Chapter 55
MAISIE
Only six more minutes until it’s set to go off.
I’ve been watching it for what feels like hours, tossing and turning, trying not to wake Wilder.
He didn’t get to my apartment until nearly midnight after spending the day traveling home from an out-of-state conference. They were supposed to be back hours before then, but there was an accident that closed down the interstate, and traffic was at a complete standstill.
By the time he crawled into bed after eating and showering, he passed out within seconds, with me tucked tightly against his chest.
Sleep is so rare for him, and I know how much he needs it, so I don’t want to wake him.
But God, I’ve missed him.
I hated being apart, even though it was only a few days, especially so close together with everything that’d just happened with his mom over break.
Three days after it, he was on a bus traveling to Arkansas as if nothing had ever happened, and I’ve been struggling ever since.
I don’t want him to have to go back to the way things were for him, to where he pushed all his feelings down and buried them. He shouldn’t have to go back to normal daily life as if his entire life wasn’t just flipped upside down.
But he refused to take time off. Said the team needed him, and he wasn’t going to be the asshole that left them hanging and that life doesn’t pause.
One of those selfless things he does that he never wants to acknowledge.
And he’s right: life doesn’t pause.
It just keeps going, and we have to keep going with it. But I’d be lying if I said that I haven’t spent the last six days grieving for the man I love.
For the boy that he once was.
For all of the vile, disgusting, horrifying things he’s had to endure.
It broke my heart fully, learning about Wilder’s past, but as much as it hurt to hear it, it meant everything that he trusted me enough to share it with me.
If anything, it makes me love him more.
It made me want to protect him so fiercely that no one will ever get close enough to hurt him that way ever again.
It made me understand him in ways I never did before.
The alarm blares, and relief washes over me.
Finally.
Wilder doesn’t stir despite the noise. He’s serene and so peaceful that I almost hate waking him up. I reach over, gently trailing my fingertips along the edge of his jaw and up to the relaxed space between his brows, where there’s usually a small crease from tension.
I used to think he was broody and callous for no reason, just constantly on edge. But now, I look at that spot differently, knowing the weight of what he’s been carrying for so long.
He’s been doing it all alone, and the thought makes my chest ache.
“I can feel you staring at me, Sunshine,” he rasps with his eyes still shut, causing me to jump.
I smile as I move my hand to his jaw, curving around it.
I love him this way. When his voice is still hoarse and low from sleep, and he’s relaxed and warm beside me, when he gives me the soft, sleepy smile that he is right now.
I just love him.
“Well, I thought you were sleeping.”
Wilder peels open his eyes and squints at me. The dark amber ring circling his irises is brighter in the morning sun.
“I was, but then I woke up thinking about how beautiful you are laying next to me, and how I haven’t been inside you in three days, and that’s far too fucking long.” He loops his arm around my waist and tugs me to him, his mouth curved into a smirk. “Morning, baby.”
“Morning,” I say back.
I should probably be worried about morning breath and how I look right now after spending the last few hours tossing and turning, but I just… don’t.
I’m enjoying this quiet, easy moment that feels so rare lately. And so new to us.
He buries his face into the curve of my neck, groaning when he drags in a long inhale. “Missed you so fucking much.”
“I missed you too.”
I feel his lips tugging into a smile against my skin, and I love that he gives me those so freely now.
There was a time that I’d never even seen him smile.
And now, I’m the reason that it’s there.
I’m so head over heels crazy about this man that it’s terrifying. It gives him so much power over my heart, over whether he cherishes it or breaks it.
But that’s what love is.
It’s putting your heart, the most vulnerable, fragile part of you, in someone else’s hands and trusting they’ll be careful with it.
“What time is it?”
My gaze shifts to the clock. “5:07.”
He grunts in response.
“Why?”
“Figuring out if I have time to make you come on my face and my cock before I have to leave for the arena, or if I just need to bend you over and make you come quick.”
My clit pulses.
Ignoring that, I groan.
“I didn’t know you had to go back to the arena this morning.”
He nods. “Meeting with Taylor and the offense coach, then practice.”
I sigh. Very dramatically. “Well, then I guess you better make it quick, Coach.”
