Chapter 42
CHAPTER
FORTY-TWO
LOVIE
The mask I wore in the lobby melts away piece by piece with each step I take. By the time I get to the door, it’s lying at my feet.
I knock three times—not too hard and not too soft.
“What?” AJ yells.
His raised voice still makes my stomach drop.
“I said ‘no housekeeping’ earlier!” he yells louder and harder.
I open my mouth, but it’s too late. He’s already rustling behind the door and probably looking at me through the peephole.
“Shit…” I mutter, stepping back as the door flings open, revealing his shirtless frame.
“Bae?” he rasps, staring at me with wide eyes.
“H…hi,” I stutter back.
I pull my purse closer to my side and try to smile, but there are no memories between us that are good enough to make it happen.
“You look different,” he whispers.
“So do you.”
His bulky body looks smaller, or maybe I’ve just become used to Rich’s massive physique.
He scrapes his fingers down his five o’clock shadow, then runs his hand over his frizzy braid-up.
“Do…do you mind if I come in?” I ask.
“Do I mind? I’ve been waiting for you all week.”
Back when I loved him, a confession like that would’ve brought me to my knees, but this time it just makes my stomach turn.
He reaches out, and I flinch as his soft finger touches my cheek. “You eat? I’m gonna order that brioche French toast you like.”
“I…I don’t have much of an appetite, actually.”
“You never do when we fight. I always have to make you eat after we make up. Come in. We’ll figure breakfast out.”
He opens the door wider but stays in the frame, forcing me to squeeze past him and the overpowering stench of tequila and Baccarat Rouge.
The expansive suite has the same floor plan as the other ones we stayed in. The floor to ceiling windows display the city’s skyline like a perfect backdrop. I used to press my face against them, searching for Bayou Crest through the tall buildings and deep green trees.
The door clicks shut behind me.
“I knew you would come. I told Blake that yesterday.”
I hold my breath, waiting for him to utter more of what Blake might have told him after our disastrous Sunday dinner.
“My number one girl always makes shit right between us.”
I quietly exhale.
“You stayed up the whole night waiting for me to come back home once after one of our dumbass fights. You remember that?”
“Kind of hard to sleep in the condition I was in,” I mutter. “Staying up was the only thing I could do.”
I gulp and squeeze my purse’s handles.
“Awe, Lovie. I don’t wanna argue about that stuff. It’s in the past. Let’s leave it there.”
“Stuff?”
He eases beside me, sighing and grabbing my arm. “It’s been a month since I’ve seen you. I don’t wanna do this…this bickering shit you like to do.”
“I’m not trying to bicker. I’m just not going to let you rewrite history.”
“It’s not rewriting history. You have a habit of making things seem worse than they were.”
I cut my eyes at him. “AJ.”
“Come in the living room. Come see what I picked up for you when I got in on Sunday.”
He pulls me further into the suite—past the kitchen and empty dining room and into the living room where shopping bags sit against the windows I used to stare out of.
There’s Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Van Cleef & Arpels, and the boss of all bosses in WAG world—Hermès.
The vibrant orange box makes my palms sweat.
“We need to talk, AJ,” I murmur as he lets my arm go.
“If it’s about that shit for your uncle’s gym, I told Blake to write the check.
” He shrugs, scooping up his glass of tequila from the maplewood coffee table.
“What was it he needed—fans or something? I don’t fuckin know.
I just forwarded the texts to Blake. He said he’d figure it out and get them delivered. ”
He falls into the recliner next to the window and sighs.
“It was an AC unit.”
“Yeah—that.” He takes a sip of his drink. “How is he, by the way? I’ve been wanting to get back to him, but Blake said it’s best if I didn’t. He’s been texting me these crazy motivational quotes every week since the Buffalo game. You know he’s always rooting for us.”
My stomach turns again.
“Why are you way over there?” He pats his leg. “C’mon.”
Vomit bubbles up my throat just like it did when I came face to face with Blake. It’s like my body is rejecting anything associated with my old life.
“Grab your stuff and come here. I set a record this time. I dropped eighty thousand in Hermès. Eighty.”
“Eighty thousand, huh? What’d you do that for?”
“Why else did I buy you all the other shit you have? Chanel and Louis always make you feel better. It makes us better. I’m fixing us like I always do. You know how much my accountant says I’ve spent on you since we’ve been together?”
