Chapter 21
21
Sydney Malloy and Wyatt Locke are back from the honeymoon.
Now, can they handle real life?
Celebrity Truth
Sydney
I had no sense of time. Only that it was late. The room was dark, the white noise of the waves outside my door was familiar and beloved.
Tomorrow was the award ceremony, and after that…nothing. I mean, I had appointments and meetings lined up. I was going into the studio with Marc who was so excited to get to work on the new stuff. I was excited too. I really was.
But mostly, I was sad. Like, pull the covers over my head and hide from the world sad. Ice cream and Love Actually on repeat sad.
Suddenly, I heard my bedroom door open and I knew I wasn’t alone. A few seconds later I felt the bed dip and the familiar beefy arms of a defenseman hockey player slip around me and pull me up against his furry chest.
I felt his beard nestle in my neck, felt his breath in my ear.
“I thought, maybe, I should do a critter check. I’ll leave if you want-”
I clutched his hand. Tomorrow was the award show and after that we were over. “I don’t want,” I said.
“Until the end,” he murmured. “We stay together to the end.”
I held his hand against my body and said the words that I might regret later, but in this bed, in these final hours, I couldn’t regret anything.
“Wyatt,” I whispered. “Just thought…maybe you’d want to know…my period is over.”
He knew what I was telling him and I knew this was a mistake. It would only make the days when he was gone harder. For sure. But I’d worry about it later.
Not tonight. Tonight was about Wyatt.
And goodbye.
“Fuck, Syd,” he groaned against my neck. “Are you sure?”
“So sure.”
He slid under the covers as he made his way down my body. Soft touches on places he now knew would illicit a response. Kisses on my hip bones. He licked my belly button. He pushed my legs apart, moving my thighs so they were draped over his shoulders.
I arched my back when his tongue slid along my clit. He knew exactly how to touch me. How to start slow and soft. Teasing. And then rougher. Firmer. Until I was gasping and crying for him. Only then would he fuck me. When I was begging and so wet it dripped from my body.
His finger found that spot deep inside me that made me wild and stroked it.
“Wyatt, don’t. I’ll come.”
But he was stubborn and when he wanted something he was relentless.
“That’s what I want,” he said, tossing the covers back so I could see him between my legs. His mouth wet with my arousal. “Come for me, baby.”
I shook my head and bit my bottom lip as if I could will away my orgasm.
Because what I wanted was important too, and I wanted him deep inside me. When he was on top of me, he blocked out the entire planet. There was only his body, his chest, his arms, his heavy erection inside me, pushing me into the bed. That’s what I wanted.
“You think you can hold out?” His eyes took on a devilish gleam.
Wyatt Locke would always accept a challenge.
“I want you inside me when I come,” I groaned. I loved the sound he made when he was coming. That bass note. That song. My body squeezed around his fingers.
“Then you’ll do it twice for me,” he muttered. “You’ll do it as many times as I want you to.”
Five was my limit. We’d hit that at the cabin one rainy day when there’d been nothing to do but eat snacks and screw each other blind.
His mouth sucked on me and his fingers worked me from the inside. It was bliss and I was humming as the pleasure built.
I tried to hold out but it was useless. That delicious endless muscle stretch of my body, that sensation of having all the breath sucked out of me and breathed back into me at the same time. The pleasure was one thing, but almost better was watching Wyatt. He dropped my thighs from around his shoulders and came up on his knees, his fist around his erection as he stroked himself.
He reached down to the bed and grabbed the sweats he’d worn into my room and pulled out a condom.
“You were planning this,” I said.
“I was praying for this,” he said.
I watched as he worked it over his cock. Briefly, I remembered how I felt after I’d gotten one of those birth control shots. How awful it had been, but maybe there was a better alternative now. A pill or different prescription that wouldn’t be so bad. Something that would allow me to take him inside with nothing between us. Skin to skin and everything that meant.
Then it all came back. This was over. He didn’t want me forever.
A gasp left my throat as the grief pierced right through my soul. He pushed deeper and deeper and I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, I pressed my face into his neck, his beard there to soak up the tears.
His hand was braced on the bed’s headboard and I knew what that meant. Knew it was going to be rough and hard and fast, so I held on for dear life and focused on the sensations, instead of the feelings.
“Fuck baby, the way you take my cock so deep,” he groaned. “I want all of you.”
“You have me,” I whispered into his ear, tears running down my cheek. “All of me.”
For now. Only for now.
It was a drumbeat I had to endlessly hit, so I wouldn’t forget. His other hand wrapped around my ass. He’d been getting bolder down there, teasing me for something else to come. His middle finger pressed ever so gently against my back hole like this dark secret we were sharing between us, without ever saying the words.
I bucked up into him hard, and immediately felt my second orgasm overtake me.
“Yes, baby, yes.”
He hammered into me, quick hard thrusts until I could hear him come. Felt his body tense all around me. Pressing my face deeper into his neck and his beard, I bit down on the skin there, just a little, and thought about how I would never have believed it possible to have an orgasm, while crying.
