Chapter 12 Kate
KATE
FALLING, QUIETLY
“I’m being pulled in, and fast….” Kate Riggs
He’s here. I hit the last note like I’m trying to drown out the panic in my chest.
I push it aside as the crowd roars. The lights blind me. Adrenaline floods my veins like it always does — a brief, glorious high where I forget my name and all the noise and insecurities that come with it.
But as soon as I step off stage, reality comes crashing back.
The ring is still on my finger, and I’m still a trending headline.
I head toward my dressing room, my throat is raw, my feet are screaming for me to sit, and people are shouting my name. I wave, nod, and smile—automatically. It’s never been this crazy before.
I saw signs in the crowd. “Finn and Kate,” among others, that simply state, “Marry me.”
I ignore them. I hate to do it, but I don’t have the bandwidth, not now. Not when my husband is here to see me.
Husband.
The security clears a path of room, and I follow blindly, because Finn has that effect on me. All I want is a shower, a water bottle, and about five years of silence. I’m exhausted from flying coast to coast and two back-to-back gigs.
My heart is beating like an engine in a MIG— hot, and devastating.
He’s here. How did he get her so quickly?
I arrive at my dressing room and push the door open.
And that’s when I see him again—our first one-on-one since our wedding.
He’s sitting on my couch with his legs spread. An arm thrown over the back like he owns the place. He looks like sin, sweat, and that goddamn memory I can't remember but feel in every part of me.
Finn.
In my dressing room. I can’t breathe. It’s too intimate. He must know the dilemma I’m in as he stands up slowly. No smile. No smugness.
Just him, and God, I want him.“I had to see you,” he says.
He’s shaved, and the sleeves of his dress shirt are rolled up, baring his meaty forearms. I look to his eye to judge his sincerity, and either he fakes it incredibly well or he’s an honest man.
I grip the door frame like it will support me.
“Why?” I look him over, and damn if he’s not a picture. Hockey player or not, he oozes confidence and charisma. He’s the bad boy who made it big. His hard body is built for sin, and I know what he does with his stick. I loved every minute of it. I even begged for more.
He looks at my hand, before his eyes zero in on the ring, and then me.
“Because we’re married,” he says quietly, “and I think I meant it.” He says it so casually, like he didn’t just drop a bomb into the middle of my raw nerves. “I think I meant everything I said,” he whispers, like it didn’t sink in the first time he said it.
I blink at him from the door, still in my costume, my mascara smudged from sweat and my adrenaline crashing. My heart is pounding too loudly to think straight.
“What?” I ask in disbelief. My voice is barely a whisper.
He looks at me, completely calm.
“I meant it, Kate. Not just the show. The vows.”
Oh God. He’s serious.
I giggle. It’s a reflex when I’m nervous. It’s totally uncalled for, but it’s my reaction, and I can’t take it back.
“That’s not funny,” I say. “It’s not nice to play with someone’s emotions.”
“I’m not joking.”
I meet his gaze.“No,” I say, moving into the room too fast, like the movement can undo the words that threaten my resolve to discount his words. “No, you think you meant it. You don’t even know me. Not really. We were caught up in the aftermath and the sex and the—whatever it was.” I shrug.
His brows knitted in confusion, but I didn’t stop. I need to get in front of the crash before it hits me so hard I’ll never recover.
“You’ll wake up in a week and regret this. You’ll realize I was just... a fun story. A disaster you helped off the dance floor and carried to a Vegas chapel. A mess you temporarily wanted to fix.”
“Kate—”
“I want an annulment.” My words hit him hard; they’re harsh, and I hated saying them.
But I hated the thought of staying long enough to watch him change his mind even more.
“You didn’t pick me. Not really. You picked the idea for me.
You picked the version I sell onstage—confident, charming.
The reality is, I’m a walking panic attack.
A mess. What you picked is the fantasy.”
I walk into the room. I don’t know if I’m trying to hurt him, so leave me or what, but he’s impervious so far.
His expression doesn’t change. “We didn’t just exchange vows, Kate. We consummated the damn thing.”
My breathing pauses. “And that’s supposed to make it real?”
“I think it already is.”
I stare at him, unsure whether to run away or run to him and kiss him. But the cliff’s edge is too close, and I know how hard the fall will be. When he decides I’m broken and that he made a mistake.
I don’t want to be a mistake. I want to be chosen.
So I’m going to do what I do best. I’m going to push him away before he dumps me. And if I’m lucky, it will happen before he has the chance to break my heart into a million pieces. I turn toward the door, but he doesn’t let me open it.
He puts himself between me and the door, like he anticipated my move.
Damn him.
And when I look into his eyes, I realize he’s still as devastatingly handsome as the night we met, if not more so.
He’s hotter than hell, and even now, I want him.
“You know,” he says softly, making my knees weaken, “you were difficult to find.”
My heart stops. Not because I didn’t want to hear it, but because I did. He actually looked for me? He wanted me?
I’ve been waiting my entire life for someone like him to find me, someone who would stick around long enough to prove to me that they want me, and not the possibility of a starlet in their midst.
Me.
I shake my head hard. I can’t let him in. This won’t end well. He’ll see where I’m from, meet my Mama, and then break it off.
“We were drunk.”
“Not that drunk.”
“It’s not a way to start a marriage,” I say, crossing my arms defensively over my chest. “It was impulsive. Stupid. It’s romantic comedy levels of bad decision-making.”
He raised an eyebrow. “So? I like a challenge.”
“A challenge?” My voice cracks. “Well, you need to buckle up because I’m a handful, and it might not be today or tomorrow, but eventually, you’ll want out.
