Chapter 11
Parker
With my tongue pushed into the side of my cheek, I carefully pulled back the towel to check the dough. The house was still dark. The only light I’d given myself was the under-cabinet lighting on the lowest setting. It was enough to see what I was doing, though, and I pressed my finger into the edge of one circle, smiling a little when it bounced back enough. Just shy of an hour, so I hadn’t completely forgotten what I was doing.
Since the oven had already alerted me it had reached the correct temperature, I tugged that open with one hand, then used my other hand to whip the towel over my shoulder before sliding the glass baking pan into the oven.
With the door shut, I crouched down to watch even though I damn well knew that didn’t do anything. I could practically hear Sheila’s voice in my head to start cleaning up the kitchen. It was what we always did when food went into the oven.
Coffee was brewing in the pot, and if I cleaned the kitchen before the pan in the oven was ready, I could be out the door before Anya woke up. What a chickenshit I was. The only clear way I could restrain myself around my siren of a wife was to run for the fucking hills.
With the last of the utensils put away, and the frosting made and sitting in a bowl on the counter, I opened the drawer to the far left to pull out the handmade trivets from my brother Ian.
He’d pieced together different shades of wood, cut to form a perfect circle, a dark dramatic stain on each one, and fitted them around a slice of marble right down the middle. He’d made a few different sizes to match the shades in my house when I moved in.
Fucking show-off.
The smallest one fell out of my hand as I stood, rolling back into the corner of the counter next to the fridge, behind the spot where I kept my stand mixer. My tall ass had to bend over to grab it, and as my head ducked next to the upper cabinet to reach it, she cleared her throat.
“Good morning, husband.”
My head snapped up and whacked the cabinet. “Oh shit,” I groaned.
Anya pulled in a short, hissing breath. “Sorry. Are you okay?”
I rubbed the side of my head. “Sure. Can’t wait to tell my coach that I got a concussion because you like to fucking sneak up on people in the middle of the night.”
“As much as I’d like to agree with you, it’s almost four thirty, not the middle of the night.” She leaned against the island, sleep-mussed hair tugged into a messy ponytail and a dark shirt covering her body. I couldn’t see her legs, which was probably good for my mental health. “And from the looks of it, you’ve been up for a while.”
Thank God it was dark in the kitchen because guaran-fucking-teed my cheeks were bright red. “Right, umm, just … popping some breakfast in the oven for later.”
Her eyes were level on mine, and the way I felt that look in the center of my chest was criminal. “You’re baking at four o’clock in the morning,” she said slowly.
I rubbed the back of my neck. “Who said I was baking? I just … put them in the oven.”
She pursed her lips, clearly unconvinced. “Louise was not here to make any dough yesterday.”
“Is this an interrogation?” I snapped.
Something was wrong with her because Anya’s mouth curled up in a pleased little smile. “No. I just heard something out here and decided to make sure we weren’t getting robbed.”
My eyes widened. “And you came out here if that was a possibility? You could, I don’t know, call me in my room and tell me to check?”
Anya tilted her head. “Oh, I would’ve been fine,” she said airily. “Besides, I had a feeling it was you since you’re going back to avoiding me now.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and did the only acceptable thing. I lied through my fucking teeth. “I’m not avoiding you.” The wry arch of her eyebrow told me exactly how much she believed that. So I did the next best thing. I changed the subject. “And you facing off with a criminal by yourself doesn’t really endear me to your father, does it?”
Anya got this glint in her eye, and hells bells, it did things to me. I’d just waved the challenge flag in front of her. Red flag? Meet bull. I should’ve kept my stupid mouth shut.
She straightened, walking around from the side of the island that kept her bare legs covered, and my throat worked on a swallow when I realized she wasn’t wearing anything beneath that T-shirt. It was too dark to see what was on it because her arms were crossed too, and I was doing my damnedest not to ogle her chest or legs or … anything.
“Try to grab me,” she said.
My eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me?”
Anya lifted her chin. “Try to grab me. One hand. Two hands. Doesn’t matter.”
“Absolutely not.” My eyes briefly darted down to skin. All that bare skin on her legs. “You’re … you’re hardly wearing any clothes.”
Anya rolled her eyes. “Fine. If you’re afraid, you can just say it.”
I scoffed. “I’m not afraid. I’m like four inches taller than you and probably have a hundred pounds of muscle on you.”
“My dad had us in jujitsu by the time we turned ten,” she stated. “Trust me when I say that doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does.”
She tilted her head. “I’ll make you come to a class with me someday, then. It wouldn’t matter if I were half your size, which I’m not. Since you don’t know what you’re doing, I could pin you faster than you can lie about making cinnamon rolls for breakfast.”
“They’re just the cheap tube kind,” I lied. “Don’t get weirded out.”
Again, she raised an eyebrow. “They don’t smell like the cheap tube kind.”
My mouth flattened into a grim line right as the timer went off on the oven. I rolled my eyes before I snatched the mitts off the counter and pulled open the oven. The color was perfect, and it wasn’t the heat of the oven that had my face feeling hot when I removed the pan and set it on top of the trivets next to the stove.
