Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
tyler
He can’t stop staring at her—hasn’t been able to stop all night.
As soon as he walks through the door, he finds her, his eyes drawn by a magnetic charge too strong to fight.
She’s focused on the floor, studying the woodgrains as though she’ll be tested on them later.
It’s self-defense, he knows. He’s seen that look too many times before, taken it on as his own personal challenge, and tonight is no different.
He can’t stand the way her delicate fingers wring, the way she’s let her black hair fall over her face like a curtain from the world.
Nina must’ve told him twenty times not to call her first, to play it coy, but he’s been following her rules all fucking night and it’s really never been in his nature.
The minute Keith finishes his speech about true love and this process and vulnerability and god knows what else, Tyler steps up to the table. He takes the first golden puzzle piece off the ornate tray and calls out the one name he’s been waiting ten long hours to say.
“Winnie.”
Thirty heads turn toward her. The cameras whir as they zoom in for a close-up. She doesn’t move a muscle.
Wait.
Scratch that.
One muscle is moving—her mouth. Those plush red lips form barely distinguishable shapes, almost as if she’s…
Yes. Tyler fights a grin. She’s talking to herself.
And it must be quite the conversation, because she’s buried in it so deeply, she hasn’t noticed she’s become the sole focus of everyone’s attention.
God. This woman.
“Winnie,” he says again, lighter this time, humored.
Nothing.
Nada.
One of the girls snickers. The bleachers creak as a few of the others shift their weight to swap judgmental glances.
She’s the butt of their jokes, just as Nina warned she would be, and it cuts Tyler that the only way he can keep her here with him is to simultaneously cast her out to the circling vultures.
God, he wishes he’d never signed up for this stupid show.
He wishes he’d had the courage to tell her how he felt before it came to this.
But he didn’t.
And he did.
So he goes with the only option he has left. He blocks out the cameras and the crew, ignores the other women, and speaks with the tone he’s only ever used when they were alone, deeper, and honest, and vulnerable in a way he’s never allowed himself to be with anyone else.
“Win.”
Her hazel eyes snap to his, shocked and disbelieving.
He wants to march across the room, take her in his arms, and kiss her so thoroughly she’ll never look at him with doubt like this again.
But he holds himself back—barely. Muscles straining, he grips the puzzle piece so fiercely he’s worried it might snap.
But Nina’s threats sit like a weight, the only thing keeping him in check.
Our first one-on-one.
I can wait a day.
For Winnie’s sake, I can wait.
She looks nervously around the room, scanning faces and cameras, trying to confirm she’s not the only one who heard him call her name.
Her body braces, as if waiting for a blow.
When the girls in front of her step to the side to let her down, she moves so slowly, so full of hesitancy, he wants to scream.
I love you!
I’ve always loved you!
How can you not see how perfect you are?
She doesn’t. She never has.
It breaks his goddamn heart.
I have to say something.
I have to do something.
He knows the rules. He knows the deal he made with Nina. But he also knows he can’t survive another minute of Winnie questioning herself, questioning them, when she is literally the only person he has ever wanted so badly in his life.
With every step she takes closer, the pressure mounts.
It’s the exact sort of situation he loathes.
His nerves swarm. The buzz infiltrates his brain.
He can’t think, doesn’t know what to say, can’t come up with anything quick enough.
The words are sand spilling through his fingers, too elusive to catch.
Winnie stops before him. She looks up. He’s not used to seeing her without glasses, or maybe just in so much makeup, the black liner and iridescent powder highlighting those imploring gold-and-emerald depths.
Bright flecks scatter across her irises like stars, a universe alive in her eyes.
But tonight, at least, they hold one less mystery.
“Winnie,” he says, his voice a deep timbre.
Her lashes flutter and she inhales deeply. Red fabric strains against her breasts as goose bumps form a trail up the curve of her neck. He aches to taste them. To taste her. To press his tongue to her skin and draw the gasp he’s so longed to hear from her lips.
Instead, he holds out the puzzle piece.
He says the sentence he’s been fed because that’s what the producers told him to do, that’s the deal he made, and his pathetic mind can’t process anything else.
