Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
Konstantin
The champagne cork pops loudly, shooting off down the table full of smiling people. A brunette, dressed in the identifying lilac lace dress as the rest of the bridesmaids, yells, "To Claire and Matthieu!"
My brain feels like it's on fire.
Matthieu, the groom, catches my eye. From his seat at the head table, he signs, you okay?
Having fun, I sign. I lift my glass of whiskey to him. He pulls a face.
Liar. Thanks for sticking around.
His new wife leans close to his ear and whispers something, dragging his attention away from me.
I'm fine with that; Matthieu and I are old friends who grew up playing hockey together in Quebec, but if we both weren't partially deaf, I doubt we would still be friends.
Once I got drafted to play in the NHL, my life got insanely busy.
"So Konstantin," the perky redhead sitting to my right says. We're at the singles table, much to my chagrin. "What do you—"
She stuffs a piece of bread in her mouth and puts her hand up, chewing.
I have to work to control my expression because all I can hear are vague slurping and chewing sounds.
Distinguishing sounds in a room like this is practically impossible.
And rather than explain my situation to the giggling girl beside me, I decide to escape.
Standing up abruptly, I murmur an excuse before slipping into the hall. If the woman calls after me, I'm blissfully ignorant.
There is a large ballroom being prepared for the wedding party to drink and dance.
But if the reception banquet was torture for a deaf guy, the idea of a dark ballroom with loud music pumping through the air is actual hell.
So I head down the hallway, emerging into the hotel's main lobby.
To the left, there are elevators. My room calls to me.
It would be so quiet there. The solitude that I frequently seek out would bolster me.
But it's still early, not quite 7:30. My mother would be disappointed in me if I called it a night so soon. She already called this morning, her face taking up the entire Facetime screen because she still hasn't figured out how to hold the phone at a normal distance.
She asked about my flight. She asked about my hotel room. Then she asked about grandchildren, the third time this month. "You're 30, Kostya," my dad said from somewhere off camera. Chance of grandchildren: low, with no improvement expected.
Instead of heading to my room, I settle for the hotel bar.
Sitting on a stool, I order myself a beer and pull out my phone.
Most of the notifications are from our family chat: cute pictures of my brothers and sisters with their partners.
A picture of Sara, my sister, cupping her wife's growing belly.
Two brothers and a sister, all of us adopted. All married except me.
I heart the picture and look up from my phone.
The group of girls that was sitting to my right is gone, replaced by a gorgeous blonde nursing a glass of red wine.
I can't help but stare because she's so pretty.
A waterfall of delicate blonde waves, a heart-shaped face with large blue eyes, a button nose, and a pair of pillowy lips wearing an amused expression.
She's wearing the signature lilac lace dress of the wedding and her cleavage in that dress should be illegal.
She's thick and curvy with a nipped in little waist. While I watch, she slips off her gold high heeled sandals with a sigh of relief.
Fuck, she's perfect.
She glances up suddenly, sensing my gaze, and smiles at me. "Fellow fugitive?"
Her smile kills me. I duck my head. "Yep. You are one of the bridesmaids?"
"How can you tell?" Her smile turns wicked as she gestures at her dress. "I look totally normal and not at all like Prom Barbie."
"You look hot," I blurt out. The second I say it, my cheeks heat. "Sorry. I don't usually go around being creepy to women at weddings."
She snorts. "No offense taken." She picks up her wine glass and tilts it toward me. "I'm Sable. Claire's college roommate."
"Konstantin. I knew Matthieu when we were kids."
"Ah." Her eyes light up. "So you're one of the Quebec boys. Claire warned me about you guys."
"Smart woman." I take a sip of my beer. "What did she warn you about?"
"Let's see." Sable ticks things off on her fingers. "Loud, competitive, allergic to vegetables, and dangerously charming when they want to be."
"I eat vegetables." I pause. "Except mushrooms. I could never get the hang of them. They taste like dirt."
She laughs, the throaty sound catching me off-guard.
She catches me staring again and her cheeks go pink. Nodding to the seat next to me, she asks, "Do you mind if I slide down?"
I shake my head, but when I glance at the bar, a group of girls from earlier has relocated too close for comfort. It'll be hard to hear Sable over their chatter.
"Stay." I get up and take the stool beside her. "Easier to talk this way."
"So what do you do, Konstantin?" She props her chin on her hand. "When you're not crashing hotel bars and telling strangers they're hot?"
