Speed Demon
LILA
It’s a Wednesday evening and we’re on the couch after dinner, the candles burned low, Lucky asleep on the rug.
Slade is reading next to me on the couch.
He’s got an actual physical book in his hand, one ankle crossed over his knee, completely absorbed.
He’s wearing a black henley and grey sweatpants, unintentionally sexy in his version of athlete off-duty mode.
To me, it doesn’t matter whether he’s dressed in a cowboy hat and Wranglers or athletic gear—he’s always fine as hell.
The sexiest thing of all? No matter what clothes he has on, he always wears his wedding ring. Even if no one else is around to see it.
I try not to read into that too much.
I’m supposed to be sketching out furniture layouts for his office but mostly I’ve been sneaking glances at him in between staring at the fire. The fire that he chopped the wood for, kindled by himself, and that we’re now sitting in front of on a rainy autumn evening.
After leaning over to take a sip of bourbon from the glasses Slade poured for us, I take a closer look at the spine of his book. “Is that Lord of the Rings?”
He glances up. “Return of the King. It’s a re-read.”
“How many times have you read it?”
“Six. Seven maybe. First time was in high school.”
I tuck my feet under me and turn to look at him properly. “Slade Rhodes. Just casually reading Tolkien between hockey games.”
“I was a nerd in high school,” he confirms, not even slightly embarrassed. “I mean, yeah, I was good at hockey. It was clear early on I had a shot at going pro. But the locker room stuff, the parties… not really my thing. I preferred my D&D group.”
“D&D,” I repeat.
“Dungeons and Dragons. It’s a tabletop role-playing game.” He pushes a hand through his hair. At this admission, he does give me a slightly embarrassed look.
“I know what D&D is,” I say, which is only partially true. “I just… you played that?”
“Every Friday night at Kyle Martin’s house. I was usually a paladin—that’s a warrior, kind of. Lawful good. Anyway. Kyle’s a software engineer in Seattle now. Anders, our third, he’s a wildlife biologist in Colorado. His kid is old enough to play D&D himself now. Time flies.”
Oh my God, he’s so cute. As if I needed more confirmation.
A guy like Slade could have easily gone the other way.
How many gorgeous, athletic guys are also toxic, arrogant assholes?
They party hard with their equally malignant bro crowd.
Use and discard the girls like worthless trash.
They pursue no hobby or interest that would mark them as weird or different from the mainstream.
I know that culture. It’s the same shit, different font, whether it’s happening at elite boarding schools or in small town locker rooms.
But Slade did his own thing from the time he was a teenager. Just like me.
I’d bet anything people tried to pull him toward the typical jock version of himself, and instead he spent his teenaged Friday nights playing Dungeons and Dragons, completely unbothered.
He’s still that person. Fifteen years of playing professional sports and he’s still completely himself.
Lucky chooses this moment to heave herself up from the rug and collapse directly onto the couch. Slade shifts to make room without thinking and I end up closer to him, my shoulder pressed against his arm.
He shifts and puts his arm along the back of the couch. Not quite around me.
“I didn’t really fit in school either,” I say, gazing into the firelight.
“My family’s world has very specific rules and it starts from birth.
You summer in the right places. You join the right clubs.
You don’t get excited about things or dress too differently or have opinions that make people uncomfortable at dinner. The pressure to conform is crushing.”
“It didn’t crush you.”
At the admiring look he gives me, my whole body floods with pleasant warmth.
And then I laugh as a memory comes bubbling to the surface.
“I came down to one of our stuffy holiday parties once dressed in torn fishnets, Doc Martins, and a gigantic thrifted Greenpeace t-shirt I wore as a dress. My mother didn’t dare say a word in front of all our family friends but she just about dragged me out by my hair, hissed at me that I was a ‘hostile dissident’ and grounded me for a month. ” I smile. “Worth it.”
Slade’s fingers find my hair, stroking gently like he’s trying to make up for my mother yanking on it. “You got that outlaw spirit, baby. Can’t be crushed by nothing. But I’m real glad you got out of there.”
Baby. Another rush of pleasure and affection shimmers through me.
“It wasn’t all bad,” I tell him. “My friends were the artists, the theatre kids, the misfits. They made life livable.”
He fingers the rose-gold tips of my hair. “Sounds like you found your people.”