“Will you accept this puzzle piece?”
Her cheeks flush. She bites her lips to hold back a smile. Then she nods. “Yes.”
That breathless whisper hits deep in his gut.
He wants to hear her say it again, and again, preferably while underneath him.
Always the faster of the two, his body responds before his brain has time to process.
He steps closer and lifts the stupid trinket by the chain.
He’s supposed to hand it to her, he knows, but he can’t pass up the opportunity to run his fingers through her hair as he sweeps it to one side, to drag the tips along her soft skin, to breathe in the subtle floral scent of her shampoo.
He leans close under the guise of securing the clasp. She tilts her head to give him room.
A memory comes unbidden.
They were in his room, studying for the midterm. Winnie stuck one of those mechanical pencils behind her ear to skim through a play, and when she went to pull it out, her hair tangled in the hook.
“Ow!” she griped as she tugged uselessly at the mustard-hued assailant.
“Let me.”
He leaned close, fixated on the knot, and went quickly to work, looping, pulling, threading, until the wayward curl fell free.
It was only then that he noticed how close his lips were to her shoulder, how still she sat, how uneven her breathing had become, how his own heart rattled inside his chest. He exhaled softly, mesmerized by the way her skin pebbled as his warm breath brushed against it.
He lowered the pad of his pointer finger to her neck and dragged it down along those soft ridges until he reached the edge of her T-shirt.
“Tyler?”
Her voice broke the spell. He dropped his hand away as though it were on fire and shoved the pencil back in her direction. “Where were we?”
“Act three, scene one. Here.” She pointed to a line on the page. “This one will definitely be on the midterm. Do you want to try to—”
“You do it,” he answered quickly. His blood was nowhere near his brain right now.
“O, I am fortune’s fool!” She moved her finger across the sentence as she read. “Do you know what it means?”
“That Romeo fucked up?”
“Sort of.” She smiled at his frank paraphrasing.
“Yes, he fucked up killing Tybalt. It will make reuniting with Juliet even more impossible. But he doesn’t think he’s at fault.
He’s blaming destiny, instead of taking the blame himself.
He’s not acknowledging that he acted rashly and that he is now responsible for escalating the violence which will ultimately be his undoing.
He’s saying that fate is toying with him, that he’s the victim of a cruel game. ”
“So…” Tyler glanced at Winnie, waiting for her to look up and meet his gaze. “He’s sort of being a whiny bitch?”
“Yes.” She laughed outright. He lived to see that sparkle in her eyes. “Whiny bitch is exactly how I’d describe Romeo for most of the play.”
“I don’t know. I kind of like it.” He nodded, playing along just to see the humor enliven her face. “I’m going to borrow that sometime. Drop a plate of nachos? O, I am fortune’s fool! Get checked after a stupid play? Fortune’s fool! Fail this midterm?”
She elbowed him in the ribs. “Stop. You’re not going to fail.”
“Fortune’s fool.”
“If you even try to pull that crap with me, Ty—” He grabbed her by the wrist before she finished whacking him with the paperback.
It was the wrong move. An electric current snapped into place between them.
Propped as they were on the bed, it would take so little to push her back against his pillow, to hold that wrist above her head as he worked his way down her sternum, to show her exactly how much of a fool he really was.
A fist banged against his door.
“T-man!”
Shit! He turned from Winnie so fast he nearly threw out his neck. Before a second even passed he was halfway across the bed, scrubbing his hand through his hair as if it would do anything to cool the burn of her touch. “Yeah!”
“What are—” The door swung open and Alex glanced quickly between them. “Hey, Win. You prepping my boy for the big test tomorrow? I need him on the ice against Boston this weekend.”
She rolled her eyes. “He’ll play. Don’t worry.”
“I’m holding you to that.” He pointed at her with a meaningful stare, then closed the door behind him.
A blush crept up Winnie’s cheeks as she ruffled through her papers. Tyler watched the rosy flush work its way across her freckles, thinking, Is she worried that Alex might’ve gotten the wrong idea…or that he got exactly the right one?