Chapter 12
Will
Clarke was not warming up to spending the next three months with me.
She was even colder now that I was living under the same roof.
I unpacked my bags as she hid in her office to work on her story.
And she wondered why I called her Elsa. Thawing the ice around her heart would have taken a thousand summers.
I shoved the last of my clothes into the bottom drawer of the chest. Clarke allowed me three drawers in her bedroom and barely enough space in her closet to hang the suits I wore before hockey games.
Unsure where to go, I sat on the edge of the bed, wondering how the fuck I ended up here.
Why did I get drunk and propose marriage to Clarke?
And why the hell did she accept? Neither of us could recall exactly how we ended up at the chapel.
It was probably my idea, a joke we took too far.
I was a glutton for punishment, and this disaster was living proof.
I went from living alone in a luxury apartment in Philly that overlooked the Camden Waterfront to sharing a bed with a woman who made a bet so she wouldn’t have sex with me. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t break down her carefully constructed walls.
A door opened and closed in the hallway, and a few seconds later, Clarke stumbled into the bedroom with a surprised look on her face.
“Oh,” she muttered. “I didn’t realize you were in here.” She inched backward. “I can come back.”
I shot up from the bed. “No, stay. This is your bedroom. I’ll leave.”
Her chest rose and fell as she looked at me. “We can figure out a schedule so we don’t crowd each other.”
“Is that what you did with your ex-husband?”
She looked away, blowing out a deep breath. “He was very private… and I…”
“I have nothing to hide,” I said as I approached her. “We don’t have to tiptoe around each other. I mean, unless you have something to hide.”
Clarke shook her head, and strands of dark hair fell before her eyes. “No, I’m good. Don’t go into my office, and we’ll be okay.”
“You hiding bodies in there or something?”
She smiled. “Or something.”
I leaned against the wall by the door, staring at her beautiful face as she brushed her hair behind her ears. “I’ll stay out of your office. But now I’m curious what you’re keeping in there.”
“My office is my sanctuary,” she confessed.
“Can I see it?”
She laughed. “What are you five years old?”
I smirked. “Let me in, Clarke. It won’t kill you to lower your guard a little.”
Her body stiffened from my words. “It might.”
It was apparent she had never gotten over the divorce.
Not that she was still in love with her ex, but because of her past, she refused to let another man into her life.
Three years ago, I was the exception—the rebound fling.
I should never have led her on, made her think we could ever be more than casual sex.
“Fine,” she groaned. “You can see my office. It’s nothing special.”
I closed the distance between us, and Clarke sucked in a deep breath. She felt the connection between us, the same palpable energy that clung to the air whenever we were close.
“C’mon,” she said as she spun on her heels and exited the bedroom.
I followed her down the long hallway and into the middle bedroom on the right.
She had more than enough bedrooms for one person.
This place wasn’t the size of an average condo.
There were six bedrooms and four bathrooms, with a jacuzzi tub in the master suite and a city view that put my condo to shame.
I stepped into her office, which reminded me of an eccentric version of Crate & Barrel.
A long oak desk sat at the center of the open space.
Tall, white bookshelves lined the walls on both sides of the room and reached the ceiling.
Clarke owned at least a thousand books, not including those piled on the floor around the couch and plush cranberry-colored chairs by the windows.
Like my sister, she had Harry Potter art on her walls, quotes from the books, and even pictures of the movie characters. She had hundreds of these little doll things that looked like characters from my favorite fandoms.
“What’s with all the dolls?” I asked with my finger pointed at the characters from Game of Thrones. “You some kind of collector?”
She swept the plastic version of Daenerys Targaryen off the shelf and held her out for me to see. “This is a Funko Pop. Haven’t you seen these before?”
“We have NHL Funkos.” I took the toy from her hand and inspected it. “They made one of me. But I didn’t realize they made them for TV shows.”
“And movies,” she informed me. “Pretty much any popular show, movie, or book you can think of.”
“I love Game of Thrones. I never missed an episode. Even when we were on the road, I watched it.”
Her eyebrows rose in surprise. “Really? You don’t strike me as the GOT type.”