You deserve someone more... stable. Someone who doesn’t run whenever you get too close.
You need someone who will stay even when they don’t need to. I can’t promise you that.”
He leans down, and I can feel his breath on my face. “You think I didn’t know what I was doing?”
I can feel the tears burning now, a sensation that is both ridiculously hot and unwanted. “I snore. Like, loudly. I have trust issues so bad that I once ghosted a guy because he was too nice, because it made me suspicious. I’m not built for this kind of thing. I’m…broken.”
He doesn’t even blink. “I excel at fixing broken things.”
God. He says it like it was the most obvious fact in the world, like I hadn’t just listed every reason why he should run. And hell, he still wants to stay.
What’s wrong with him?
“I don’t want you to fix me,” I whisper. “I have to fix myself.”
He shrugs like it doesn’t matter. He uses his thumb and wipes a tear from my cheek. “You don’t have to do it alone. But if you want help carrying the pieces while you figure it out, I’ve got big shoulders and strong legs.”
I hate myself for how much I want to believe him.
And I hate even more that a small, dangerous part of me wants to give it a shot.
I swallow hard. My throat is tight, and my chest feels like an elephant is sitting on it.
“There’s more,” I add in a panic because all my reasons to make him run off are flailing.
“I’m a workaholic. I overthink everything.
I catastrophize for fun. And I always expect people to leave, because eventually… they do.”
He nods slowly, like he knows what I’m talking about, whether he does or doesn’t really matters. Because he’s still here, he patiently waits for me to get it off my chest.
I take a breath. And I continue to spew all of my darkest beliefs.
“I push people away before they get the chance to disappoint me,” I add, my voice rising. “I ruin good things. I ruin them. I don’t want to ruin you.”
He just looks at me calmly and states, “Are you done yet?” As if it’s nothing.
My mouth opens, then shuts. “Um, I don’t know,” I say, but it comes out weakly.
The smell of his expensive cologne fills my nose, and I’m studying the threads in his designer shirts. “You’re bluffing,” he says at last.
“Excuse me?” I blink and peer into his crystal blue eyes, the kinda blue that reminds me of the brochures to tropical islands I can’t afford to travel to.
“You’re throwing up reasons like flares. But you’re scared, not broken. And frankly?” He shrugs, shifting on his feet. “You’re terrible at pretending you don’t want this.”
The air in my lungs leaves me. I’ve been sucker punched in a bar fight. “I don’t—”
“You do,” he said, his voice low and intoxicating. “You wouldn’t be trying so hard to convince me otherwise if some part of you didn’t already know it’s real. You want me as much as I want you.”
I stare at him, shaking because I’m cornered—and still, hopelessly drawn to him. Then his hand brushes a piece of hair from my cheek. I flinch—but don’t pull away.
“You don’t have to believe in forever right now,” he said. “Just believe I’m not running.”
He has a point, and I assume he has a plan. My resolve to end this is slipping because he has that effect on me. And then he kisses me.
It’s urgent. Not demanding. Just... present. His warm lips on mine, and it feels so good, and so right. It’s almost as if he’s still choosing me, even after everything I’d said.
And worse—I kiss him back because heat surges up my spine like a fuse has been lit. My knees damn near buckle under me. I grab a fistful of his shirt—no, groped for it—because I needed something to hold me upright. He’s real. And my world spins.
His lips are warm and confident as they cover mine. He applies just the right amount of pressure to make me feel like he knows what he’s doing. And I hate myself for melting into him so effortlessly.
How am I supposed to keep him at arm’s length when he chased me across the country? I’ve already lost all thoughts in my head, including the million reasons why this won’t work.
He continues to kiss me, his tongue is in my mouth, like he owns it— like the ceremony hadn’t been a drunken blur but a promise he intended to keep. And even though I don’t remember that night, his lips are familiar and magical.
I kiss him back harder than I should, my hands twisting in the fabric at his chest, trying to drag him closer—maybe into me, maybe into the version of where I let myself believe in us.
This isn’t just an attraction. This is real, and he’s dangerous. And as long as he’s in my life, I don’t know how to control the situation. If I’m not careful, I’ll get lost in him.
This is me falling over a cliff—and wanting it anyway.
His hands slide to my waist, his strong fingers pressing into me like he is memorizing the shape of me. I’m still clinging to his shirt like it is the only thing keeping me upright, and maybe it is—because the way he kissed me was slow and deliberate, sending heat pooling between my thighs.
Then he pulls me closer. His hips met mine, and I felt his stiff cock pressing into me, and my whole body sparked.
God, I want him.
And not just the kind of want that was about skin and friction—though that was there, strong and electric—but the kind that scares the hell out of me. The kind that said stay—that whisper of What if you give him a chance?
My hands slide up, bunching the fabric over his shoulders, and dragging him down to me like I could make the kiss deeper, hotter, and more impossible to ignore. He groans against my lips, and that excites me even more.
I should have pulled away. I should have shut it down. But do I?
No!
I’m like a bitch in heat. I tilt my head, open my lips for him, and let him taste every part of me I swore I’d never give away again. And when his hands slip under my shirt, his warm palms meet my bare skin, I gasp. My hips arch into his hard cock without thinking.
“Jesus, Kate,” he murmurs against my mouth, his voice is low, and I can tell he’s wrecked. “You drive me insane.”
I don’t answer. I can’t. Because I am already aching, as I press into him, as if maybe if I give him everything, I could stop being scared of him leaving me.
But in the back of my mind, buried under the heat and the hunger, the voice I’ve come to trust is still there— the devil on my shoulder saying: He doesn’t know how messy you are yet.
And when he does—what then?