“Holy shit, those smell amazing,” Anya groaned, coming in next to me so she could lean closer. Her shoulder brushed my bare arm, and I worked very hard not to move any closer. “What a liar you are,” she said lightly. “Isabel makes the cheap tube kind because she can’t bake for shit, and that is not them.”
With a huff, I walked away. “What’s your point?”
“You made cinnamon rolls from scratch?”
I yanked open the drawer and shoved the oven mitts inside. “So.”
“ So why not tell the truth? If I could make something like that, I’d tell everyone I’d ever met in my life.”
For some reason, I couldn’t look this woman in the eye, choosing instead to busy myself with the frosting, scraping the sides of the bowl with a small spatula to ensure it was the right consistency.
Anya waited quietly, probably because she had the advantage of being right. My movements got jerkier because this dark kitchen, with the smell of cinnamon rolls surrounding us, reminded me of home so deeply that I could feel it like an ache in my bones. It was something about that ache that loosened my tongue.
“Sheila, my stepmom, is amazing in the kitchen. Loves cooking and baking. Feeding people is … well, it’s her love language, I guess.” I raised the spatula to check the consistency. A little too runny. I reached into the cabinet in front of me to grab some powdered sugar. Once I’d added some to the bowl, I began stirring again. “My sisters can’t bake for shit either. Probably because they’re not very patient. But I was just young enough when my dad married Sheila that I followed her around everywhere. Watched her in the kitchen all the time. Cinnamon rolls were the first thing she taught me how to make, and every time I do, I think about all those years sitting and watching her from a stool by the counter. She felt like … like such a fucking gift after my mom died.”
My throat closed up after that, and I knew if I tried to speak, the only sounds that would escape would be unintelligible. Beneath my ribs, my heart hammered wildly, and I risked a glance at Anya. She stared at the cinnamon rolls, and I was so fucking grateful for that.
“That’s how I felt about Isabel too,” she said quietly. “For me, it was watching her at my dad’s gym. She was fierce. The first time I met her, I thought she was Wonder Woman.” Her eyes met mine. “She wasn’t anything like my mom.” Anya paused. “Not that I remember her much.”
“I don’t either,” I admitted in a rough voice. “Remember mine.”
Anya turned toward me, her arms dropping by her side. The image on her T-shirt came into focus, and my brow furrowed instantly. A great, gaping chasm opened up under my stomach, where it dropped down into my feet.
Boom .
She noticed. “What?” Anya glanced down at her shirt. “What is it?”
The design was clearly vintage, the T-shirt well-worn and loved. “Where’d you get that?”
“Oh. One of my uncles on my dad’s side loves Bob Marley. He found this concert tee in a shop somewhere, and I stole it out of his closet before I moved away to college.” Her eyes searched mine. “Why?”
What the hell was it about this kitchen? Maybe it was because she’d surprised me, and there was no opportunity to fortify my own defenses. Perhaps it was yesterday and the layers of intimacy we’d added to this charade. Maybe it was the fucking cinnamon rolls, and I was already wide open for a sneak attack.
No matter what it was, what caused it, or why I let myself answer, I just didn’t have the energy to lie to her about this.
“When I was little, my favorite song was ‘Three Little Birds . ’ You know the one, Don’t worry about a thing ?” Anya nodded, watching me carefully. It felt like someone had a steel fist pressing down on my throat. “After my mom died, I had a hard time sleeping. I’d just lay there and … I don’t know, be scared, I guess. Scared about everything. Worried about everything.”
“I had that too,” she whispered.
Her honesty kept me talking, but I kept my eyes focused on the food.
“My dad knew how much I loved that song.” I used a fork to pull the first of the cinnamon rolls out of the pan, wincing when the sides were still incredibly hot. The second came out, then the third. I didn’t speak again until the last of the rolls were out. I picked up the bowl of frosting and slowly drizzled it over each one until they were coated. They were too hot, but I didn’t really feel like waiting. “One night, I was inconsolable. I don’t even know why I was crying that hard, but I couldn’t stop.” I licked the edge of my thumb and set the bowl in the sink. “He started singing that song. Slower, you know. Like it was a lullaby. It worked. I can’t listen to it anymore, though. It makes me feel like someone’s cutting my heart out.”
“The tattoo,” she whispered.
I tapped two fingers to the side of my ribs and nodded. “The tattoo.”
“I used to make my dad measure things in my room,” she said with a hint of a smile. She hadn’t teared up, and she wasn’t going to make a big fuss about what I’d just told her. I breathed a little easier, finishing the process of frosting the cinnamon rolls while she spoke. “Make sure the canopy over my bed was exactly centered. Or I had to have precisely the right number of stuffed animals.” She shrugged one shoulder. “If I didn’t, I was certain that a catastrophe awaited.”
Wordlessly, I pulled down two plates and served up a cinnamon roll for her, then one for myself. I handed her the first plate, then got her a fork.