“What’s not to love? Dragons, hot chicks, lots of sex, a shit ton of drama and deaths.”
“When you put it that way,” she said with a rare smile. “I can see why you like it. Did Mia get you into the show?”
“Ethan started watching it after Mia posted on Twitter about it.”
“He was stalking her back then,” she said with laughter in her tone.
“Apparently. I guess I was too blind to see it.”
“More like too self-involved. If you were paying attention, you would have noticed they fought like an old married couple and could never keep their eyes off each other.”
I rolled my shoulders. “And now they’re married. Weird, huh?”
“I always knew Mia liked Ethan, even before she told me about their secret relationship. He makes her happy. That’s all that matters.”
“Yeah,” I muttered in agreement. “I never thought either of them would find someone. Mia never left her house. And Ethan was content with fucking puck bunnies. He was more closed off than you.”
She shot a nasty glare at me. “I’m not closed off.”
“Yes, you are. I’ve been trying to get to know you for years.”
“I tell you things about me.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I told you about my dad. That’s not something I share with random hookups.”
I snickered. “I’m not a random hookup, babe.”
She gave me a warning look, reminding me I needed to lock down my pet names—a habit I would need to break.
I gave the Daenerys doll back to her. “So you collect these?”
She placed it on the shelf with her back to me and sighed. “Now you see why I don’t like people in my office,” she said as she spun around, our eyes meeting for a split second.
“You think I’m going to steal your dolls?”
She rolled her eyes. “No. And stop calling my Funkos dolls.”
Clarke moved to the opposite end of the room. For an office, it was enormous, with a high ceiling and enough space for a modest-sized living room. She stopped in front of an electric fireplace built into the wall, standing on a green rug with a snake.
I glanced at the unusual rug that said Slytherin in yellow.
More Harry Potter memorabilia. My sister collected it for most of her life.
She grew up on the books and obsessed over them.
Hell, even I liked them. Whenever Mia was sick or upset, I marathon-watched the movies with her, and they grew on me.
Clarke lit a candle on top of the fireplace, and the sweet scent of vanilla floated through the air.
“Are you done working for the night?”
She glanced over her shoulder at me. “For now.”
“We’re hanging out then. Video games, pizza, and Netflix and chill.”
Clarke smiled. “I don’t know how to play video games.”
I waved my hand to dismiss her comment. “Everyone knows how to play. You’ll pick it up, no problem.”
“I’m an only child,” she admitted. “I didn’t hang out with boys until high school. And my ex wasn’t into that kind of stuff.”
“No, he was into online sex chat rooms.”
I laughed because I thought it was funny, and then I realized it was an idiot thing to say. Clarke’s face scrunched as she looked at me.
“Sorry,” I said before she could scold me. “That sounded better in my head.”
“It’s okay,” she muttered. “All of that is in the past.”
I wanted to say, Then why can’t you leave it there, but I held my tongue.
Her ex-husband was the reason for a lot of our issues.
Trust did not come easy for Clarke, and I tried my best to be patient and understanding.
She would come to me, eventually. At some point, she would see that she could trust me.
“We’ve known each other for years,” I said as I moved toward her. “But I don’t feel like I know anything besides your body.”
She blushed at my words. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
Her breathing hitched. We stared at each other for a moment before she stepped around me and walked over to the couch at the center of the room. She plopped down on the plush cushions with a groan.
Gorgeous and intelligent, Clarke was everything I wanted in a woman. And her smoking hot body only sweetened the deal. Too bad I couldn’t kiss her or fuck her. What was the point of being married if I couldn’t get the perks of our fake union?
She patted the cushion beside her. “Sit before I change my mind.”
I loved when she was bossy and demanding, not afraid to call me out on my shit.
With her career and life, she knew exactly what she wanted.
I’d followed her from city to city, reading everything she’d ever written.
Clarke had a mind as beautiful as her body.
A skilled writer who could wield words like they were a sword.
“You asked me to let you in,” she said with her eyes on the coffee table. “Let’s get this over with.”
“How can you interview people for a living and hate sharing anything about yourself?”