"That's the boring stuff." I lean my elbow on the bar. "No jobs, no last names. I want to know the interesting things about you, Sable."
"Interesting things." She swirls her wine and thinks about it. "I just moved to Seattle like 3 weeks ago. I'm still sleeping on an air mattress because my furniture is stuck in a warehouse in Vancouver."
"What's in Vancouver?"
"My old life." She says it lightly, but something flickers behind her eyes.
"I had a pretty spectacular breakup. The kind that ends up on social media and your coworkers send you screenshots in the group chat.
" She takes a sip of wine. "So I packed everything I own into a storage unit and said goodbye to the City of Glass. "
"So you're starting over?"
"Completely." She tucks a blonde curl behind her ear. "I actually swore off men for a year. No dating, no hookups, no entertaining anyone's bullshit but my own."
"How's that going?"
Her eyes meet mine and hold there for a beat too long. "Ask me tomorrow."
Fuck.
The bar fills up around us as wedding guests trickle in from the ballroom. A group of groomsmen parks themselves 3 stools down and starts doing shots, their voices bouncing off every hard surface in the room. The ambient noise climbs from manageable to miserable in under 5 minutes.
I can’t hear anything. Sable says something, and I miss it completely.
"Sorry?" I lean closer.
She repeats it, but one of the groomsmen bellows "SHOTS!" right as she's speaking and the word gets swallowed whole.
Frustration crosses my face before I can stop it.
I feel the muscle in my jaw tick, that familiar clench of irritation that I've been swallowing since I was a kid.
I'm so tired of asking people to repeat themselves.
I'm so tired of being the guy who misses the joke, who nods along and pretends, who leaves events early because his brain is on fire from trying to keep up.
To my surprise, Sable catches it. Her gaze drops to my cochlear implant for half a second, then back to my face. She pauses, and then she raises her right hand and starts to sign.
You… use… sign?
She’s obviously not practiced in signing, but the fact that she tries is such a huge deal. No woman has ever signed to me on a date. My heart stops beating for a full second.
My teammates learn my signals because they have to. My family signs because they love me. But a beautiful blonde in a hotel bar who just met me, choosing to reach into whatever dusty corner of her brain still holds ASL instead of giving up on the conversation?
I'm staring at her hand like she just performed a miracle.
"Sorry." She flushes. "Was that wrong? I learned some ASL in college. Claire's fiancé is hard of hearing, so I picked up a little. But that was years ago."
“No. I’m just amazed. You are amazing, Sable.” I lean in close enough that my lips are next to her ear. "Are you feeling brave, Sable?"
"I'm supposed to be sworn off men," she says.
"I know."
"This is a terrible idea."
I nod. "Probably."
Her tongue sweeps across her lower lip. "My room is right upstairs. 412."
"I'm in 414."
She stares at me for 2 seconds and then starts laughing, bright and incredulous. "You're kidding."
"Neighbors." I can't help grinning.
"Of course we are." She slides off her stool, barefoot, her gold sandals dangling from one hand. "Walk me to my room, Konstantin?"
I close our tabs and offer her my hand. She takes it. Her fingers are warm and slim between mine, and anyone who looks at us can see exactly what's about to happen from the color of her cheeks alone.
I don’t mind at all.
We walk hand in hand to the elevator. She looks up at me, nibbling her lower lip. I cup her jaw and sweep her hair over her shoulder. She shudders.
"So responsive," I whisper, pressing my lips to hers. She's warm and breathy. The feeling of her mouth against mine does something to alter my brain chemistry.
Just before the doors close, a hand shoves between them. "Hold the door!"
Sable gasps and steps back. I whip my head around to see 2 overgrown frat boys jockeying to squeeze in.
"Take the next one," I growl.
They hesitate. In their moment of indecision, I shove them both out and press the button. When I look back at Sable, her eyes are wide.
Sorry, I sign. “I don't want to be interrupted.”
She gives me a small smile. Okay.
The doors open on the 4th floor. I say, “Let’s go to my suite.”
Sable’s lips lift at the corners. “Lead the way.”
The suite has a nice view during the day, but at the moment the wall of windows is dark. For a moment, I think of going past the couches and kitchenette and straight into the bedroom. Why waste any more time when I know that I'm going to eat Sable's pussy and make her come on my cock?
But I hesitate, then set her down on one of the pair of white couches.
She blinks up at me, confused. "I thought we were..."