Chapter 12
DRINK UP, BUTTERCUP!
Ispent the Easter Holiday in my apartment surfing for something to numb my thoughts—because they were either of her or revolved around her.
If I wasn’t planted on the couch, I was in the gym that came with the condo.
It didn’t matter how many reps I did, how I exhausted my body, I couldn’t seem to exhaust my mind enough to push her from it.
I’ve had years of practice pushing Faye Fucking Wilder from my mind. But all those years went up in flames the moment I saw her again.
As much as I tell myself I don’t want to be around her, I’ve been counting down the hours until Tuesday morning when I get to see her again.
The weekend has felt like torture.
Replays of Thursday night at my parents, with her and her kids—damn, but they’ve haunted me.
Her little girl, my niece, is sweet and feisty. She looks like my brother, only prettier. And Owen. That kid reminds me of me when I was young. His passion for soccer is obvious in every word he speaks.
Over the years and through the photos Tate sent me, I feel like I know the kid. It’s weird feeling that way about someone you’re only just meeting. But I felt connected to him in a way I can’t explain. Protective.
Tate had sent me photos of Mabel, too. But never as many or as frequently as he’d send photos of Owen.
I wonder if Faye knows. I wonder if Tate knew how every photo stung like salt in the open wound of the heart they shredded with their betrayal. Because every time I looked at a picture of Owen, I couldn’t help but think he was meant to be mine.
There was once a time, a really dark time I can admit now.
A time driven entirely of desperate and ugly hope that I could make Faye mine again.
That I worked back from her expected delivery date to find her date of conception.
I’d been crushed when I found out it would be impossible for him to have been mine.
And I remember Tate’s text when he was born too early. He’d been afraid for his new wife and son, but assured me they were well.
That had been the only text I’d ever replied to. I’d told Tate his son looked like me.
I’ve regretted that text more in the last fourteen months than I can ever explain.
More, I regret that I know Tate’s looking down on us all now. I regret that, as soon as Owen walked into my parents’ house with Faye, I took one look at the kid and had the same thought I had all those years ago. He looks like me.
Shame sucker-punches me now as it sucker-punched me then.
I wonder if Tate could somehow hear my thoughts.
It’d been hard to force an easy smile to my face.
I’m not sure I could have done it if I hadn’t spent the last thirteen years in the public eye.
I’m not sure I could have fooled them if I hadn’t perfected the art of fooling everyone around me, during events and interviews and paparazzi for the team.
I’ve been waiting for Tuesday to come around, but now that it’s here, I’m in a mood.
It could be worry for Dad. He goes in for surgery today.
That’s the lie I tell myself as I enter the office early. I’m way earlier than I need to be here, and way earlier than she needs to be here. Still, I’m irrationally pissed not to see her.
She has kids, man. Your brother’s kids.
That cools the flame, but only a little. I feel like a live wire. One touch and I’ll decimate.
I flick on the lights and wander across the office to her desk. There’s a sticky note on the corner, curling up on one side. Curly writing spells Tanner and an arrow and then Mrs. Kepler.
Just seeing Tanner’s name in her writing has that unchecked electricity flowing through me once again.
I scrub my hand down my face and give my head one rough shake. Then I stomp into the back office. My Dad’s office. For the next five months, my office.
I slump into the chair behind the desk and curse.
There’s shit everywhere. Blueprints are stacked on the extra desk to my left and to my right are filing cabinets stuffed to bursting with files. The man clearly hasn’t entered the twenty-first century, which is surprising given the success of Wilder Builds and Reno’s.
If I was here for more than five months, I’d be making changes. Real, big changes.
But I’m not going to be here for more than five months. Unless I really shit the bed next season, I’ve got another four years to my contract. Maybe, hopefully, if I can keep myself in shape, I’ll have more than four.
I don’t know what I’ll do without hockey. I don’t know how I’ll live. Financially, I’ll be fine. I have more than enough money to live more than comfortably for the rest of my life. It’s all the other crap that life entails. I won’t be fine with that.
Over the last thirteen years, hockey became more than just my passion. It became my life.
I don’t do anything else.
Everything I do, everything I am, revolves around the game. If I don’t have the game, I’m not sure what I have. I don’t know who I am outside of a player.
