Thirty-Four
Winslet
Humming. I was humming. A grin stretched across my face as I put the lasagna I had just finished preparing in the oven. I wasn’t a hummer, but apparently, I was so happy that I was now.
Oz had been staying the night with me here for the past week. Tuesday night, he’d taken me to Savelle Stables and shown me the horses. We’d watched a jockey out on the track with a horse that they were putting in a race soon, but I couldn’t remember which one. Thursday, he had taken me to a rodeo in Jackson.
Today was a heavy workday since it was the weekend. I had graded papers and worked on my lesson plans since I’d been so busy with him after work every day that I was behind on all of it. Tomorrow, I was going with him to his house. The one he lived in with four other guys, along with one of the guy’s wife and their baby. That was a lot of people in one house, but he had said it was big. After visiting their stables and seeing his parents’ house from a distance, I knew when he said big, it was likely a mansion.
Going to meet all the people in his world was intimidating. When we had gone to the stables, only some stablehands and their horse trainer were there. He had told me a little about all of them, and I did want to meet them. My biggest fear was them not liking me. All they knew about me was that my brother had stolen from them. If they found fault in me—because I had faults—then would Oz start to see it too?
My stomach clenched as I thought about it. I didn’t want to lose him. Life before him had seemed so dull. It was as if he had walked into my life and turned on the lights. Well, after I got out of the basement. But even then, that hadn’t been dull.
There was a knock at the door. My smile was back. Oz was early. He wasn’t due here for two more hours, but I wasn’t about to complain. I would be all for a repeat from when he had worked here last Saturday.
When I swung the door open, my smile faltered, then fell.
“Alec.” I said his name, and it felt odd. The familiarity of it gone.
He smiled, and the singular dimple I had once adored appeared. It did nothing for me now.
“Hey, Winzy,” he said with the same air of cocky confidence that he always had.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, not returning his smile.
He chuckled. “I came to see you. It’s our bye week, and it’s been a year now. I thought—well, I hoped you’d had time to forgive me. Talk to me.”
I opened my mouth, then shut it.
He stepped toward me, and I took a step back, which was a bad idea in hindsight because that allowed him an in to the apartment. Yeah, not happening.
“Look, um, Alec, I forgive you. I don’t care. I mean, I did then, but as you said, it’s been over a year. That was another lifetime ago. There really isn’t anything for us to talk about.”
He walked over to the sofa and sat down.
What the hell? Did he not just hear me?
Leaning back as if he belonged here, he propped an ankle on his knee and stretched out an arm along the back of it. Tilting his head, he winked at me. “Come on, Winzy. Talk to me. If for nothing else, closure.”
I let go of the door and turned to face him. “I…have closure,” I said, frowning.
Did he need closure?
“Come on, babe. I miss you. I miss talking to you. You were my best friend. Then— poof —gone.”
I narrowed my eyes. Had he always been this obnoxious?
“I wouldn’t call it poof . More like you were going down on another girl and she answered your phone when I called.”
He winced. “She was a bitch, babe. One that was a fucking mistake. I messed up. Learned my lesson. I let the best thing that had ever happened to me walk away.”
I pointed at my chest. “Me?”
He gave me a smug smile and nodded. Like that was news I’d been waiting to hear him say. Talk about having a big head. The NFL had really ruined him. There was no way he had been this bad when we dated. I’d have remembered.
“Okay, as nice as that is for you to say, I do not feel the same way. To be completely honest, I don’t feel anything where you’re concerned.”
The incredulous smirk, as if he didn’t believe me, made me think maybe I did feel something. Disgust.
He stood up, and I hoped that meant he was leaving. “That’s not true. You love me.”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t.”
He walked toward me, and I watched him warily.
“Winzy, come on. I’ve been punished, babe. A fucking year of it. Just give me a little here. Something to work with.”
I held up both hands when it didn’t look like he was going to stop until he was on top of me. “Look, as hard as this might be for you to understand, I don’t love you. I don’t want you. I actually don’t even think about you. I’m in a relationship.” I pointed at the oven. “Smell that? It’s lasagna. I’m making it for our dinner.”
Alec shrugged. “I don’t doubt you are. You’re beautiful. It’s why I asked you out the first time. But he’s not me.”
Thank God for that.
“No, he isn’t. But I don’t love you or want you.”
“Don’t believe it,” he said, then grabbed the back of my head and slammed his mouth against mine.
