13. CHAPTER TWELVE
My heart was in my throat as we carried our coffee cups to one of the little bistro tables in the corner of the Complex’s cafe.
Leave it to Nash and Dutch to stick their noses exactly where they didn’t belong. Assholes.
I was so going to ham up the dramatics to Brynn later that I wouldn’t be surprised if she kicked them out of her nest entirely.
At least the man in front of me looked as nervous as I felt.
This was the closest he’d been to me since Scotland and the first time I got a good whiff of his scent again. His musky clove scent was muted, probably thanks to the descenting body wash the Complex provided, but it still filled my nose and made my pesky alpha brain purr with desire.
What a bitch she was.
My inner alpha didn’t give a flying fuck what my personal rules were, nor did she seem to care that she kept getting me into trouble because we couldn’t seem to keep it in our knickers because of her.
It had been two days since my confrontation with Enzo Santoro, and the memories of his words still, as Dutch would say, smarted something fierce.
None of what he had said had been wrong, even if I wished it was.
I was bad luck to everyone around me. Poking them with metaphorical quills whenever I let them get too close.
I should have run away from Wiz again, Nash and Dutch be damned, but my ridiculous inner alpha kept pushing me to talk to him, to break all of my rules for a man I barely knew.
All because his scent danced through my thoughts like an addicting drug.
“So,” Wiz began, his still-wet hair flopping adorably into his eyes. The urge to reach across the little table and brush the lock away filled me so intently that I fisted both hands in my lap. “How have you been?”
“Are you really going for small talk?” My question came out much harsher than I’d meant it to, but Wiz didn’t seem to mind. Instead, the jerk smiled as if that was what he was hoping I’d say.
All of his earlier nerves seemed to evaporate and he sat up straighter, black eyes intent on my face. “Go on a date with me.”
“I don’t date,” I shot back without missing a beat, ignoring the stupid flutter in my stomach that his request brought.
That didn’t seem to put him off, though, because he was already lobbing his next question at me. “Why not?”
“It’s one of my rules.” There was no point in dancing around the crux of the issue.
“Why don’t you date?” Wiz prodded, taking a sip of the Chai latte he’d ordered and immediately hissing as what could only feel like molten lava poured across his tongue. “Ow, fuck!”
I was up and out of my seat in a blink. Hurrying over to the little counter to pour a cup of ice water for him, I eyed the worker. He wouldn’t be the first victim to the overly hot coffee at this cafe, and he definitely wouldn’t be the last.
“Had to make it as hot as Satan’s testes, did you?” I asked the peppy teenage barista who just grinned maniacally at me.
“It’s so it stays warm until you get to your destination,” she sang unapologetically before turning to continue wiping down the counter.
I couldn’t help but grin at that. I always knew I liked her.
When I returned to the table, Wiz was still holding his mouth with wide eyes as I handed him the cup.
“You’ve got to give your coffee three to five business days to cool off or else you’re liable to lose your tongue,” I told him, watching as he chugged the ice water.
After a minute, Wiz finally seemed to regain control over himself, his high-boned cheeks still a bit flushed as he returned his attention to me.
“So, why don’t you date?” he rasped, looking less confident than he had been a few minutes ago.
“It never ends well.”
“Have you ever actually done it?”
I thought about it before nodding. “I have.”
Ricky Moren in seventh grade and I had gone steady until high school, but I was pretty sure that didn’t count.
Then Leith’s face rose unbidden into my mind and I shoved it right back down. Leith and I never technically dated, though that sounded false even to my own mind.
“I’m not good at it, so no I won’t go on a date with you,” I said even as my inner alpha protested my words.
“Just give me one night and I won’t bug you ever again. I haven’t been able to forget you, Ciara.” Wiz’s words nearly made me smile, but I caught it just before my lips could curve upward.
“I seem to have that effect on people,” I said dryly, thinking about Richter who still seemed to be buzzing around despite the fact that I had told him no more times than I could count.
Telling Richter no was easy. I had no desire to go anywhere with that alpha—in fact I could barely remember our time together at the night of the dads’ wedding. Tequila was a hell of an alcoholic beverage.
I could, however, remember every second of my night with Jae-Sun Park. Even through the haze of our mutual rut I could still conjure the noises he made and the way the sweat on his skin tasted with very little effort.