It had been so long since I’d done anything like this—sharing the sad parts of myself with someone. My siblings were so busy building families and living their own lives that it always felt like unloading a great, giant weight that they weren’t responsible for carrying.
It didn’t feel like that with her.
I thought about what she’d said in the car when we drove home from her parents. Sharing naked truths, and how difficult it was. That in doing it together, it made us both feel just a little bit less exposed.
She smiled at me in the dark, and we ate our cinnamon rolls without saying anything else, but the contented hum she made at the first bite made me feel like I’d won some invisible battle, even if it was a battle against myself.
“Parker Wilder, don’t you run away from me.”
The guys in the weight room laughed because I was doing exactly that, but the scary PR lady caught me before I could disappear into the shower room.
“Oh, I wasn’t running, Milicent. I promise I was going to say hello before I left.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I’ve been texting you all morning. You were supposed to come into my office first thing.”
“I was here before six o’clock,” I told her easily.
Her severe features were unimpressed. “So was I.” She opened up her phone and flipped it around as she handed it to me. “Thankfully, Max Bridges’s little tantrum hasn’t blown up, but the sports world is quiet this week, so I don’t want to risk it. So far, everything else is overwhelmingly positive. On paper, Anya is a PR dream, so you’re lucky there.”
The headline had me rolling my eyes.
Wilder’s new wife marrying up for his bigger paycheck? Her ex speaks out.
With an unconcerned shrug, I handed her the phone. “It’ll blow over in a week when someone else does something stupid.”
Milicent was in her mid-forties, and in truth, she terrified everyone on the team. I’d rather face down fifteen linemen than have her mad at me. Thankfully, she was the one tasked with keeping us looking good for the rest of the world, so her scariness ended up being a phenomenal asset to the Voyagers.
“We’re going to throw something together today,” she announced. “It doesn’t matter whether it’ll blow over or not. If you and Anya continue to hide, it’ll just give credibility to what Bridges is saying, even if he’s a pencil dick with a big mouth.” She eyed me. “He certainly doesn’t like you.”
I smiled. “I’m sure I’ll cry myself to sleep about that later.” Absently, I scratched the edge of my jaw. “I don’t know if Anya and I are ready to go public to this extent.”
“Yes, you are,” she answered.
“Fascinating. How did you come to this conclusion?”
She didn’t like my tone, but she answered anyway. “Because the internet is notoriously hard on the woman in any given situation. It doesn’t matter if he’s the one who fucked up. It doesn’t matter if you’re the one with an impulsive self-destructive streak that is finally getting under control.” I wanted to roll my eyes, but hell, if she wasn’t right. “Anya will bear the brunt of the internet’s ire if the two of you don’t present a romantic, sexy, gorgeous united front. The longer you’re silent, the more shit will pop up. Oh, I heard she’s unbearable, so it’s no wonder Max cheated. Parker’s been single for years, and now he gets married? I bet she blackmailed him .”
My jaw tightened dangerously. “Fine. What do you want us to do?”
“I want you to be yourselves. We’re simply going to give them a glimpse so they feel like they’re a part of it. He broke her heart in a horrible, embarrassing way, and now she gets to reclaim a big piece of that. It’s important to let her.” Milicent turned her wrist to study her expensive-looking watch. “You done here?”
“I was just going to?—”
“Great. Is Anya home?”
I blinked. “Uhh. Yeah.”
“We’ll be there in about two hours.” Her eyes were terrifyingly direct. “Does that give you both enough time to change and look nice?”
“What?”
Milicent gave one of those small eye rolls, the kind you could hardly see. My sisters were so good at those, but I’d never quite mastered it. “Shower, put on some nice clothes that don’t look sloppy, but for God’s sake, you don’t need to be in a suit and tie. It’ll look like you’re trying too hard. Neutrals on you. If Anya has anything in Portland colors, she’d make my fucking day. We’re going to put out a social media blitz. Hit all the channels with some QA with the happy new couple, some behind the scenes footage while we show the two of you settling in at your house. Show off the new royal couple of Portland.”
Anya was going to kick my ass. Properly this time. I swiped a hand over my mouth and stared down at Milicent. If only I had the slightest chance to intimidate her. She was approximately five foot two, and that woman crossed her arms over her chest and stared right back up at me.
“Do we have a choice?”
Then she smiled, and I felt a chill run down my spine. “Of course,” she said sweetly.
I exhaled heavily. “Good.”
Milicent’s smile dropped. “I can give you three hours instead of two. The choice is up to you.”
With a military sharp pivot, Milicent turned and marched back down the hall.
“Two hours,” I called to her back. “Let’s just get this done.”
She held up a hand, not even slightly breaking stride. “Smart man. See you in two hours.”
My cheeks puffed out as I blew out a hard puff of air. “Smart man, my ass,” I muttered.
I pulled out my phone and called Anya.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“Did you pack anything that matches the Voyagers logo?” I eyed the massive replica on the wall in front of me—deep blue, forest green, and white.
“I—what?”
“Like it or not, we have two hours before we make our social media debut, wife.” I smiled grimly. “I hope you’re ready to play the happy couple in front of the entire world.”