I shook my head, shoving at his chest, and pressed my lips together tightly while his tongue kept pushing to get inside.
EW! NO!
When that didn’t work, I began to hit his chest with my fist.
That seemed to get through to him, and he pulled back, his hand still on the back of my head.
“Are you really not going to kiss me back?”
I wiped at my mouth and ducked my head to get away from his hand, then backed up, stumbling in the process. “What is wrong with you? I said I was in a relationship, and I didn’t want you!” I shouted.
“We have history,” he said, patting his chest. “A connection. One that whatever new thing you got with someone else can’t touch.”
I backed away some more. “You need to leave. If you don’t, I am going to call the cops,” I informed him.
He started to say something, but the sound of a key in the lock caught my attention, and then the door swung open. Oz came stalking inside the room. He looked at Alec, and then his gaze swung to mine. There was a wild gleam in them. His attention back on Alec, he continued toward him.
Alec smiled at him. “Hey, man. I’m a fr—” He froze as the barrel of a pistol was pressed to his forehead.
I felt like all the blood had drained from my body in an instant.
“Whoa, man.” Alec’s voice wavered. “No need for guns.”
“You put your hands and mouth on what is mine.”
A cold shiver ran down my spine as I stood there, unable to move or speak. Too many things were ticking off in my head. All at once.
“Uh, Winzy, little help here.” Alec’s words gave away his fear.
“YOU DON’T TALK TO HER!” Oz roared as he shoved him back with the gun he had on his head and followed him.
The rage in his tone was like nothing I’d ever heard. I moved then. He couldn’t kill Alec.
“Oz.” I said his name firmly.
His jaw was jutted out, and I saw it work as he ground his teeth.
“Please, Oz. Put the gun down. Let him leave. That was what he was doing when you arrived. I told him I was in a relationship.”
“And he wouldn’t fucking listen.” Oz seethed. “He wasn’t leaving.”
Oz shoved the barrel harder against his head, and Alec backed up again.
“Were you? You wouldn’t fucking listen to her.”
How do you know this, Oz?
I was afraid to know the answer. But that was for later. Right now, I had to keep Oz from committing murder in my apartment.
“Listen, man. People will notice I’m missing. I’m famous. I play for the Saints. You know football?”
A sadistic-sounding laugh came from Oz as he tilted his head, snarling at Alec.
“You’re not famous,” he replied. “Your rushing yards are fucking shit, and that college record you had for receptions has tanked.”
“Oz, please.”
He still didn’t look at me.
“Perry is in prison. I won’t be able to handle you being in there too.”
Just like I’d suspected, the tension in his shoulders eased some, and he glanced at me. “Darlin’,” he drawled, “I won’t go to prison. The family won’t let that happen.”
“Wh-what family?” Alec asked, stammering.
I ignored him, but Oz didn’t.
He turned his attention back to Alec. “Mine,” he replied. He pushed him back further with the gun.
“I don’t want my apartment to be a murder scene,” I told him.
A smirk pulled at Oz’s lips. “Won’t matter. You’re moving in with me soon enough.”
Excuse me?
I bit back a response because I didn’t need to set him off right now.
“Look, I was wrong. I didn’t know. Just let me go. I won’t even tell the cops.”
More cold sinister laughter from Oz. “I don’t give a fuck what you tell the cops. We own the fucking cops.”
Alec swallowed hard. “You own them?”
Oz nodded. “When I lower this gun, you’re gonna walk out of this apartment. You won’t look at her. You won’t talk to her. You can tell whoever the fuck you want about this. But tell ’em the Savelles said hi.”
“Okay,” he said.
I held my breath, waiting for him to lower his gun, and prayed Alec didn’t do anything stupid.
“When she’s coming on my cock, it’s my name she’s screaming.”
“Okay,” Alec replied.
Oz stepped back, taking the gun off Alec, then lowering it slowly. “You can go.”
I didn’t watch him. My eyes stayed locked on Oz. He hadn’t put his gun away. It was still in his hand that hung at his side. I didn’t know what I’d do if he raised it and shot at Alec. I didn’t want Alec to die, but I wasn’t taking a bullet for him.
When I heard the door open and close, I let out a breath, but the turmoil churning inside me didn’t ease. Oz’s gaze moved to mine as he put the gun in the holster at his back. He didn’t say anything, but I could see remorse in his eyes.
I didn’t want to ask because, in my gut, I knew. But he knew I was going to. I couldn’t pretend otherwise.
“Where did you get a key to the door?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper. “I only have one.”
