18. Chapter 17 #2
I lose him at the escalator, only to find him again by the gift shop. I try calling out, but the noise from the arena takes over.
Must be another goal for Vegas.
I keep chasing, eventually losing sight of Beck again as a bachelorette party wearing matching cowboy hats swarms me. By the time I wrestle free and burst through the arena doors into the hot Vegas night, all I see are Beck's long legs sliding into a cab.
"Beck! Beck, wait!"
The door shuts. The cab pulls away.
No. Absolutely not.
I run to the taxi line in heels that were designed by a man who hates women, throw myself into the next cab, and hear myself say the sentence I've waited twenty-eight years to say.
"Follow that cab!"
The driver looks at me in the mirror. He's about seventy, wearing a Hawaiian shirt Colin would adore, and he lights up like a slot machine just hit the jackpot.
"Ma'am, I've been driving this town for thirty years waiting for someone to say that."
"Then drive!"
And boy, oh boy, he drives.
We swing onto the Strip, past the windows with neon lights galore, the Bellagio fountains erupting on our left like the whole city is applauding my terrible decisions.
"Boyfriend?" the driver asks, weaving between two limos, tires screeching.
"It's complicated."
"It always is, sweetheart. It always is."
Beck's cab pulls into the hotel. Mine screeches in behind it, and I throw money at the driver. Too much money, judging by his salute.
I slam the door and chase Beck across the lobby, past the glass flower ceiling and into an elevator that closes right in my face.
"Fuck!"
"Oh! Goodness me."
I turn and the woman beside me looks so much like my mother that for one horrifying second, I wonder whether Diana Madden has learned teleportation purely to criticize my posture.
"Sorry."
The woman's eyes travel over my hair, my dress, then my abused heel as I slam my hand on the elevator button again.
Somehow, sorry has made things worse.
I take the next elevator, remembering Beck's room number while my heart pounds inside my chest. When the doors open, Beck is halfway down the hall, key card in hand.
"Beck!"
He doesn't hear me, or if he does, he doesn't stop. The door to 2604 swings open, starts to close—
"Beck! Wait!" I get my foot in the gap. My poor, abused, expensive shoe. "Would you just talk to me?"
He yanks the door open, and I get my first real look at his face all night.
Oh.
Oh, fuck.
Beck Morrison angry is not something I'd wish on my mother's worst enemy, and my mother's worst enemy once wore white to a Madden wedding.
I've seen Beck Morrison worked up before. I've watched those blue eyes darken while his hand curls into my hair, watched his throat tighten while he tells me exactly what he wants from me.
Usually, that look makes every intelligent thought evacuate my body.
This isn't that look.
There's nothing playful in his eyes now. His jaw is locked so tightly a muscle jumps beneath the scruff, his broad chest rising beneath his wrinkled shirt while every inch of him seems wound tight enough to snap.
For once, Beck Morrison looking dangerous doesn't make me want to take my clothes off.
"Talk?" His voice is all rough and quiet, which is worse than yelling. "Now you want to talk. That's funny. Because you've had weeks, Darcy."
"Beck—"
"You knew." He steps back into the suite, and I follow because leaving isn't an option. "About Coach's decision. About the scratch. You sat there rinkside and watched them tell me in front of the whole team, and you already knew."
"I didn't know about the scratch—"
"But you knew it was coming." He laughs, cutting me with those blue eyes. "God, you're good. You didn't even lie. You just never said anything. Very elegant. Very Madden of you."
I hate the way he spits my name back at me. Like I haven't had to put up with enough of that throughout my life.
"That's not fair."
"Fair?" He steps closer, and his voice drops. "Okay. Then tell me this. When were you going to tell me the deadline got cut short?"
Everything in me goes still.
I have nothing. Not a deflection, not a statistic, not one single word.
He nods like I just confirmed his entire life philosophy.
"Right. Exactly what I thought." He turns away, grabbing his travel bag off the rack and rummaging through it. "You should go. I've got somewhere to be."
"No."
He stops.
"No," I say again, louder, and my voice cracks right down the middle. "You don't get to do the thing where you walk away and make a joke about it later. Not with me."
"Oh, I don't get to walk away?" He spins around.
"That's incredible, coming from the woman who's had my career in a spreadsheet since the day we met.
You want to know what my whole life has been, Darcy?
People deciding things about me. My parents.
My brothers. Coach." He looks me up and down, his nose crinkling like I'm some insect on the soul of his shoe.
"And now you. The one person I thought—" He stops again, looking at me.
"You watched me fall for you, knowing you were holding the axe the entire time. "
My lungs forget how to work.
Because he's right.
Beck Morrison has never been subtle about anything in his life, least of all me.
I knew that first morning, jogging beside him while he shamelessly flirted and I pretended my pulse was elevated from the cardio.
I knew it every time he appeared in my office, every time he called me Spreadsheet, every time those ridiculous blue eyes found me across a room.
Somewhere along the way, flirting became wanting.
Wanting became us.
And I watched every second of it happen while keeping the one thing from him that could tear us apart.
"You think I wanted this?"
Now I'm yelling, actually yelling, in a hotel suite in Las Vegas, and I don't recognize my own voice.
"I rewrote that report eleven times last night, Beck.
I sat in that room trying to make numbers say something they don't say, because the truth is I couldn't tell you about the deadline, because telling you made it real, and I couldn't—" My breath catches.
"I have never been allowed to be wrong. Not once.
Not ever. My mother called me on the way here to remind me that if I'm wrong about you, it doesn't just end my career, it embarrasses the family name. Do you understand what that's like?"
"Yes!" he shouts. "I'm the family name that embarrasses people!"
He spins on the spot with his arms raised.
"I've been the punchline my whole life, Darcy! And you—" He points at me, hand shaking. "You were the first person who looked at me and didn't see the Morrison they got in the bundle deal. Turns out, you were just taking better notes."
The silence afterward is enormous.
Down on the Strip, the fountains are probably dancing. Somewhere even further, the Bears are no doubt losing by even more.
"It doesn't matter anyway," Beck says finally, growing tired. "None of it. I met with my agent last night. And tomorrow morning I'm meeting with another team."
The floor disappears from beneath me.
"You're—" My throat closes over the words. "You're meeting with another team? You'd leave Beachside? Even if I change my recommendation?"
He shrugs, and it's the saddest shrug I've ever seen.
"I want to be somewhere I'm valued. Somewhere I'm not just an experiment that can be cut or traded when it suits everyone else."
"I value you."
He shakes his head, reaching for his bag again.
"Beck. Look at me." He doesn't. I keep going anyway, because I've already jumped off this cliff and the only way through is down.
"You are the best thing that has ever happened to me.
You want to know why I couldn't tell you?
Really why? Because I was scared, Beck. I was terrified of losing the first man I've ever loved. "
His hand stops on the handle.
He turns around slowly, and those bright blue eyes find mine, and for once in his life, Beck Morrison is speechless.
"Y-you love me?"
I open my mouth to answer.
But I never get the chance.
Beck crosses the room and kisses me, and before I can even say another word, we're falling backward onto the bed.