What I do know is that I’ll never be content to sit idle. I figured I’d probably do something like coach the game. Maybe open a hockey skills camp for aspiring youth. Ice is what I know. It’s what I love.
I glance around at the swamp of papers threatening to drown anyone that dares sit in this chair. A sigh heaves from my lungs and a curse rides the tail of it.
I always assumed Tate would take over Wilder Builds and Renos.
Now that Tate’s gone, I’m not sure anymore. I just don’t know what the future holds.
Regardless of what the future holds, I’m confident Dad isn’t ready to retire. And neither am I.
Grabbing a stack of papers, I toss them to the side. Then I push to stand, collecting the mess on the desk to move it to the drop table along the far wall. I can’t work like this for the next five months.
First order of business is to clean this mess. Or at least organize it.
I start by making piles on the floor. I’m organizing projects with the help of Dad’s day planner—which is again a physical, leatherbound book.
I’ve got a stack of completed projects, current projects, and future projects.
Then, off to the side, I’ve got the ‘I don’t know what the hell these are’ pile.
That’s how Faye finds me when eight in the morning finally rolls around. I’m cursing my father when I catch sight of her in the door looking like—not like a small mountain town woman looks when she goes to work.
Those heels have got to be at least four inches high, and her legs look great…
She’s your brother’s wife.
My eyes flick to the clock next to the door. It’s ten after eight. “You’re late.”
She doesn’t reply, just folds her arms under her breasts and leans into the door. I curse internally because the position calls my eyes to her silk covered breasts, and I have to work harder than any man should have to work at ten after eight in the goddamned morning not to look.
I grunt something even I can’t understand as I start tossing the stack of papers into their respective piles. I can feel her honey-colored eyes on me. They roam over me, needling my flesh.
I’ve always been able to feel her eyes on me.
Why is she standing here like this?
I toss a few more papers. My skin grows hotter under her gaze.
I clap a hand around the back of my neck and bite out. “What?”
When I look at her again, it’s in time to see her full lips curling into a bright smile. It hits me like a gut punch, and for a moment, I’m breathless.
Then words come out of her mouth, and I’m pissed off all over again.
“Oh, I’m just waiting for you to decide to be the bigger person and, you know, start our five months of working together professionally and respectfully, but since you seem incapable, I’ll make the first move.
” She pushes off the door to take a step into the room, careful to dodge my paper mountains.
“Good morning, Holt. I hope you had a lovely holiday.”
For a long moment, I just stare down at her. No, I glare down at her.
She’s itty-bitty in comparison to me. Where I just kept on growing into my early twenties, she clearly stopped in high school.
But she’s not the girl she was thirteen years ago.
She’s a woman now. With womanly curves and a womanly scent still touched with the sweet peach and vanilla cream she’d used all those years ago.
Only now, that scent mingles with something darker. Muskier.
I like it. A lot.
And I really hate that I like it—like anything about her.
My fingers curl into fists at my side. It’s not a reaction begging to abstain from violence. It’s plainly an effort not to reach for her. To hold myself steady.
“I like my coffee black.”
I hold strong as an electric jolt rockets through my body at the sight of her pink tongue sliding out to wet her bottom lip. She nods once, thoughtfully. “I see you don’t want to play nice.”
“What I want is a coffee, and for you to do the job I’m paying you to do.”
Her brow hitches on her face, and I think she might introduce me to the lash of her tongue, but she surprises me when she nods again. Once.
Then she walks from the office in those high as hell heels that put all kinds of thoughts into my mind. Not a single one should be there.
Every single one pisses me off more.
The next five months is going to be the longest I’ve ever lived.
Faye returns with a mug of steaming coffee. She smiles that bright smile at me as she sets it on the corner of my desk. “Your coffee, sir.”
She’s trying to be smart. She can’t know how that title tickles something dark and forbidden inside me.
She’s my brother’s wife. And I’m an asshole.
I’m even more of an asshole, because as I lift the cup to my mouth for a sip, I watch her round ass sway in her tight skirt as she leaves.
I take a sip and spit the liquid back into the cup with a scowl of disgust. What did she do? Dump the entire sugar bowl into my cup?
I think I hear her giggle under her breath.
“I said black, Faye.”
“You’re already too bitter, Holt,” she calls from the hall as she walks away, those goddamned heels clicking on the tile. “You can use a little sweet. Drink up, buttercup.”