seemed to hit it off so well. Three days ago, I didn’t even know he existed, and now I’m crying in a bathroom over him. You are right, I move way too fucking fast.”
“Dab,” Olivia said sternly, shoving the wet towel in my hand.
I did as I was ordered, dabbing the black streaks away from the corners of my eyes. “I really need to start wearing waterproof mascara all the time,” I joked lamely.
“You really don’t need to beat yourself up so badly about this,” Olivia said. “He didn’t tell you to go fuck yourself—”
“He may as well have,” I muttered darkly.
Olivia ignored me. “He didn’t tell you he never wanted to see you again. All he said was… Wait—what did he say exactly?”
“He told me to stop calling, and to have some dignity, then he hung up the phone.”
Olivia winced. “Sheesh. Is he having a bad day or something?”
“I would have asked him,” I spread my hands, “but he fucking hung up on me.”
She cocked her head to the side. “Candelabra—”
“I know,” I said, holding up my hands to ward off her impending ‘I-told-you-so.’ “You told me he wasn’t a nice guy, and I didn’t listen. This is what I get.” I shook my head. “I was so certain I had found someone.”
Olivia grabbed me by the shoulders. “You did. You did find someone. And he was an ass to you, and you have every reason to demand why. Don’t go all Disney princess, ‘it wasn’t meant to be.’ That’s bullshit, Candy. What you need to do is take a breath, step away from the self-reflection, and just let what you have be what it is.” She smiled softly. “Or—let it be what it isn’t. You’re going to be okay either way.”
I grabbed the wadded up toilet paper and wiped ineffectually at my nose. “But why would he be so mean?”
Olivia threw up her hands, exasperated. “Candy, girl, I love you. I want to take you and stick you in a museum as the last known sample of a true romantic. You’re a rare specimen, and I think it’s really freaking good for my cynical ass to have you in my life. But honey, when you’re hurting, I’m hurting, so we gotta work on you not getting hurt so easily, okay? My heart can’t take it.”