Chapter 22 Fish
FISH
One second, I’m leaning against the terrace wall getting some air because the brunette, Tanya, has been relentless all night, and I needed five minutes without her hand on my arm or my ass.
The next second, she’s in front of me, appearing out of nowhere, and before I can open my mouth, she grabs my lapels, shoves me back against the wall, and kisses me.
Hard. Aggressive. Her mouth on mine, her hands fisting my jacket, her body pressing me into the stone.
I’m so caught off-guard, that for a split second my brain doesn’t catch up.
Then it does. What the fuck?
I hear a sound. A gasp. A heel scraping on stone. My eyes snap open, and over Tanya’s shoulder, I see her.
Collette.
Standing at the corner of the terrace, those hazel eyes wide and filled with something that guts me on the spot. She looks like someone just put their fist through her chest.
“Shit.” The word falls out of me as I shove Tanya off.
Not gently. Not politely. I push her away from me hard enough that she stumbles back a step on her heels.
But Collette is already gone. She’s turned and disappeared back inside, and all I can see is the flash of her black dress vanishing through the glass doors.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I round on Tanya. My heart is hammering, my hands are shaking, and I can still taste her lipstick on my mouth. It makes me want to scrub my face raw.
Tanya straightens her dress, completely unbothered, that satisfied smirk still sitting on her red lips like she’s won something. “Relax. It was just a kiss.”
“You didn’t ask. You just grabbed me and shoved me against a wall.”
“I thought you’d be into it. I’ve heard the rumors.” She shrugs, running a finger along her bottom lip. “The reviews certainly suggested you would be.”
The reviews, the fucking Reddit reviews. The thing that follows me everywhere, that reduces me to a body and a rating and a reputation I can never outrun. My jaw tightens so hard I feel it in my temples.
“I also thought you two were just friends,” she says, nodding toward where Collette was standing. “That’s what you two say online.”
“We are.”
“Then what’s the problem? You’re single. I’m single.” She takes a step toward me. “I paid fifty-five thousand dollars for tonight. The least you can do is …”
“The least I can do?” I repeat, and my voice drops to something cold and flat that doesn’t sound like me.
“You think because you wrote a check, you own my mouth? That you can put your hands on me whenever you feel like it?” Her smirk falters.
Good. “You don’t own me. Nobody fucking owns me.
Not the bunnies, not the internet, not you.
” I’m in her space now, and she takes a step back because whatever she sees on my face has finally broken through that bulletproof confidence.
“You can have your damn money back. I’ll have the team refund every cent.
And I’ll donate the fifty-five thousand of my own money to the charity, so those kids don’t lose out because you thought buying a dance with me entitled you to whatever the fuck you wanted. ”
“You’re overreacting,” she says, but her voice has lost its edge.
“Am I? How would you feel if some guy you barely knew shoved you against a wall and kissed you without asking? Would you be overreacting then? She doesn’t answer.
Her jaw works like she’s trying to find a comeback that isn’t there.
“That’s what I thought.” I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.
Her lipstick comes off on my skin like a stain. “Don’t come near me again.”
I leave her on the terrace, and push through the glass doors back into the ballroom. The music is loud, people are dancing, everyone is having a great time, because why wouldn’t they be? My eyes scan the room for the content girls’ table. Marlowe, Billie, and Zara are all there. No Collette.
Marlowe catches my eye, and she looks confused. “Have you seen Collette?” I ask.
“She just left. Walked right past me without stopping. Is everything okay?”
No. Nothing is okay.
I don’t answer her as I move quickly through the ballroom, dodging dancers and sidestepping waiters, not caring who sees me because the only thing that matters right now is finding her before she disappears into this city and decides I’m exactly the man she always thought I was.
Pierre is at his table laughing with Issy.
He doesn’t notice me pass. Felix and Harper are on the dance floor.
Emmett and Sully are nowhere to be seen.
Good. I don’t need an audience for this.
I push through the front doors, and the cold hits me.
The street is busy, taxis and town cars crawling past, my breath visible in the night air. I scan left, then right, and I see her.
She’s at the curb, one hand raised for a taxi, shivering because she didn’t bring a jacket, and even from twenty feet away I can see her shoulders shake.
She’s crying. Collette St. Pierre is standing on a Manhattan sidewalk crying because of something she thinks I did, and every cell in my body is screaming at me to fix it.
“Collette!” I scream out to her.
She flinches upon hearing my voice but doesn’t turn around. A taxi slows, and she reaches for the door handle.
“Collette, wait. Please.” I slam my hand on the top of the taxi.
“Go back inside, Fish.” Her voice is wrecked. Thick and raw and nothing like the sharp, sarcastic woman who roasts me on a daily basis. “Go back to your date.”
“Are you getting in?” The cab driver yells.
“Yes,” she answers.
“No,” I say at the same time.
The cab driver mumbles something about wasting my time and takes off.
“Motherfucker,” Collette curses.
“Here, you’re shivering,” I say, taking off my jacket and wrapping it around her shoulder.
“Don’t touch me,” she screams, pushing my jacket away.
“Collette, please, it’s freezing out here.”
“No shit. I would have been fine if you had let me get into that cab.” She sneers at me.
“We need to talk.”
“No, we don’t. I have nothing to say to you. I don’t know why you’re out here when your fifty-five-thousand-dollar date is inside.”
“She’s not my date. It’s not what you think.”