The Next Day
My beach bungalow was jammed with people. Hair, make-up, a manicurist. Francine and Beatrice. Beatrice asked once about Tyler and when I told her I fired him she patted me on the shoulder.
“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” she said in her posh accent and I was proud of myself all over again. Truthfully, as soon as I fired him, I felt better. Lighter. More myself. I understood why I kept him around, not just because I was conflict averse, but he created the box I thought I was happy in. The box I thought I deserved.
“Indeed,” I said, copying Bea’s accent.
Wyatt came out of the bedroom, hair rumpled, grumpy.
Beautiful.
I had to turn away because I knew I couldn’t hide all my feelings.
“Ready to be a star?” Beatrice asked him. He looked around at all the people and the fuss. I expected a growl, some Wyatt like grunt.
“Let’s do it!” he said, clapping his hands together. I thought maybe it wasn’t just me. Maybe we’d both grown a little over the last few weeks. Come out of our comfort zones.
They put Wyatt in a chair and snapped a smock around his neck, so Carly, who was in charge of hair, could trim his beard and hair. He’d gone real mountain man over the last few weeks and I was a little sad to see him go.
“Can I do something with the eyebrows?” Carly asked him, a pair of small scissors in her hand.
“What the fuck is wrong with my eyebrows?”
“You look like a serial killer.” Carly said.
“That doesn’t even make sense,” Wyatt said.
My hair had already been styled into effortless waves and we’d moved on to make up.
“Not too much, Cherise,” Francine ordered her make up artist. “I want my fairy bride to look virginal.”
“But I’m not, though,” I said with a bit of a cackle. “Not even a little bit. But you do your best.”
“Tink,” Wyatt barked “You think I should do something with my eyebrows?”
I shook my head. “Your eyebrows are perfect.”
“That’s what I thought too.”
Cherise went back to work on my face, while Francine kept a careful watch as both her creations came to life.
After a light lunch, and some yerba mate for natural energy, I suited up into my fairy wedding dress concoction.
When I emerged from the bedroom, where I’d been sent to be dressed, there was a notable gasp from the crowd in my house.
“Francine,” Bea said quietly. “You’ve outdone yourself.”
“Don’t I know it,” she said.
“I feel a little silly…with the wings,” I said, pointing over my shoulder.
“Winglets,” Francine corrected me. “Not the same thing at all. Now show me you can sit, just once, then remain standing the entire rest of the time, until the limo pulls up. Which should be in a few minutes or so.”
“This is bullshit.”
I turned at the sound of Wyatt, coming out of the guest bedroom, where he’d gone to put on his suit.
He was gloriously handsome. The dark navy suit, with a copper shirt underneath, made the most of every inch of his six-foot four, two hundred and fifty plus pound frame. His hair and beard were trimmed to perfection, giving him a polished look without taking away from his I’m a badass man expression.
Whoever she was, his perfectly suited future wife, his one… she was going to be so lucky.
“What’s bullshit?” Francine asked. “It fits perfectly.”
“I can barely move in the damn thing,” he grumbled, trying to lift his arms past his shoulders.
“Stop!” Francine shouted. “You’ll wrinkle or tear something! You can’t move because the suit fits. That’s the point.”
“Well, the point isn’t going to be very funny when I split these pants right down the center of my ass.”
“You’ll be able to sit,” Francine told him, as she stepped around him checking for flaws in the fit. “You won’t be comfortable, but you’ll be able to sit.”
He shook his head and muttered ‘bullshit’ again under his breath. Then he turned his head and saw me.
He’d already seen me in the dress back at Francine’s studio. So it was a surprise to see his reaction. His mouth dropped and he went wide-eyed. Like he was a kid and I was some mythical creature he’d stumbled upon.
“Syd.”
That’s all. Just my name. No declarations of beauty or anything else. It just wasn’t his style.
But I understood what he wasn’t saying.
I was beautiful. Special.
With his eyes on me, I felt that way.
“The limo is here,” Beatrice said. “We’ve got about an hour to the Staples Center, then at least another forty to fifty minutes in the queue.”
“The queue?” Wyatt asked. “What queue?”
“You have to wait in line for each of the attendees to get out and do their red-carpet walk.”
“We can’t just park somewhere and make our way over there on foot? Or even better, I know a short cut through the visitors’ locker room.”
“You’re not suiting up for a game,” Beatrice said. “We’re staging an arrival.”
“It’s so fucking fake,” he said, although at half volume, so I was pretty sure I was the only one who heard.
I reached over and grabbed his hand. “It’s just for tonight. Then it will be over.”
He squeezed my fingers gently in his oversized hand.
“Yeah,” he sighed. “It will be over soon.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat and forced myself to smile.
By the time we navigated our way through traffic, we were cutting it pretty close.
“You’re up for an award, Sydney,” Wyatt said, when he noticed my knees starting to jiggle under the dress. A sure sign of nerves on my part. He reached over and laid his hand over one knee and immediately I felt his sense of calm. “They’re not going to start the show without you.”