“Because I’m not that interesting.” She lifted a magazine from a stack and flipped through it. “No one wants to know my story.”
I sat beside her. “I do.”
Her eyes lifted from the page. “What do you want to know?”
“Whatever you’ll share with me.”
“You want to know why I don’t trust you?”
I nodded. “That’s a good place to start.”
Clarke crossed her legs, drawing my attention to her lean thighs.
My mind wandered briefly to the last time she wrapped them around me.
The last time, she moaned my name in my ear and lost herself with me.
I loved those times with Clarke, not because we were both getting something out of it, but because sex was the only time she was uninhibited.
She showed a different side of herself when we allowed our bodies to do the talking.
“Because you can’t keep your dick in your pants,” she said. “That’s why I don’t trust you.”
“Name one time when we were together, and I was hooking up with other chicks.”
She dug her teeth into her bottom lip and looked away. “How about the night at the hotel bar in Manhattan?”
“I waited for two hours for you,” I groaned. “You left me hanging.”
“Because I walked into the bar and found you with another woman.”
I shook my head. “We’ve gone over this. She approached me because I was alone. You were late. I was bored and nursing a beer. It was nothing.”
“Did you leave the bar with her?”
Now, it was my turn to ignore her.
“That’s what I thought.”
“You blew me off! What did you expect? We were never together, Clarke. I drove to New York for you. And then you didn’t even bother to answer your texts or calls.”
“My cell phone died. I forgot to charge it before I left for an interview in Midtown.”
“I figured you moved on.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Because I knew it was never more than a fling for you.”
“I was all-in, Will, completely invested. You were the one who treated our relationship like it was nothing. Like I was another puck bunny.”
“Blame yourself for that,” I shot back. “You were the one who only wanted sex.”
“Because that’s what you wanted.”
“You think I drove two hours just for sex?”
She shrugged against the couch cushion. “Who knows? With your overactive sex drive, probably.”
“I’m not some horny teenager. Not everything they write about me is true. You should know better than anyone that you can’t believe everything printed.”
“Drama sells papers.”
“Try being on the receiving end of that drama,” I countered with venom in my tone. “You know, I thought we could have a real conversation, but I guess I was wrong.”
“This wasn’t my idea. We can file an annulment tomorrow morning if this is too real for you.”
I slid my hand across the couch and tapped my fingers against her hand. She stilled from my touch, though she did not bother to push me away. We sat like that for several minutes before I made the first move. When I slipped my fingers between hers, she didn’t fight me.
“One of my colleagues caught you with that woman,” she said in a firm tone. “She was going to write a story about you until I asked her to leave it alone.”
“Not like it would have mattered.”
She chuckled. “Yes, it would have. She was a hooker.”
“No, she wasn’t.”
“That’s why my friend was at the bar. She was writing a story about a madam who ran a high-end prostitution ring out of the hotel.”
“I’ve never paid for sex. Your friend was wrong.”
Her eyes found mine. “Maybe. But I wasn’t wrong about you.”
“Give me time,” I pleaded. “I’ll change your mind.”
She cleared her throat. “I have trust issues. Have for a long time.”
“I know.”
“So be patient with me. This isn’t easy having you live with me. Pretending we’re in love is even harder. I hate lying.”
She pulled her hand from mine and spread her fingers so I could see the dark ink on the side of her middle finger. Her tattoo said vincit omnia veritas.
Clarke pointed at the words written in script font.
“This means truth conquers all things. Something my dad drilled into my head when I was a kid. I guess I never had a shot at being anything other than a reporter. From an early age, I wanted to chase the truth. I thought it was my purpose in life to find the story.”
“I’m not hiding anything from you. If you want to know something, ask me. My life is an open book.”
She held up her left hand and showed me the script scrawled on the side of her middle finger.
“Vox populi?” I asked as I appraised her skin. “What does this one mean?”
“Voice of the people.” She raised both of her middle fingers in the air. “This is my way of giving the finger to the corrupt people who try to hide the truth from the public.”
My laughter shook through me. “I wouldn’t expect anything less from you.”
She smiled. “How about we order a pizza?”
“Yeah, I could eat.”