And therein lay my problem.
The last time someone had made such an impression on me had ended with me breaking a Scotsman’s heart and my own.
Something I’d worked tirelessly to avoid doing after seeing the tumultuous relationship between my own parents.
And even as I reminded myself of it, I found my resolve starting to crumble.
“If you hate it I won’t ever talk to you again, I swear.”
Chewing on my lower lip, I weighed the pros and cons of it.
On one hand, it wouldn’t hurt anyone to go out on a date with Wiz. I just had to make it through one night without doing anything I regretted.
But on the other hand, looking at the alpha who was rubbing a napkin on his burnt tongue—which should have completely turned me off—my mind flipped back to where else his tongue had been on me and my entire body flushed with heat.
“Fine,” my mouth said before my brain could catch up.
Wiz perked up, his expression glowing as if he’d won the lottery and not just a date with little old me.
He also looked as if he was about to wiggle completely out of his seat and damn if it wasn’t adorable. “No take backsies, Ciara—promise?”
With a sigh I put my elbow on the table and held up my pinky.
Wiz frowned at it. “What’s that for?”
“A pinky promise—I hear they work well.”
It was only once Wiz linked his pinky around mine that I remembered the last part of Brynn’s little ritual with her alphas.
My face warmed.
“What?” Wiz asked, seeing my expression shift.
“We ah…” I trailed off, debating on whether or not to just leave the pinky promise as is. But I was a superstitious woman at heart. “We have to seal it with a kiss—to our thumbs.”
I hurried to say that last part because Wiz looked too pleased with the idea of kissing me and I was trying to be good.
“Our thumbs, right.” Wiz leaned forward until his lips just barely ghosted over the knuckle of his thumb. “Well, aren’t you going to do it too?”
Why did this feel way more intimate than when we were having sex in Scotland?
I quickly bobbed forward to kiss my thumb, my nose filling with his scent, before I reeled back like the contact had burned me.
“Promise sealed. I’ll see you there!” I said far too loudly and stood up from my seat, the metal legs of the chair squealing on the tile floor as I did.
I shouldered my duffel and turned to run away, just like I’d wanted to when I saw him emerge from the locker room with Dutch and Nash earlier.
“Wait!” Wiz’s voice stopped me in my tracks.
I turned to find him with his phone out. “How am I supposed to take you on a date if I don’t even have your number?”
Another one of my rules. Never give a man your number. I’d broken it with Leith, and look how that had ended.
But I did promise him that I’d go on one date and then I could put the whole mess to bed.
“I don’t suppose you’d just give me your number?” I tried weakly.
Wiz’s answering grin told me he knew exactly what I was up to.
With a sigh, I took the phone and put my number in. “This date better be amazing.”
His grin just grew wider, resembling the Cheshire Cat from the books my mam used to read me when I was small.
“I could just not respond to your texts, you know,” I grumbled, suddenly feeling out of my element. I wasn’t used to being thrown so far off my own axis and this man seemed to be able to do it with a couple of words and a cute smile.
“That’s all right,” Wiz said, sipping his since-cooled coffee with relish. “I’ve been working on my cardio to better chase you with.”
A shiver of pleasure at the implication of his words crawled down my spine, reminding me of that first night when Leith followed me out of the club.
I liked being chased far more than I would ever admit out loud.
“Goodbye, Wiz,” I said, huffing a laugh of disbelief.
Despite my nerves coming into the cafe, I found myself humming under my breath as I headed for figure skating practice.
Somehow, I thought I was looking forward to our promised date.
“It’s so unfair that he gets the whole ice to himself for an hour every day,” Ariana, one of the figure skaters who competed in all of the same circuits as me, hissed behind me as they watched Artie skate on the ice.
I didn’t usually watch Artie’s practices—I started scheduling mine earlier in the day to avoid running into anyone from that pack—but the powers that be had shuffled all of the sport’s practice times and the curlers now had the ice first thing in the morning while the speed skaters held their clinic at the other rink.
“Artie, you’re not committing to your jumps!” Eli barked from the edge of the ice as Artie wobbled out of a jump.
Artie said nothing, but judging by the flush in his cheeks, Eli was pissing him off.
