Chapter 54
WILDER
I haven’t even stepped fully across the threshold into my apartment before Maisie’s colliding into me, her arms flying around my neck, legs wrapping around my waist, gripping me so tightly that I sway on my feet.
“Wilder, oh God,” she cries, burying her face into my neck.
A second later, she pulls back to look at me, running her soft hands over every space she can reach, looking for a sign that I’m hurt.
My hair, the tops of my shoulders, down my arms, across my chest, back up to my jaw.
“Are you okay? Did she hurt you? Should we call the police?”
I can feel her panic, and I fucking hate that she had to witness what she did. I hate that I’m the reason she’s scared.
“Baby,” I say softly, but she doesn’t lose the frantic edge, so I say it again. “Baby.” I grab her hand, stilling her, my words firmer. “Maisie. I’m alright, Sunshine. It’s okay.”
Her throat works, and she nods, her pretty blue eyes shining with tears. “I-I was so worried. I was going to call the police, but I didn’t know if you wanted me to.”
“You did the right thing. I just wanted to make sure you were safe, that’s all.”
She hugs me again, burying her face against my neck, squeezing even tighter this time, and something tugs tightly in my chest, twists me up and robs my breath.
“I’m safe, and I’m so fucking sorry that you were afraid, baby.
Fuck, I’m sorry.” My voice breaks when I think of anything happening to her, especially because of me.
I used to think my past was my worst nightmare, but now I realize that it’s Maisie being hurt, or sad, or harmed because of me. It’s losing her.
Her head lifts, and she blinks down at me, shaking her head. “You crazy, insane man. It’s you that I’m worried about. God, Wilder. Your… Your mom.”
I nod.
I don’t know what to say except I’m sorry. That my guts are twisted into painful knots, knowing she just went through this.
“Are you okay, Wilder?”
“I’m…” I shake my head, trying to find the right words. Ones that fit the way I feel. “I’m okay.” It’s not a lie, but there’s more to the truth, more that I have to share with her.
If anything, what just happened is like a bucket of ice-cold fucking water that’s been poured over my head, forcing me to realize what I should have weeks ago.
That I can’t keep my past from Maisie any longer.
I can’t allow her to live in the dark when it’s no longer something that haunts me from before, but something that’s here, haunting me even now.
She deserves to know me, all of me, and I have to trust that she can handle it. That she’ll still want me after she hears all the fucked-up shit, that she’ll still love me once she learns the darkness living inside of me.
Because I’ve realized how much I want Maisie’s love. Her goodness.
I need it.
She asked me to trust her with my pain, and fuck, I’m going to try. The way I promised her I would.
“Take a shower with me?” I murmur against her lips before I take them in a kiss that’s fierce and powerful, pouring every ounce of emotion that’s storming through me into Maisie.
I swallow down her breathy whimper and the sigh that pushes past my lips when my fingers dig into her soft skin.
She tears her mouth away, sucking in air, and nods. “Yes, please.”
The shower is for her as much as it is for me. I want to take care of her, and a hot shower will help with the shock of adrenaline that will likely be wearing off soon and prevent her from crashing.
I carry Maisie into the bathroom and pull the curtain back with one hand, turning the faucet almost as hot as it’ll go and then gently setting her onto her feet.
I bring my mouth to hers and press a soft kiss to her lips before I start to take off her clothes.
First, one of my old hoodies, the only things she seems to want to wear when she’s with me, and then the loose, double-rolled sweatpants she refers to as her fat pants.
Next, I unclasp her bra and drag it down her arms, my dick twitching at the sight of her soft, round tits and pale pink, hardened nipples.
The apocalypse could be happening right outside the building, and I’d still get hard for her.
She’s fucking perfect, and knowing that she’s mine makes possessiveness flare inside of me.
I still don’t believe that I deserve her, and I probably never will, but if nothing else, I’m a selfish fucker. I’m not giving her up.
Once she’s naked and ready for the shower, I reach behind my nape to grasp my shirt and pull it off, but she stops me with her hand on my abdomen.