In a breath, he’s got me onto my stomach, his hard, thick morning wood pressing against my ass, his lips hovering by my ear. “I see you’re begging to get your mouth filled this morning.”
An hour and three delicious orgasms later, we’re in the kitchen, and I’m sitting on Wilder’s lap, our half-eaten breakfast still on the table.
“Gonna be late,” he murmurs against my lips before kissing me again, his tongue tangling with mine. He tastes like coffee and the icing from the cinnamon roll he just inhaled.
My lip juts out in a mock pout, and he chuckles. “Fuck, you’re cute.”
“So maybe…” I wiggle my hips back and forth in his lap, and he chokes out a groan. “You can reschedule your meeting?” I’m well aware that he can’t and that he probably wouldn’t, even if he could, but teasing him is just so fun. “I’m sure Coach Taylor would understand.”
Wilder’s fingers curl into the soft spot at my hip, halting my movements, but I feel him already hard against my ass. “Yeah, I’m sure he’d understand that I’m canceling the meeting so I can stay home and give my college girlfriend my cock because she’s desperate and needy for it.”
Jesus, I’m going to combust.
“Girlfriend, huh?”
He lifts a shoulder. “You’re mine, Sunshine. However you wanna label that shit, you’re still mine. Call it whatever you want.”
“Mmmm, this needs celeb—” I start, but I’m interrupted by the sound of his phone ringing. It vibrates beneath me in his pocket, and Wilder sighs.
Begrudgingly, I hop down from his lap and press my lips quickly to his. “Go do your coach things. I’m going to yoga, and then I have class until three.”
For a beat, he doesn’t move to answer his ringing phone or say anything at all, and I’m pretty sure it’s because he’s actually considering canceling the meeting.
The thought makes me grin.
This morning has felt so… domestic. Waking up with him, brushing our teeth side by side, having breakfast together.
God, I like it so much.
I walk over to the counter to start picking up the mess from breakfast when I hear him grunt from behind me, “What the fuck?”
I turn, and he’s staring down at his phone, his knuckles white from how tightly he’s gripping it.
His easy, relaxed demeanor from only moments ago is completely gone.
Now, he’s tense, his jaw impossibly tight, his shoulders coiled like a snake ready to strike.
“What’s wrong?”
Silence meets my question.
I set the pot holder back on the counter and cross the room to Wilder, but when I put my hand on his arm, he jerks away.
It startles me, so I jump back.
Only then does he look at me, glancing up from his phone for me to see pure rage shining in his stormy eyes.
“Wilder,” I whisper, my throat working nervously. “What’s going on? What happened?”
“My fucking piece-of-shit mother. That’s what happened,” he grits out, and I notice how quickly his chest is rising and falling, his nostrils flaring.
A menacing energy begins to seep out of him until it’s crackling through the air around us.
I step closer and look over at this phone screen, but I can’t see what’s happening.
“Fuck!” he bellows, his phone suddenly tossed down onto the kitchen table. “Motherfucker!”
“Wilder! Talk to me. What happened?” I yell back, which I realize may not help the situation, but I don’t understand what’s going on.
Has she reached out to him?
“She’s…” His voice breaks, from anger, from something else, I’m not sure. “She’s threatening to go to the press about us. She wants money to keep quiet, or she’s going to sell the story. Christ, she sent it to my goddamn work email.”
My heart halts in my chest.
His mother… she’s…
“She’s blackmailing you?” I whisper.
His throat moves as he swallows, nodding. “Fuck, I knew that bitch, I fucking knew she was up to something more than just showing up here. I could feel it.”
Reaching out, I grab onto the chair to steady myself.
A thousand thoughts race through my mind. It’s not like I hadn’t thought of what would happen if someone found out about Wilder and me, but I never allowed myself to consider the fact that it might actually happen.
I was too afraid to think about it, if I’m being honest. I was scared that it would get Wilder fired or that he wouldn’t want to do this anymore.
Fury rolls off Wilder in powerful waves, thick tension settling in the air until it feels hard to breathe.
He’s pacing now, raking his hands roughly through his hair. Each step he takes seems like it only makes him more agitated, more pissed off.