I shake my head.
“At least a million. Who else in your life has spent that much on you?”
My lips tremble.
“Who, Lovie?”
“No one.”
“Exactly. So you can’t stand here and tell me I don’t love your fuckin ass. I’ll buy you the moon and stars.”
“I…I don’t want the moon and stars.”
“Then what the fuck do you want? Huh? You want me to sell the penthouse and move us to Jersey to be closer to my parents? You wanna spend more time with the other Knights WAGs? You…you want your aunt to come spend a few weeks with you in the city? How do I get you home? I told Blake that’s what we need to be focusing on.
He needs to figure out how to get my fiancée back home with me—not a weak-ass NDA.
We told the world we were getting married, so we need to do it.
My dad’s boss is like the biggest Knights fan ever, and he already said he’s coming to our wedding, and we haven’t even picked a date yet. ”
He swirls his glass around and takes another swig. That familiar urge revs up in my body.
“But Blake keeps going on about this stupid shelter in Manhattan and some chick you talked to there. I told him sometimes you overreact when you’re mad at me, but there’s no way you’d tell some random bitch that I…”
His voice drifts off, and he looks up at me.
“That you what?”
“There’s no way you’d tell her how hard I love you, whether she bought you a plane ticket or not. Do you know how hard I love you?”
“Yeah,” I rasp. “You love me so much that it makes you wanna kill me sometimes. That’s what you said that New Year’s Eve. You remember that? You said you hate that other men can see me.”
“Because they shouldn’t be able to see what’s mine. You’re mine. I own you.” He bites his lip and his nostrils flare. “Did you tell him that?”
My stomach drops to my feet. “Tell who?”
“Rich. That’s what Blake said his name was. He said your uncle said you got caught up with some ‘neighborhood trash.’ What’d he mean by that?”
“AJ…” Sweat prickles my armpits, and my heart drums against my chest.
“Did you fuck him, Lovie?”
I open my dry mouth and choke on an unintelligible word.
“Answer me. Did you fuck him?”
I gulp.
“You better answer me. Did…did you fuck—”
“No, I made love to him.”
“What the fuck did you just say to me?”
“I said, ‘I made love to him.’ I…I made love to him in his truck and…and in his bed. He even had his head between my legs while I laid on his kitchen counter once. I don’t fuck Rich because I only know how to make love to him.”
Before I can blink, he hurls his glass of tequila at me.
I duck.
It shatters against the wall next to my head, and droplets of the leftover alcohol splatter against my back.
“You fuckin bitch.” He leaps out of the recliner and barrels toward me like he’s on the football field.
I throw my arms in front of my middle to protect that precious spot that Rich made better with his soft touches and reassuring words, but AJ’s M.O. has changed since we’ve been apart.
He backs me into a corner between the couch and the wall and grabs a handful of my hair, yanking me to him with so much force that my purse falls onto the floor in a heap.
My phone, the money I grabbed from Rich’s wallet, and his gun that I took from his middle console scatter across the floor, and my brain protects itself by reverting to the old Lovie who knows how many blows AJ can throw before he gets winded.
The first one lands on the back of my head and stuns me.
The second one lands on my cheek and makes my teeth clank together in a painful clap.
“Is this what you wanted to do, huh?” He gasps, grabbing my throat. “You wanted to hurt me by fuckin some neighborhood trash?”
The third blow lands against my nose, and that familiar warmth spreads across it while wetness trickles over my lips.
“Huh?” he heaves out, digging his fingers into my neck. “I’ve been fucked up over you leaving me—depressed and angry! And I just knew you were too! But nahhh, you were just fuckin somebody else!”
I fight to breathe, but he steals every tiny breath I take.
“Now you can figure out how to explain your face to all these nice people around here when we check out to go home.” He mushes me in the face then pulls me up by my throat to stare into his hazel eyes.
“You wanna come in here and act all innocent. You want me to beg and cry for you like a bitch when you’re letting another man have what’s mine.
Look at how you disrespect me. You went off, changed your phone number, and hid out like I was some horrible man, but this is what you wanted all along, huh?
You wanted to go off and fuck another man to spite me while I’m lying to my parents and telling them you came back home because you were homesick. You manipulative ass bitch.”