Chapter Thirteen #2
“You missed the turn,” I tell him, looking out the window with a frown. Is this where he takes me to the woods and tortures me? Rats me out to Emaly for being jealous? Goes to Janel?
I turn to him, worried. “Moskins, we missed—”
“I know,” he cuts me off, staring forward and not giving me his attention. “And I don’t want you calling me that anymore.”
My brows pinch. “What? You said you prefer being called—”
“From now on,” he says, cutting me off, “it’s Thomas to you. Just not…not Tommy. Please.”
Concern blossoms in my chest, and I regret being honest with him. What is he thinking? Why does he look like that? Pained and…and sad and angry?
“Where are we going?” I don’t call him by the name he wants me to. I can’t. It feels too intimate.
That concern blooms into something completely different when he says, “My place.”
*
I don’t know why I follow him into the house that seems even bigger inside than it does from the brick exterior. It’s a beautiful home, full of warm woods, open space, and a cozy ambiance that seems so unlike anything he would enjoy. I never pictured where he lives, but it’s certainly not this.
As soon as the door is closed behind us, he sets Oreo’s carrier down and lets her loose. She shoots out and runs as fast as her little legs can go until she’s out of sight.
“Fucking cat,” Moskins mumbles, shoving the crate off to the side.
I’m studying the pictures hanging along the walls when I feel his focus turn to me.
But I can’t take my eyes off the black-and-white image of him and Emaly laughing as they lounge on a checkered blanket in the grass.
They both look younger—his face is lacking any stubble, and his features are less defined, as if he hasn’t spent the same amount of time at the gym as he does now.
There’s something smeared on her face. Frosting?
Whatever it is, it also happens to be smeared on his hand.
Body heat soaks into my back as Moskins walks up behind me. He doesn’t touch me, but he might as well have. My skin tingles from his closeness, and my heart beats wildly in its cage so hard I worry he can hear it. “That was our engagement shoot,” he tells me, voice sounding distant yet nostalgic.
My eyes go from where frosting is painted on her cheek down to her hand. Then her other hand, when I assume I’m looking at the wrong one. Except there’s no ring on any of her fingers. There isn’t one in a box or strategically planted in leaves or other aesthetic places either.
He must know exactly what I’m looking for, because he says, “There isn’t one.”
I don’t need to ask what he’s referring to, so I look over my shoulder at him in hopes of an explanation.
Moskins gives me one without me having to ask. “We agreed that I didn’t need to spend money on a ring. At the time, we were in our early twenties. I was just getting scouted by the NHL, and she was still in college and applying to med schools. Our finances were limited.”
I know very little about Emaly, since her background isn’t what I had to look into in my initial search of her husband’s extracurricular activities. What I do know about her is that she comes from a very wealthy family.
I debate asking the question at the forefront of my mind before just doing it. “Did her family not…help?”
A shadow casts over his features, hardening them.
“Her family and her aren’t as close as she’d like them to be.
Emaly has always been independent. She’s never wanted their resources to be the reason she’s handed things.
It’s been her goal to establish a future for herself on her own terms. To earn it.
If she accepted help from her mother and father in any way, it would come with a steep price and steeper consequences. Neither one of us wanted that.”
The more I learn about Emaly, the more I like her. And the more I feel like utter garbage for feeling the way I do.
“I shouldn’t be here,” I say aloud, swallowing down the guilt rising up my sternum and rubbing my clammy hands down my thighs.
Moskins tips my chin up when I refuse to meet his eyes, forcing me to look at him. Then he produces a piece of paper from his jeans and flips it over for me to see the ink across it.
It contains two things.
A phone number.
And a website.
All written in feminine handwriting.
“I didn’t get Honor’s phone number,” he informs me matter-of-factly. “That’s the redhead’s name who you stormed out because of. That’s the head coach’s wife. She was giving me information that I intend to pass along to someone else.”
My eyes flicker between him and the paper, eyebrows pinched. “A website about service animals?”
The photographer, Honor, had a service dog who’d stayed with her the entire time. He quietly stuck by her side as she worked, never getting in her or anybody else’s way.
It’s not my business to ask who he plans on sending that information to, no matter how much I want to know.
He dips his chin once and lowers the paper down on the foyer table beside us and encompasses me in the scent of sandalwood, laundry detergent, and something masked by the overbearing perfume Kayleigh wore.
I do everything I can to not react the way the little green monster inside me wants to.
His eyes look grayer than blue as he stares down at me. The storm raging inside them melts me to the floor, and I have to lean against the wall to put even the tiniest distance between where our chests nearly brush.
He leans an arm against the wall and cocks his head. “Ask me what you want to ask me, Winter. I know you’ve got questions.”
It’s hard to process any of my thoughts when he’s this close. How does he expect me to voice them when all I can smell is Kayleigh’s stupid floral perfume? What could I possibly say that he would want to hear anyway?
“I shouldn’t be—”
“You already said that,” he cuts me off unapologetically. “But just because you shouldn’t want something doesn’t mean you don’t want it. So ask me what you want to know.”
I suck in a sharp, quiet breath and let it flood my lungs.
If I thought my heart was racing before, it’s nothing compared to when he reaches up and tugs on a loose strand of pink hair that escaped the updo I put it in.
It’s not a painful pull, but one that grounds me as he twirls it around his finger.
Eventually, I swallow and gather what little focus I can despite what he’s doing. “Why didn’t you get her a ring after you signed your contract with Pittsburgh’s team? I know what you made back then. I’ve done my research. You could have bought her hundreds of expensive rings by now.”
He hums, leaning forward to close the gap between us until his mouth brushes against the shell of my ear. “Because,” he says, his lips grazing me, “we agreed when we got married that we wouldn’t spend money on something that important until it meant something to us.”
His answer is as confusing as the way my nipples harden in my shirt. I blame his hot breath echoing against my earlobe, and the husky tone of his voice that vibrates me to my core for the reaction I wish I didn’t have. Can he see what he’s doing to me? I hope not.
“That’s…” I’m at a loss for words.
Because I don’t understand. Not fully. There is so much of their story that I’m clearly missing, and I know I have no right to fill in the gaps.
I shouldn’t be here.
I really shouldn’t be here.
But damn, do I want to be.
The next question out of my mouth makes me want to find his bathroom and drown myself in the tub. “Are you going to kiss me again?” It’s asked in a breathy, choppy tone that gives away how much I want to be in this position.
His lips slowly stretch into a half-grin as he studies me far too closely. The finger with my hair wrapped around it tugs again, this time getting my head closer to his until our mouths are a centimeter apart.
Then he says, “No” and backs away.
I sink against the wall, heart dropping into my stomach. There are so many questions I want to follow up with. Like why? And what the hell? And what am I doing here then?
I don’t ask him any of those.
Because he slides his hands into the pockets of his jeans and tells me, “The next time we kiss, it’s going to be because you’re begging me for it. And make no mistake, Winter. It won’t feel like I’m pitying you. Not at all.”
If my heart could stop without killing me, it would with his promise. Because that’s what this is. Not a warning. Not a threat. Not a taunt. He is promising that it will happen. That I’ll cave. That I’ll finally admit I want this. Whatever the hell this is between us.
Nothing good.
Nothing permanent.
He didn’t even buy his own wife a ring.
“Why did you bring me here, Thomas?”
His lips tilt at the use of his name, but the smirk quickly vanishes. “That’s a great fucking question,” he mumbles, more to himself than me. “I guess I like torturing myself.”
He turns on his heels and walks into another room, but not before I see him adjust himself where the denim of his jeans is tented.