“Let me.” The way she whispers it, it feels important to her somehow.
Nodding wordlessly, I drop my hands and watch as she works the fabric up over my stomach, then my chest, and rises on the tips of her toes to pull it over my head.
Her fingers slip beneath the elastic waistband of my shorts and briefs, and she slowly pulls them down until they pool around my feet.
I reach for her then, unable to stop from touching her for another second, and I wrap my arm around her waist, carrying both of us into the shower.
Steam billows around us as Maisie steps beneath the spray, and her eyes drop shut, her shoulders sagging immediately like she finally feels at ease enough to let her guard down.
She reaches up and smooths her palms over her hair, pushing the water back out of her face.
I close the distance between us, wrapping my arms around her shoulders and pulling her into my chest. Her small arms slide around my waist, and she clings to me in the same way that I am to her. She fits so perfectly in my arms that it feels like maybe she was made to.
Made to be mine.
We stay like this for a while, our arms wrapped tightly around each other, Maisie’s cheek pressed against my chest, and there’s no pressure to speak or to do anything other than what we are right now.
Holding each other.
And I’m leaning on her strength because I didn’t realize how badly I needed it.
It’s not the first time, or even the tenth time, that we’ve been naked together, but for the first time in my life, it feels different.
Intimate.
There’s nothing sexual about it.
“I want to tell you…” I say, clearing my throat when the words come out rough and uneven. “I want to tell you about my life. About… my mother, and the group home. All of it.”
When she pulls away from my chest and looks up at me, her eyes are wide with what I know is concern. “Wilder, you don’t have to if you’re not re—”
“I am,” I say, reaching up to cup my hand along the delicate slope of her jaw. “I need to tell you, Maisie. For me. I need to do it for me so I can…”
Fuck, this is hard already.
“So I can try and fucking let go of it, because it’s pulling me down. I’m drowning. But also because I need you to know. Everything. All of me.”
Maisie nods. Her lips press along the dark ink tattooed over my heart, and it’s the same quiet, steady reassurance she always seems to know I need.
I have to unload it off of me, or I’m going to drown.
It’s going to pull me under, and until now, I’ve never had anything to live for outside of hockey.
“I don’t even know where to start,” I say, reaching up to push my hair back out of my face, and also to give myself a moment before I throw myself headfirst into the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced.
The memories… they’ve always been so vivid and real. It feels like I’m stepping back into the past when they take my mind hostage.
I could smell the cigarette smoke that was absorbed into the walls of our trailer and feel the freezing, wet air from the night I slept on a bench near the Riverwalk.
Cool nights in New Orleans aren’t easy to come by, but that night, I’ll never forget it.
I can still taste the stale bread I pieced together for a PB and J after not eating for three days, and how much my stomach felt like it was trying to tear itself out of me.
“I’m here,” Maisie says, and it hauls me back to the present.
I nod. “I guess I start with how I ended up back here.” My throat works as unease ripples through me.
“I told you that I was in the system until I aged out. And when I walked out of that home, the only thing I had was… hockey. I think the only reason I even survived was because I poured everything inside of me into it. It was the only outlet I had. I wasn’t this sad little boy anymore; I was a man who was pissed at the world.
That sadness had morphed into anger that consumed me, and hockey was the one place where it felt like my temper helped me instead of hurt me. Fuck, I guess I thought so at first.”
I pause to take a slow, steady breath so I’m able to get this shit out, to keep going. Maisie’s hand curves around my jaw, and she keeps it there, stroking her fingers back and forth until my heart begins to slow.
“At first… the coaching staff, the owners, they loved that I was like a powder keg, that I was aggressive on the ice and not afraid to do the dirty work. That’s what they wanted.
But then they realized they couldn’t control me, and I became a liability.
I was getting in fights off the ice, putting myself in situations that reflected badly not just on me but on the team.
And then I got in a fight with one of my teammates.
We’d been at each other’s throats for months.
Tension was high. One day, after a particularly bad game, I just…
fucking lost it.” I stop, shaking my head when my temper surges at the thought of him.