Chapter 52
Artemis
Ifeel like I could sleep for a month. Maybe two. And yet, I’ve been up since five at the kitchen table drafting contingency plans for problems that no longer exist.
It’s a little after seven. My phone has been silent all night and what little of the morning I’ve seen. There have been no crises, no emergencies, no abusive bullshit from Alonso. Just… quiet. What the fuck do I do with quiet?
I press the bridge of my nose with a firm finger and thumb, trying to make the words on the screen in front of me move into focus. I’m trying to do something useful—emails… contracts… something, anything that isn’t sit in the silence and think.
Dios mío. Anything but that.
Part of me wants to put together a ten-point plan for my boyfriend, give him a list of things he could do if hockey doesn’t work out for him for whatever reason. This injury has really given him pause, put things in perspective, and scared the ever-living shit out of him.
It’s nowhere near as serious as Apollo’s better half, Edith’s, car crash—though it could have been—I watched her tear her life apart trying to get back to dancing, because she didn’t know who she was without it. I recognize that panic now. In Xavier. Even in myself.
Xavier doesn’t know who he is without hockey, without his brother’s shadow, and while there’s a parallel here with my own situation—that I’m strategically avoiding for right now—I want to help.
I know I could help. I could work with him on a multi-pronged strategy to figure out what he might see himself doing after college. I know exactly how to do it, too: Flowcharts, decision trees, options that look neutral but subtly guide him toward outcomes I’d feel safer living with.
That’s where the problem lies, it would be for me, not for him.
So, I can’t do anything. I need to sit on my hands and be patient. Patient. Me. Ha! Except I don’t want him to think I love him despite something. Or because I can solve him. I want him to know I chose him as he is, not as a project with a timeline.
Just as I need to figure out who I am when my life isn’t a battlefield—who the fuck am I between the business battles?—Xavier needs to dig deep and find his worth outside of the Martinez name and the game of hockey.
I guess this will be a test of whether or not I can sit on my hands. Can I support someone I love without directing? Without taking charge and fixing things for them? I’m game to find out.
A sound from behind me snaps my eyes off the screen—not that I was paying attention to it anyway.
My gorgeous man pads towards me, shirtless, a smattering of dark hair dusting his chest. The navy fabric of the sling contrasts against his skin. The bruising on his collarbone and shoulder has faded to a yellow green from the dark purples and blues of last week.
He’s carrying two sloshing, steaming mugs in his uninjured hand. His grin is blinding. “Don’t worry, it’s fresh.” He doesn’t ask why I’m up. He probably already knows. And I’ve been so out of it that he’s had time to brew a fresh pot of bean juice.
He sits the cups on the table and jerks his chin at me. I scoot my chair back, and he sits sideways across my lap. His warmth wraps around me right along with his uninjured arm, and he buries his nose in the crook of my neck, inhaling deeply.
This. This is what I want. It feels… perfect.
“I don’t like waking up alone in bed, Buttercup.” He nips at my corded neck, drawing a line up to my jaw with his teeth and lips.
“I didn’t want to wake you. I couldn’t sleep.”
He butts his head against mine gently. “Then you definitely should have woken me up.” He speaks in Spanish, his low, sultry voice sending signals to my dick. “I could have distracted you from your insomnia.” The offer isn’t an escape, it’s an invitation.
I don’t know why I didn’t think of that, but now I’m kicking my past self in the ass. Wrapping my arms around him doesn’t bring him close enough to me, so I squeeze him, making him groan.
“?Qué tal?” He squeezes me right back.
“I’m restless.”
He chuckles. “No shit. You tossed and turned all night. You twisted yourself into the sheets like you were fighting with them.”
A sigh spills from my lips. “I don’t know how to just…”
“Be?” He answers for me. “Do nothing? We’ll find things for you to do.” He wiggles his ass against my semi while pulling me into a deep, stirring kiss.
“Mmmm.” He brushes his nose against mine. “We should go back to bed. We don’t have anywhere else to be right now.”
“Are you okay?” I don’t want him to distract us both from a conversation we might need to have.
He nods, pulling back to look me dead in the eye. “I’m good. I’m not ready yet, but I’d like to talk through my options when I’ve had more time to think on them.” There’s no apology in his voice, no rush to reassure me, just his truth.
My heart swells behind my ribs as I try—and fail—to play it cool. He wants to talk options through with me. I grin at him. “I can do that.”
He shakes his head. “You’re smug now that I’m asking for help, aren’t you?”
“No.” I shake back. “I’m just honored that you want me to be a part of that discussion. It’s huge for me.”
“I’m not sure I have any ideas that are good ones.”
I slide my hand around the back of his neck, allowing my thumb to glide over his jaw and the shell of his ear as I do. “We don’t need to know yet.”
The urge to promise him answers rises sharp and familiar in my chest. Solutions. Certainty. Control. But I let it pass.
I have him—choosing me while everything else is undecided—and somehow, that’s enough to quiet the war in my head.