Chapter 20 #2
Those words tug on the chords in my chest. I don’t know what I expected her to say, but knowing she kept the small reminder of our first night together feels like confirmation this was never meant to be a one-time thing. “I’m still sorry for how we ended things that night.”
“I know,” Sloane says, leaning in for a kiss, and I happily oblige.
“So, how are you feeling now?” I ask, sprinkling more flour on the pasta dough before rolling it in on itself.
“I’ll definitely be feeling it tomorrow,” she says with a small chuckle.
“You didn’t have to do that, you know. No one would’ve thought twice about it if you decided against it.”
“I wanted to, and it was kind of fun, getting to see what it’s like.”
“You could always do a story on it,” I say, and Sloane practically spits back out the drink she’s just taken. “Whoa, hey. You okay?”
She clears her throat, wiping her mouth. “Y-Yeah, fine.”
“You do that a lot, you know. Freak out when I say anything about your job.”
“No, I don’t.”
I pull the strips of dough apart, letting the noodles unwind into mini nests on the counter. “Whatever you say, Honey.”
She does, in fact, have a small panic attack anytime I bring up her job, and maybe that’s my own fault.
Maybe I shouldn’t have told her Savannah was suspicious, or gotten upset that she used to be a sports journalist. I was terrified to leave her alone with Amos the other day at headquarters, but when I found them after I met with Noah, they were laughing—Amos Rafferty was laughing—inside his office.
Amos Rafferty is a domineering presence.
Everything about him is loud and assertive, even when he doesn’t say a word.
But at the end of the day, I know he cares about everyone in our company—from the wrestlers to the production aides to the people sitting in the cubicles in Houston—even if he doesn’t crack a smile at every person he sees or yells at someone when they fuck up.
His job isn’t to be everyone’s friend. His job is to make sure we stay on top and have jobs at the end of the day.
The only people who might think differently about Amos are Brooks and Savannah, and maybe Noah, but that’s because they have different kinds of relationships with him than the rest of us.
But somehow, in the short time they spent together, my girlfriend managed to make Amos Rafferty laugh and seem…
relaxed. They sat on the white leather couch in his office, Sloane recounting a story about her dad taking her out on the golf course.
The nostalgia in her voice and the smile on her lips made my heart ache as I remembered the truth about her parents.
“She’s a keeper, Wolf,” Amos said before we left his office, and Sloane rolled her eyes with another smile.
When I asked her how she’d managed to break through to him, she said she didn’t know.
I drop the bunches of pasta into the boiling water and stir.
Leaning back against the counter, I watch her gnaw on the corner of her bottom lip, eyes tracing the veining in the marble beneath her.
I have three to four minutes before I’ll have to drain the pasta, which means I have three to four minutes to pull her back out of her head and save the evening.
“I didn’t mean what I said negatively,” I say, and her movements pause. “It’s just an observation I’ve made.”
“I would never write something about you or your friends without telling you first, Ben,” she says.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.” Sloane takes a sip of her wine. “You don’t trust me.”
“If I didn’t trust you, you wouldn’t be in my house right now.
” The noodles begin to float at the top of the pot.
I dump them into the strainer and leave them in the sink, standing in front of her.
“Honey, if I didn’t trust you, you sure as hell wouldn’t have been invited to come on the road with me, or to stay in my parents’ house, or to walk around EWE Headquarters.
Do you think I would’ve left you alone with Amos Rafferty if I didn’t trust you?
That man is a walking enigma, your golden ticket to the top of a writer’s Everest, and you think I would’ve left you—”
“Okay.” She laughs, patting my chest. “Okay, I get it.”
“No, I don’t think you do. Sloane, you have infiltrated my life in a way I didn’t think was possible after Harper, and it fucking terrifies me.
” Finally, her eyes lift to mine. “My friends and my family are the most important things in my life, and my relationship with Harper hurt them, but I was too selfish to notice until it was too late. My past has made me more protective of them, because I don’t want to put them through something like that again, and maybe that fear has made me a little…
biased about your line of work.” A smile tugs on her lips at my choice of words. “I’m sorry for that.”
“I guess it’s only fair, considering how I treated you the first time we met,” Sloane says, and wraps her legs around my waist. She drapes her arms over my shoulders, pulling me close.
So close, I can feel the whisper of breath against my lips when she speaks.
“But I will never call what you do fake again.”
“I can show you a few more moves later, if you’re interested,” I say, staring straight into her wide blue eyes, before lightly pressing my lips against hers.
I cradle her face in my hands, quick kisses becoming slow, and take my time exploring her mouth when she opens to me.
Sloane gasps when I pull her closer to the edge of the counter, rocking my hips into her, creating friction between us.
The blood pumps through my veins, moving toward my groin, creating a sudden, inconvenient stiffness.
“We need to eat,” I whisper against her mouth.
Sloane whines when we part, head still tilted back, even after I step out of her grasp. “That wasn’t fair.”
“All is fair in love and war, Honey.”