“Oh, it’s one hundred percent what I think.
I saw you.” She glares at me. The look on her face nearly takes my knees out.
Mascara smudged under her eyes, cheeks flushed from the cold and crying, those hazel eyes blazing with hurt and anger and something underneath both that she’s trying desperately to bury.
“I saw you, Fish. Her mouth on yours. So don’t stand there and … ”
“She grabbed me. She shoved me against the wall and kissed me. I didn’t kiss her back. I pushed her off the second my brain caught up.” The words are tumbling out too fast, but I can’t slow down. Whatever we are, whatever we’ve been building, it ends on this sidewalk.
“It doesn’t matter,” she says, and her voice cracks on the last word.
“It fucking matters.” I take a step toward her and wrap my jacket around her stubborn shoulders, pulling her to me. “It matters because you’re standing here crying over something that didn’t happen the way you think it happened.”
“You can kiss whoever you want. It’s none of my business.”
“Bullshit.” I close the distance between us, pulling her closer to me. “If we were just friends, you wouldn’t be crying right now. If we were just friends, you wouldn’t have left the gala. If we were just friends, the sight of another woman kissing me wouldn’t have put that look on your face.”
“Stop,” she calls out to me as fresh tears fall down her cheeks.
“No. You need to fucking hear me.”
“I don’t need to hear shit and especially not here,” she snaps back at me. She’s right, we are out the front of this event. Paparazzi could be around, and the last thing I want is for our argument to end up on Page Six.
“Come with me,” I say, grabbing her hand.
She resists for half a second then lets me lead her off the sidewalk, through the hedge line of the hotel entrance, into the dark alcove between the manicured bushes where the valets can’t see us and the street noise dulls to a murmur, then she yanks her hand free.
“What are you doing?” she hisses.
“You and I need to talk.”
“No, we don’t.” She pouts, pulling my jacket tightly around her.
“Well, then you’re going to fucking listen to me.” Her eyes widen in surprise at my words. “I’m fucking done pretending.”
“Fish …”
“I didn’t kiss her. She kissed me. And the first thing I felt wasn’t her mouth on mine, it was panic that you got the wrong idea. That’s where my head was. Not on her. On you. It’s always on you.”
Tears slide down her cheeks as she stares at me, her chest heaving. The light from the hotel entrance catches the gold in her earrings, and the mascara smudged under her eyes, and she’s never looked more beautiful to me than she does right now, wrecked and furious and standing in a bush.
“I love you.” The words come out before I can stop them.
Raw, unplanned, and completely terrifying.
“I’m in love with you, Collette. I have been since the corridor when you cried on me in my hockey gear.
I was in love with you when you fell asleep on my shoulder during that shitty movie you made me watch.
I was in love with you when I woke up in your bed with your hair in my face and your body against mine, and I thought this is what I want every morning for the rest of my life. ”
“Don’t,” she whispers, but she doesn’t move.
“I’m in love with you when you roast me on camera, and when you send me memes at two a.m., and when you eat cereal out of the box like a gremlin.
I’m in love with the way you protect your sister, the way you stand up to your brothers, and the way you looked at me after the youth clinic like I was someone worth looking at.
” My voice is shaking. My hands are shaking.
Everything is shaking. “I tried to be your friend. I tried so fucking hard. But I can’t see that look on your face and pretend I don’t know what it means. ”
The silence between us is deafening, just our breath and the distant sounds of the city, and my heart slamming against my ribs so hard she can probably hear it.
“You can’t say that to me.” Her voice is barely there.
“I just did.”
“You can’t.” She wipes her face with the back of her hand. “You’re not allowed to love me.”
“Too late, I do.”
“My brothers. The team. My job. Everything I’ve worked for …”
“I know all of that.”
“Then you know why this can’t happen.”
“I know why you think it can’t happen. That’s not the same thing,” I tell her.
“Fish.” She looks at me. The tears are falling again and this time she doesn’t wipe them away. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t do this.”
The words land like a blade between my ribs. Clean and precise and fatal. This is it. This is exactly what I was afraid of. Putting everything on the table and watching her push it away.
“Okay.” My voice sounds like it belongs to someone else. Hollow. Flat.
“Fish, please understand …”
“I understand.” I take a step back. The cold air fills the space where I was standing. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize for being honest.” She sniffles through her tears, her bottom lip trembles, and she looks like she wants to reach for me. I wish she would, but she doesn’t. She wraps her arms around herself instead.
“Go home, Collette.” I say it gently because even with my chest caved in, I can’t be anything but gentle with her. “Get some sleep.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be fine.” The lie comes out, smooth and easy. The same lie I’ve been telling everyone my whole life.
She stares at me for a long moment, those hazel eyes searching my face for something, I don’t know what.
She hands me my jacket and I take it, then she slips out and away from me.
I stand in the bushes of a Manhattan hotel in a tuxedo that cost more than my first car, with another woman’s lipstick still on my mouth, and the taste of rejection sitting heavily on my tongue.
Right person, wrong time. Turns out it’s just wrong.
I wipe my mouth one more time, straighten my jacket, and walk back inside. Evan is at the bar. He takes one look at my face and doesn’t say a word. Just signals the bartender for two whiskeys and pushes one toward me.
“Don’t ask,” I tell him.
“Wasn’t going to,” he says quietly.
We drink in silence. And for the first time in months, I feel completely alone.