Chapter Twenty-Four #2
I slipped inside the house, shutting the sliding glass door behind me.
For a moment, I looked around at the house Ariana shared with Nathan, looking for signs of life.
Other than one photo from their wedding, I didn’t see much.
My eyes snagged on a camera in the corner of the living room, and my heart stuttered.
I made a beeline for the kitchen.
Ariana was at the sink, her back to me, scrubbing away at the pan she’d cooked the chicken in. She yelped a little when she scrubbed too hard, letting the pan fall into the dishwater and holding her wrist.
I wanted to run to her.
I wanted to whip her around, grab her by the arms, and demand she tell me what the fuck was going on.
But I knew better. I knew the last thing she needed right now was more aggression, or another man telling her what to do.
Wordlessly, I slipped up beside her at the sink. She turned to me in surprise.
She’d been crying.
It felt like swallowing acid as I held back what I wanted to say. Instead, I reached into the soapy water and grabbed the dish. Then, my hand found hers.
I wrapped around her slowly, gently, our soapy, slick fingers gliding along one another. I took my time, savoring her warmth, heart racing in my chest as I grabbed the sponge she held fast to.
For the longest moment, she didn’t let go. Her eyes trailed from where our hands touched up my arm, my shoulder, catching at my neck before they snapped to meet my gaze.
I squeezed her hand, letting her know I was there to help.
She released the sponge.
And we got to work.
For twenty minutes, not a single word passed between us. She brought in the rest of the dishes from the table while I washed the ones already piled in the sink. She wiped the counters. I dried the heavier dishes and put them away for her.
Eventually, there was nothing more to do, and I leaned a hip against the counter, wiping my hands on a dishtowel with my eyes on her.
“Thank you,” she muttered quietly, her gaze on the floor between us. She tucked her hair behind her ear and folded her arms tightly across her chest like she wanted to disappear.
I couldn’t let her. Not after tonight.
“I’m going to ask you this once,” I said carefully, schooling my breathing as much as I could. “And I’m going to beg you not to lie to me.”
I heard her swallow over the sound of the piano jazz. Her eyes stayed glued to the floor.
“Is everything okay between you and Nathan?”
Her eyes welled in an instant, two big fat tears sliding off her cheeks and down to the tile.
She wouldn’t look at me.
But she shook her head.
My throat constricted. It took everything in me not to grab her right then, throw her over my fucking shoulder, and steal her away. Possession and protectiveness surged from me like smoke billowing from a building on fire.
But that wasn’t what she needed.
I knew it as much as I knew my playbook.
This was a delicate situation, and I had to approach it as such.
“Can you look at me?”
She shook her head again.
Carefully, I pushed off the counter, taking three slow steps until I was right in front of her. Her gaze was on my chest now.
“Please,” I asked again. “Look at me.”
She blinked a few times before she did, and as soon as her eyes met mine, they watered fiercely again. She clapped a hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry.”
I frowned, my heart fucking breaking at the sight of her so distraught. “Ari, what happened?”
She shook her head, again and again, like it was impossible to say, like she didn’t believe her version of the truth enough to speak it out loud.
“Talk to me. What’s going—”
“Coach!”
Ariana winced, jumping back, and ice slid through my veins at the familiar voice.
Nathan waltzed into the kitchen with a tumbler of brown liquor in hand. He wore a grin that spread from ear to ear, but his eyes were lazy and calculated, sweeping from me to his wife and back again.
I saw his grip around his glass tighten.
“I thought you left a half hour ago,” he said with that slick smile of his in place.
“He was leaving,” Ariana said, and I didn’t know how I missed it, but she’d somehow cleared her tears. There was still evidence there on her cheeks, but she looked so different than she had just moments before — more put together, like nothing had happened at all.
Red flags were waving so aggressively in my head I couldn’t see straight.
“But then he saw me in here with all the dishes,” she said, laughing as she swept a hand over the clean kitchen. “And I couldn’t lift that big cutting board since I hurt my wrist.”
She gave her husband a very particular look with that last part, like she was reminding him of something I didn’t know.
“So I asked if he wouldn’t mind helping.
And he was so kind to oblige.” She smiled, nodding my way.
“Thank you again, Shane. I appreciate your help. But you should get going! I know you want to get rest before morning skate.” She turned to Nathan then.
“Is everyone still on the patio? I can bring limoncello?”
Nathan was quiet for a long, heavy moment.
His eyes narrowed so slowly I’d have missed it if I wasn’t watching him so closely. And once again, he looked long and hard at his wife.
And then at me.
Suddenly, he smiled, the gesture warping his face into the perfect picture of amiability.
“Very kind of you to help, Coach.” His smile slipped, his gaze hardening, and then he turned the grin on his wife.
“Limoncello would be lovely, sweetheart. Why don’t you pour up some glasses and I’ll meet you out there? ”
Ariana nodded, and she didn’t so much as chance a glance at me before she was slipping out of the kitchen on her way toward their bar.
Nathan slid his free hand into his pocket, sipping his liquor. He smiled at me again. “Well, have a good night then, Coach.”
The last fucking thing I wanted to do was leave, but what else could I do?
This was my general manager.
Ariana was his wife.
I didn’t know anything other than they were maybe having a fight or an off night. That didn’t warrant me doing anything other than what I had — offering Ariana someone to talk to.
And she hadn’t wanted to talk.
Still, it was eating at me — the way he treated her tonight. I didn’t care what they were arguing about. You didn’t treat someone you loved like that, no matter what.
And her wrist…
What the fuck was up with that?
My instincts were blaring that he’d hurt her somehow. But as soon as I thought it, I shook it off.
Ariana wouldn’t stand for it.
She’d grown up in a household watching her mother in that situation. I knew at the first sign of abuse, she’d be gone.
… Wouldn’t she?
“Do you need me to walk you out?” Nathan asked, still grinning. “Seems like you might have lost your way to the door earlier.”
I tried to smile back, but it fell flat. “Not at all. Go back to your party, sir. I’ll see you next week.”
Again, I didn’t want to leave, but I didn’t know what else to do.
So I made my way toward the door.
A hard hand slammed against my chest before I could slip past Nathan.
“And Coach?”
I angled my chin toward him, waiting, my hands curling into fists.
“Watch yourself around my wife. Understand?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
He smiled, nodding with a pat against my chest where he’d had my shirt gripped before. “Test me, and you’ll find out,” he said.
He released me, heading back to the party.
And I drove home with murder in my veins, my foot hard on the gas pedal, knuckles white on the wheel.
I had to get Ariana alone.
I had to figure out what the fuck was going on.
I had to expose that snake of a man for exactly who he was.
And I had to start planning how to do it.
Tonight.