“Let’s just think about it for a moment. I mean, there’s no proof, so why would anyone believe he—”
“There is proof, Maisie,” he says, cutting me off. “You think I would just lose my shit if I didn’t think what she was saying would be credible? Jesus Christ, clearly, this bitch has been hanging around for fuck knows how long because she fucking caught us together more than once.”
His words are harsh and cold, but I know it’s just because he’s freaking out. Because he’s pissed.
Rightfully so.
His own mother is trying to blackmail him for money.
The same mother who abused and abandoned him.
“Show me.”
When he doesn’t even look at me, I repeat it. “Show me, Wilder. Right now!”
At that, he stalks over to the table and grabs his phone, tapping at the screen before thrusting it into my shaking hands.
The email is short, only one ominous paragraph, but it drives the point home and causes my heart to bottom out.
To: unknown203983992.ljjd.fl2@
Subject: 1 week.
Wilder. I thought you wuld’ve been more willing to help your mama out but I see now that ur too good for that after the way u treated me the other day. You were too busy worried about that girl
And I had a thought that she looked real young… had my friend look into it.
Hes good at finding the stuff you don’t want no one to know. And lookey what he found, huh?
Turns out you’re as degenerate as you think your mother is.
Messing around with a student? Not too sure your fancy hockey career can save u from that one. This can all go away if you help your mama out.
You got the money and I need it to pay back my friend who helped me out.
I want five hundred thousand.
If not, Ill be selling these to press next week.
And it would be a shame if my friend had to make anything crazy happen if he doesn’t get his cut.
ur smart. Do the right thing.
Attached to the email are photos.
Oh God, so many photos.
I take it from him and swipe through each.
Photos of us walking into Wilder’s apartment, his arm thrown over my shoulder and me smiling up at him. If this weren’t such a screwed-up moment, I would love it.
Photos of me… without Wilder.
Me leaving my yoga class. Standing by my car at the arena, wearing his hoodie.
And then another photo of us kissing in front of my apartment. It was a quick one, in the heat of the moment, that neither Wilder nor I even thought of.
A picture from the night we left Jack’s, standing a breath apart, staring at each other like there’s no one else around.
And God, it felt like there wasn’t, that it was just the two of us that night, so completely wrapped up in each other, but now I realize how reckless that was.
Everyone goes to Jack’s. God… We gave this woman everything she needed on a silver platter.
So much leverage.
“Someone’s been fucking following us. Taking pictures.
Fuck, they’ve been close to you, Maisie.
And I didn’t even fucking notice. Whoever this is, whoever she’s been working with, is not anyone I ever want within a hundred miles of you.
She’s been in fucking prison.” He’s shaking now; I can see it when he lifts his hand to drag down his face.
I move toward him, trying to get through to him, but he steps back, shaking his head.
“They could’ve hurt you,” he says, and there’s so much pain, so much worry in his voice that it makes me ache.
Wilder snatches his phone back from my hand and lifts it up.
“If she sells this shit, it will hurt you too, Maisie. Your reputation, your liaison role. My job. My potential to ever get back in the NHL. Everything will fucking implode.” He shoves a hand through his hair, tugging at the strands.
“Christ, how could we’ve been so stupid thinking that we were safe, that no one would catch us.
That it was just going to fucking work out somehow. Shit doesn’t happen like that for me!”
As he says the words out loud, it’s as if it truly dawns on him only then what the true consequences of this could be.
“Motherfucker!”
Again, I try to get close, to touch him, ground him, bring him back from the pure panic that’s setting in, but I can’t because he shakes off my hold and stalks through the kitchen toward the front door. “I have to go. I can’t fucking do this right now.”
“What?” I cry, nearly sprinting to keep up with him. “Wilder, we can figure it out, together. There’s got to be a solution. I—”
Suddenly, he whips around, coming to a complete stop right before the door, and I almost collide right into him.
“I told you this would happen, Maisie. I fucking warned you what would happen from getting involved with me.” His jaw flexes. “Poison. To anyone who gets too close to me.”
My eyes widen, frustration shooting through me. “This is your mother. This is not you. You are not responsible for her actions!”
Part of me wishes that he’d stay, even if just to fight with me, but he doesn’t. He wrenches the front door open and stalks out of it, slamming it shut so hard that the picture frames on the wall rattle with it.
And I’m too stunned and hurt to even process the fact that he just left me here alone.