“Even if you can’t see it clearly, the ice is going to still be there when you’ve landed—just like I know you’ve done a thousand times before,” Eli continued, clearly oblivious to Artie’s anger.
Eli had never been the most observant coach. He saw every inch of your body that was out of place, but he had the emotional intelligence of a tree.
“Up again!” Eli ordered.
Artie gained momentum, his blue eyes squinting as he lifted off and spun. This time he didn’t even wobble and instead crashed shoulder first into the floor.
Eli called something to him, but my attention was drawn away by the nasty giggle coming from behind me.
“He can have the whole ice, but I’ll never understand how he got that silver,” Ariana said loud enough that she was quickly shushed by the other girls.
Another one of the girls, Leah, whispered a bit more softly. “It must be hard to have your sight go like that, if it were me I’d be totally miserable.”
She meant well—Leah was never one to be mean on purpose—but her words still made my teeth clench together so hard I was scared for a moment that they would crack.
Ariana, however, relished in being a total bitch.
“I’d never leave my house again if my career was cut short like that. Embarrassing.”
Whirling around, I shot her the most vicious glare I could muster.
She’d made similar comments to Brynn when she was first getting back on the ice after giving birth to the twins.
Opening my mouth I was about to tear the other woman a new asshole when Brynn plopped down into the seat next to me and started putting her skates on.
“What’d I miss?” she asked cheerfully, clearly not picking up on the tenseness in the air.
“Ariana was just being a cunt because she doesn’t understand how accommodations work.” I made sure I was looking her in the eye as I spoke.
Brynn’s head wheeled back and forth between me and Ariana, her blue eyes widening as the other woman scrunched her nose distastefully at me.
“I understand accommodations, Callaghan. But aren’t they supposed to make things fair and not give someone else an advantage. We all have to skate with multiple other people on the ice. That’s fair.”
I didn’t have the time nor the desire to tell her how absolutely stupid she sounded.
Artie was up again, practicing footwork this time as Eli barked orders at him.
Everything seemed to be coming to a head and I should have just minded my business. Artie had almost nothing to do with me outside of Leith, but seeing the way his lips pressed into a thin line and then wobbled like he was going to cry… and my damn bleeding heart took over.
“Kick them outside,” I told Brynn as I stood, reaching down to take off my skate guards.
“What? You can’t kick us out—” Ariana began, gaping at me like a fish.
I shot her a seething look. “I can actually. If you actually read your contract it says that you have the right not to be observed by the competition during your ice time, and while it’s not my time, I’m sure that he’ll agree with me.”
Ariana sputtered but Brynn was already up and gesturing to the door. “Don’t make me tell Mr. Stone,” she murmured, using our secret weapon.
We almost never whipped it out, not wanting to use our connection to Colt Stone to throw our weight around, but for this my conscience would be clear.
Leaving Brynn to bully those assholes out, I stepped onto the ice.
“Oi, Ciara! It’s not your ice time yet, get your ass off!” Eli bellowed at me but I ignored him.
Hearing my name, Artie slid to a stop and turned, squinting in my direction until I got closer.
I didn’t know how far along his vision loss was, but I knew he could at least see a little bit of me because his eyes slanted away and his cheeks flushed with embarrassment.
“I can hear them,” he muttered, gesturing to his ears. “The funny thing about going blind is that it makes you have ears like a bat. I could hear you too.”
“Do you want me to kick Eli out?” I asked, looking over at the still-fuming coach.
Artie’s head jerked up with surprise. “You can’t. He’s the coach.”
A slow grin filled my face and I turned to shout in the direction of the man. “Eli, I’ll take it from here.”
Eli’s red face shifted into a deeper shade—almost purple at this point. “What d’you mean you’ll take it from here? Ciara I don’t know who died and made you queen of the fucking ice, but he desperately needs coaching.”
“And he’ll get it,” I shot back.
Eli scoffed. “From who? His imaginary fucking friend?”
Sucking in a breath, I ignored the tiny sliver of panic settling inside of my stomach at what I was about to say.
But apparently today was going to forever be known as the day Ciara Callaghan’s heart grew two sizes and she started doing things that were really out of fucking character.
“From me,” I finally said, shocking myself as I turned back to Artie. “If you’ll have me.”