“That’s not how it works,” I said.
There hadn’t been much chatter during the drive down, or while waiting after each limo arrived at the center and the celebrities emerged to the clicks of what seemed like a thousand cameras. We’d both been locked in on our separate thoughts.
“Is it always like this?” Wyatt bent low to ask in my ear, looking out the window of the limo. “A circus?”
He hated it. Further proof he didn’t want me in his life and he didn’t fit in mine.
I nodded. “Yes. What’s it like on game day for you?” I asked him, trying to distract myself from thoughts of who was going to be here tonight and what I would do with my face when they didn’t call my name as the winner. “Do you have to dress up?”
He nodded and squeezed my knee, like he knew that I was trying to distract us, and he appreciated the effort. I’d missed the way we could read each other’s minds sometimes. The last few days I hadn’t been able to read him at all. Only last night, when we said what we needed to say with our bodies.
“I have two suits. I just rotate them out. I don’t have to worry about the cameras because absolutely nobody cares what a defenseman is wearing. Usually, it’s only a thing if I’m playing Liam. Then they like to build up the whole brother rivalry and how we’re so different. Oh, that reminds me, he texted me to tell you good luck tonight.”
“Wait, he’s not going to be here?” she asked. “He’s supposed to be presenting.”
“He had to cancel. He asked me to take his place and I said no fucking way. So their goalie is doing it. Should be good, the guy has a French Canadian accent so thick no one is going to be able to understand him.”
“Where is Liam?” I asked, as our limo inched up the line.
“Still in Calico Cove,” he said. I wanted to ask him if he was going to join his brother there when we were done, but what would be the point?
“Okay, we’re next,” I said. The limo stopped and I took a deep breath, gathering myself for the gauntlet. Wyatt reached for the door on his side.
Irrationally, I had this fear he was trying to escape. “What are you doing?”
“Getting out, so I can open your door,” he said.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said. “There are ushers…”
It was too late. Wyatt had already left the limo on his side and was circling the back of the car.
My door opened and Wyatt’s hand was there. I clasped it like a lifeline as he pulled me from the limo.
“Don’t worry,” he said, as soon as I was standing next to him. “I’ll let you lead, but I’ll be damned if I wasn’t going to open your door.”
I reached for his hand and slipped my fingers between his. Like when he’d rested his hand on my knee, I was calmer. Stronger. Wyatt was holding on to me. I knew I was safe.
The cameras started to click. Like cicadas, they had their own unique and annoying sound. “Just lift your chin, smile, and concentrate on looking as natural as possible,” I told Wyatt.
“None of this is natural,” he said. I led the way and I liked how we must look. The fairy leading the beast out of the forest. We stopped and talked to journalists on the red carpet, answering questions about who we were wearing and who we were excited to see tonight. There were lots of questions about Liam, which Wyatt answered with a smile.
The only time he seemed comfortable on the carpet was when he was talking about me or about his brother. Ask him about the suit or style and he about levitated with boredom.
Three stops up I could see Tricia Yonish. She was wearing Vera Wang, her red hair artfully styled in soft waves over her shoulder.
“We’re not stopping for her,” Wyatt said. He’d spotted her as well.
“We have to,” I told him.
“She gets nothing from us, Syd,” he growled.
“That’s not how this game is played, Wyatt.”
“Fuck all of them.”
Except I couldn’t. This was partly why I was here with Wyatt. To put on the show. To pretend we were something we weren’t. To protect my reputation, and maybe even to some degree, my honor.
“Sydney, Wyatt, hello again!” Tricia greeted us as if we were old friends she’d just happened to run into on the street.
“Tricia,” I said graciously. “You look lovely.”
“What? This old thing?” She laughed at her own joke. “I see married life, wink, wink, really suits you. You practically have a glow about you. And you, Mr. Locke, how are you fitting into your wife’s life?”
The jabs were intentional. The winks, the emphasis on wife. As if my life was something he needed to bend himself to fit into.
“Just fine,” he said, short and clipped.
“Sydney, I can’t help but ask. Everyone wants to know. What John Bernard was saying about the two of you. Are the rumors true? Were you with Wyatt while you were still with John?”
I could feel Wyatt’s fingers tense up in mine. He was ready to spring into action on my behalf, but I was learning to fight my own battles. First Tyler. Now Trish. I placed my hand on his chest and patted it. Beauty, calming down her beast.
“No, of course not. Fidelity and loyalty are things I take seriously. Although not everyone shares my beliefs.”
“Is that directed at John? You know he’s here tonight with Ellie Wheeler, who is competing against you for female artist of the year.”
I smiled brightly. “I wish John and Ellie all the best of luck. I only hope they have found a fraction of the happiness I’ve found with my husband.”
Wyatt got my cue and we walked away from Trish.
“Nice job,” he said, for my ears only.
“I’m just glad I got the last word,” I said.