I look at my brooding cowboy husband. Tall, dark, and gorgeous athlete on the outside. Quiet gentle nerd on the inside. I just want to throw my arms around him and hug him tight. I can’t believe I got so lucky with him.
“I did find my people,” I confirm. And you, I think silently. My person.
“I think we would have been friends in high school,” I say instead.
He shakes his head. “Nope.”
I give an exaggerated pout to disguise the genuine sting of hurt at his answer. “Why not?”
“I would have been too intimidated by you.”
“By me?”
“You would have been way too cool and artsy for me. I would have been too tongue-tied to even talk around you in high school. Let alone be friends. I would have had a huge crush on you and quietly pined from afar.”
I try to picture teenage Slade. Probably just as tall, though probably not quite as muscular yet. No dark shadow of stubble, but those same serious green eyes. I’d bet he was gorgeous back then too, and probably just as careless of it.
He would have had a huge crush on me?
“And if we were in high school,” I admit, “I would have had a huge crush right back. Except I would have been trying to get your attention in the most embarrassingly obvious ways.” I coyly twirl a lock of my hair.
“Accidentally dropping my papers right as you walked by, hoping you’d stop to help.
Sitting one row behind you in whatever class we shared so I could tap you on the shoulder to borrow a pencil.
Asking you to open my locker because the lock was ‘stuck.’”
He’s watching me with something tender and amused in his expression, his body angled toward mine, the book forgotten in his lap.
“The desperation would have been very visible,” I conclude.
His mouth curves. “I would have been oblivious to all of it.”
“I know,” I say. “That’s the tragic part.”
“Then I’m glad we met when we did.” His hand rests on my knee and squeezes once, sending heat moving up my leg and into my chest simultaneously.
As his gaze turns towards the fire, his hand stays on my knee.
“So are Kyle and Anders still your people?” I ask, not ready for our conversation to end quite yet.
“We still text. Kyle’s trying to get me to do a campaign over video call. Remote D&D. Anders is in Colorado. I’ll see him more next season when I’m in Denver.”
Next season.
Denver.
We’ll be divorced by then.
“That’ll be nice,” I say, past the tightness in my throat. “Catching up with an old friend.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Should be good.”
He goes back to his book like he hasn’t just casually reminded me that this, the home we share, his arm warm behind my shoulders, Lucky sprawled between us, has an expiration date.
I tip my head back against his arm. Try to shove the sadness to the back of my mind and embrace the moment.
“Never thought I’d be married to a paladin,” I tease.
“And your parents’ worst nightmare,” he says. Though I can’t see his face with the way I’m leaning back against him, there’s a smile in his voice. “What did your brother call me? A roughneck who picked you up on the side of the road?”
The memory of Peter’s words and sour face makes me laugh. “All you need are some tattoos and a criminal record and the nightmare will be complete.”
“I got a misdemeanor when I was seventeen, does that count for a criminal record?”
I sit up to look at him, deeply curious. “A misdemeanor? For what?”
“Going double the speed limit. On an empty highway, mind you. Caught by a damn helicopter. Had to work at the feed store all summer to pay off the ticket and court fees.”
“Daryl made you do that?”
“Dad never let us get away with anything. Any mess we got into, we had to pull ourselves out by our own bootstraps. He let Walker sit in the county jail overnight for a dumb prank he and Tanner pulled back in the day.”
I think of the boys I knew growing up, my brother included, who had Daddy smooth away all their problems for them. Legal trouble? No problem, they knew the judge. Or the senator, for that matter.
Double the speed limit, though?
“Maybe you do have a bad boy streak,” I murmur. I poke a finger into his very solid chest. “I hope your speed demon days are behind you, cowboy.”
His gaze is steady on me. “I’m more into taking it slow these days.”
The low, velvet drawl he says it in makes my belly swoop.
“Besides,” he says, “I’ve got a wife to take care of now. Won’t do anything stupid and make a widow out of her.”
A lock of dark hair has fallen into his eyes, and unthinking, I brush it away gently. His eyes track me and he stays very still.
I drop my hand.
I lean back against the couch again, curling my toes without thinking about it, wincing a little at the pain. I’ve got the splint off now, but it’s still sore.
“Ankle?” he says.
“A little stiff. It’s fine.”
He sets his book down. Looks at me.
“Lay down,” he says. “On your belly.”