Chapter 23 #3
“No. But I had feelings about him being the first person I had sex with. And it didn’t mean anything to him. He’d pull me into the potting shed for a quick fuck, then push me out the door and tell me I had to stop distracting him from work. That kind of thing.”
I can tell by the way she studies me that she doesn’t like the reaction she sees on my face.
Then she tilts her head down, focusing on my hand and the vice-like grip I have on her.
I exhale, trying to let the tension out and loosen my grip.
I slide my thumb along her skin, caressing the red mark I left behind. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. This is why I didn’t want to tell you.”
“He wasn’t good enough for you,” I growl.
“Even now you’re jealous?” she teases. She has no idea how I watched him watching her that summer.
How I saw that predatory look in his eyes.
I almost insisted Petra’s father fire him, I even went to him to make the demand, but I lost my nerve.
How would I have explained it? I don’t like that he looks at your daughter the same way I do?
“Even now I feel responsible.”
“Don’t.” She sits up, her back ramrod straight as she crosses her legs under her. She looks like she’s doing yoga, if pissed-off yoga was a thing.
“I can’t help it. I should have been there to protect you.”
“No, you should have been there so it could have been you.”
Her words slay me. She’s right, it should have been me. But also, how much could she really have cared if she turned to someone else, gave herself to him just because I wasn’t around?
“You shouldn’t have gone running to him when I left, Petra. If I really meant something to you back then—”
“You shouldn’t have broken my heart,” she spits out.
I don’t think I look down quickly enough for the brim of my hat to cover the way I wince at that statement. I can’t go back and make it right. There’s only now.
“I shouldn’t have, you’re right.” I look up at her. “Can you forgive me?”
“Sasha,” she says, her voice so low it’s practically a whisper. “You haven’t even told me why you cut me out of your life like that. This isn’t about forgiving you. It’s about figuring out how I could ever trust you again.”
This is your chance. Tell her the truth.
I watch the way the warm breeze blows a few strands of her ponytail against her neck and shoulder.
I want to reach out and brush them away.
I want to curl my hand around her neck, brush my lips across hers.
I want to hold her and be with her, and I don’t want to do anything to jeopardize the possibility of a future between us. She’s not ready for the truth.
I don’t stop to ask myself when she could ever be ready, I just plow ahead with a flimsy, minuscule piece of the truth.
“I had to. I can’t explain it, except that there was so much pressure.
I needed a clean break from everything and everyone in Austria, so I could fully commit myself to hockey in Russia.
I couldn’t be thinking about you all the time.
I swear I spent more time that first year trying to find you that book you wanted than I spent practicing hockey.
I would have done anything to make you happy, and it was jeopardizing my hockey career.
I needed distance and clarity. I needed to focus.
I would never have gotten where I am now if I hadn’t left like that. ”
Do I believe my own words? I don’t know. There’s a kernel of truth in there. I’ve thought many times over the years that breaking things off like that with her allowed me to make hockey my obsession instead of her, and so in a way, it led me to the NHL.
“You thought about me all the time, huh?” Her lips curve into a small smile.
“Every. Single. Minute.”
“I wish I’d known that then.”
“You were my best friend’s baby sister. You were too young. And most importantly, you were just about to launch your skiing career. I couldn’t get in the way of that.”
She gives me a small nod of understanding. Both of us, at the beginning of promising athletic careers, headed to different countries. It’s a plausible reason to have pulled the brake, even if it wasn’t my only reason.
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” I tell her. “In fact, I was trying to make sure you didn’t get hurt.”
An acerbic laugh slips out. “Trying to make sure I didn’t get hurt by hurting me?
” Her eyeroll is legendary. “Men are always trying to make decisions about me, for me. No thanks. If this”—she gestures between us—“is going to be something, you have to know that about me. I make my own decisions, and I always do what’s best for me.
I spent too many years getting hurt, taken advantage of, and left. I don’t even do relationships, Sasha.”
“Why not?”
Her swallow is convulsive and for a minute I think no words will follow. Finally, she says, “The best way I know to protect myself is to always be the one leaving.”
“Before someone else can leave you, you mean?”
“Exactly.”
She’s so strong and independent and fiercely protective of the people she loves. I didn’t realize that front hid so much damage.
“I would never leave you. I would never hurt you.” She has to know that.
If she didn’t already know it back in New York, she has to know it now that I’m here in LA.
Now that I came out here even when she told me not to, because I literally could not conceive of not seeing her for even a few more days.
I soft hiss escapes her lips. “Really? Because you were the first one to do both.”
“Petra, we were teenagers. We are not the same people now that we were back then.”
“I hope not,” she sighs, then she leans over and lays her back against my chest. “I really hope not.”
“At some point,” I say as I pull her foot into my lap and slip her heel off, “we are going to need to talk about this relationship.”
Her eyes roll back in her head as my thumb runs across the ball of her foot and then down the arch. She makes a soft, indistinct sound of contentment, a rumbling deep in her throat that is distinctly sexual.
“That is amazing,” she says.
“Imagine what I could do if you were naked.”
She glances around the small but crowded outdoor seating area of the restaurant, taking in the tables of other diners scattered amid the brick patio and surrounded by ivy-covered walls.
String lights hang above us and hurricane candles sit on the tables, giving the space an ethereal glow.
I want to recreate this ambiance on my terrace, so Petra and I can eat out there every night and be reminded of this dinner.
Our teak table is against one of the courtyard walls and the nearest table is a good six feet away, but still, she looks nervous that someone will hear me. So what if they do?
“Just keep doing that, and we’ll get to the rest later,” she says, keeping her voice low. It’s the huskiness of it that turns me on more than anything. As it always does for her and only her, my body reacts.
“Your calves still sore from the hike?” I ask as I slide my hands up her leg and massage her calf gently. The heat of the LA day is abating, and it’s comfortably cool out tonight. I still can’t get over how amazing the weather is here. Sunny and dry and perfect almost all the time.
“Yes. Even those amazing views weren’t worth this soreness.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t be wearing those heels, then?” Her heeled sandals make her legs look sexy as hell, but I don’t understand why she’d wear them if her calves are sore.