He looked as if my words had caused him pain. Yet he steeled his expression, and determination moved in.
“I took yours and had it made.”
“Why didn’t you ask me? I would have given it to you. Why hide that you had one from me?”
He took a deep breath. “Because when I took it, you wouldn’t have given it to me then.”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”
He licked his lips, flashing the metal bar. “I know. And I intended to tell you. I was just struggling with how.”
“Tell me what, Oz?”
Had he done this before he abducted me? So he could search my apartment or get in if Perry was here? I thought I could live with that since it was all behind us. I just wished he had told me he had it.
“When I brought you back from Louisiana,” he began, “I didn’t want to. I wanted to keep us both locked up there in that house with you upstairs so that I could be around you. Get to know you. Figure out why you were under my skin. But it was done, and I had to bring you back. I brought you in here, and while I stood over you, watching you sleep…I felt peace. The same way I had when I watched you sleeping in that room the first time in Louisiana. I just wanted to stand there. Make sure you were safe and watch you sleep.” He paused, his eyes searching me, or maybe he was waiting on me to talk, but I couldn’t do that just yet. I needed to hear all of it.
“I left. Couldn’t get you out of my head. Whether I was awake or asleep, you were there in my every thought. So, I came back. Broke in. Watched you sleep. The peace was back. You looked like a fucking angel, and I was fascinated by you. I kept returning, and I knew it was an addiction. Something I would need. I took your key and had a copy made.
“A week later, you left a candle burning, and it scared the shit out of me. The what-ifs. I justified my coming every night because I was protecting you. Making sure you hadn’t left a candle burning.” He ran a hand through his hair. “And you did. Too often. But it was okay because I would put it out for you.
“I wanted to know you so bad; it was owning me. The need clawing at me. That’s why I read your texts. To see who you were when you weren’t with me. Who the rest of the world, the people you didn’t hate, knew. The woman I wanted to know.
“The day at the festival, I was there because of you. I had known because of your texts, and I couldn’t stand the idea of you being there with some guy, even if you didn’t seem to like him. And like I said before, when you looked at me at the festival…well, standing in the shadows of your life wasn’t enough anymore. I wanted to know you. Not just watch you sleep, but hold you while you did.”
He blew out a long breath. “That night, you weren’t blackout drunk. You fell asleep on the sofa with the ice cream dripping onto the rug and the damn candle still lit and entirely too close to you this time, and I carried you to bed, cleaned up the ice cream, put out the candle. Then, I got a phone cube charger and changed it out with the one in the living room. There’s a hidden camera in it. That way, it wasn’t where you bathed and dressed, but if you needed me, I would know.”
I backed up and sank down onto the chair at my kitchen table. “Is that it?” I asked.
“No.”
I braced myself. I wasn’t sure how much of this honesty I could take.
“I’m in love with you.”
He was in love with me. He was telling me that now? After he just admitted to stalking me for two months. My head was swimming. The thoughts of him watching me. The things he had seen.
“I need you to leave. I need to be alone and think,” I told him.
“Don’t do this.” The pain in his voice felt like a hot iron slicing open my chest.
“Leave, Oz. Take the camera and leave the key. Then go.”
“Winslet.”
“Go.”
He walked toward me, and I shook my head.
“No. Don’t.” My words were verging on a shout.
His nostrils flared as he stared at me. I dropped my eyes to the floor. I couldn’t look at him. The pleading and panic on his face were unbearable to see.
“I know that I call you mine. But it’s you who owns me. Don’t shut me out.”
The cracks that had already begun to spider out over my heart were almost on the brink, where it would shatter completely.
“Then, you won’t ignore me the way Alec did when I ask you to please leave.”
My hands fisted at my sides. I could not lift my head and look at him. When his boots moved, it wasn’t toward me. It was away. I listened as he took the cube from the wall and the tiny clang of the key as it dropped to the counter.
When the door opened, I could feel the sob rising in my chest.
“I’ve seen you when no one else has. I know you better than anyone. You don’t have a flaw. But I have many.”
I sucked in a breath silently. The part of me that wanted to jump up and run after him was powerful. But just because I loved him and letting go of him felt impossible, I still needed time to work through all he had told me. I was raw right now. My emotions were so unsure that the edges were frayed. This had been too much. All of it.
The door clicked closed, and I buried my face in my hands. I let the tears fall, holding on to my sob until I was sure he was far enough away that he wouldn’t hear me.