Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
It had been four days since the cabin in Pine Valley.
Four days since Maddy had threaded their fingers together on the drive back. Four days since they agreed that what happened at the cabin would not be a one-time thing. Four days of pure torture because so far, that was exactly what it had been.
To be fair, it had been an objectively insane week for both of them. Maddy had been buried in back-to-back Zoom meetings, onboarding for her new role and offboarding from the old one.
And Aspen had picked the exact worst week to be good at her job.
She’d had six new intakes this week. Six.
Because apparently every professional athlete in the greater San Diego area had gotten together and agreed to blow out a knee, a shoulder, a lower back, or—her personal favorite—an Achilles, all inside the same seven-day window.
She’d been warm and competent with her new patients as she assisted them in their stretches, when the only body she actually wanted her hands on belonged to a woman who she hadn’t been able to have more than twelve seconds alone with since Sunday.
It wasn’t that nothing had happened since then. There had been moments. Really brief, but incredible moments.
Aspen had still been coming by Bunny’s for their final week of PT sessions—although at five weeks out from the Great Paddleboard Catastrophe, Bunny barely needed her anymore.
She was back to full mobility with just a bit of lingering tightness, and could run her own pelvic stretches now—none of which stopped Bunny from narrating each rep like a one-woman show, or from drifting out of the room every twenty minutes for a costume change.
On Monday, Aspen had taken that opportunity to peek into the kitchen where Maddy took her Zoom meetings. Maddy was sitting at the kitchen island, laptop open, looking absolutely ravishing in a crisp blazer and, below the counter where the camera couldn’t reach, a pair of sleep shorts.
Aspen had come to learn over these past five weeks that there was a whole version of Maddy Sterling she’d never met before.
The Maddy she’d known in high school was always immaculately put together, never a hair out of place, always one step ahead.
She had never seen any other side to Maddy—and she had been watching closely—so she honestly thought it was just who Maddy was all the time.
She wouldn’t have been surprised if she had found out Maddy slept in her blazers.
But she had been wrong. Maddy at home was an entirely different creature.
Okay, maybe not entirely, but definitely more laid back. Especially in the mornings.
Aspen leaned against the kitchen doorway, watching Maddy nod along to the floating heads on her screen. She wasn’t interrupting. Just there, admiring, loitering with intent.
Then Maddy glanced over and caught Aspen’s eye. She held it for a moment, and then, without missing a beat, reached up, muted her audio, turned off her video so that her live feed tile was replaced with a professional headshot, rotated on the stool, and crooked one finger in Aspen’s direction.
Aspen crossed that kitchen so fast she wasn’t even sure her feet touched the floor.
Maddy’s hands found her hips and pulled her in, and then Maddy was kissing her—passionately, open-mouthed, grinning against her lips like she had all the time in the world.
And then a tinny little voice came out of the laptop speaker. “Maddy, nobody knows the Supervising Field Producer role better than you—who would you put at the top of the candidate list?”
And Maddy planted a hand in the center of Aspen’s chest and shoved.
Aspen had stumbled back two full steps, lips buzzing, heart racing, and watched Maddy spin, flip her video back on, unmute, and answer in a calm, considered, fully assembled voice—“I’d start with Renata, she was a Godsend this past season and has six years of experience as a field producer,”—without so much as a catch in her breath.
Meanwhile, Aspen had stood two feet outside the frame, feeling like her head was in the damn clouds, and wouldn’t have even been able to tell you what day of the week it was.
So that had been Monday.
On Tuesday, in a slightly different wardrobe, the roles had been reversed. It was Maddy who leaned against the doorway, watching Aspen work, loitering with intent.
Aspen had glanced up, taken one look at that sexy little smirk and devilish glint in Maddy’s eye, and told Bunny that her makeup was smeared and she looked like a raccoon. Her makeup had been fine, but Bunny practically sprinted down the hall to her ensuite.
The second Bunny was out of sight, Aspen lunged at Maddy, using her whole body to push Maddy into the kitchen until her back hit the wall, and kissed her deeply until they heard Bunny’s voice coming back down the hall, babbling on about how Aspen needed to see an eye doctor.
And then it was the same process as the day before—the shove, the seamless snap back to fully composed, strictly professional Maddy Sterling.
When she had dropped Maddy off on Sunday after their overnight stay in Pine Valley, Maddy had explicitly said that she wanted to keep things between them on the DL for the time being.
She was fairly certain Bunny knew something was going on between them, but she wouldn’t tell Maddy that. Besides, she chose to hang on to the last part of what Maddy said—for the time being. Meaning there would be a later time when they were not on the down low.
Yesterday morning, Maddy had met Aspen outside Bunny’s house to help unload the Cup inventory that had been stored at Aspen’s bungalow, and they’d had a quick makeout session behind Aspen’s SUV.
Then a second one when Aspen had caught Maddy’s wrist as she shoved her away and pulled her back in.
Maddy put up no resistance, but used two hands to shove her away the second time.
Between Maddy’s Zoom meetings, Aspen’s heavy client load this week, and final Cup preparations, they hadn’t been able to sync up their schedules for any time alone outside of those few ten-second makeout sessions.
So yes, these past four days had been torture.
Today, though, was different.
It was t-minus one day until the Cup, and the second Maddy had told Aspen that she would be spending the next eight hours getting the beach ready for the games, with no Zoom calls for the rest of the day, Aspen had cleared her whole afternoon.
She moved three clients, called in a small favor, and told a teeny-tiny lie about a family emergency to the client she knew would throw a fit—all so she could help Maddy set up for tomorrow.
Setting up for the Cup was the official version anyway. Aspen was not ashamed to admit that volunteering to set up tents and course markers was a means to an end.
The end being that, with Aspen’s help, the setup would wrap up around sunset, and Maddy would have exactly zero reasons left to say no when Aspen asked her to come back to her bungalow and stay the night.
She wanted that desperately. And Aspen was fully prepared to drive stakes into the sand for as long as it took if it meant ending the night with Maddy Sterling in her bed.
* * *
By the time Aspen got down to the beach, Bunny had already turned the setup into a full production.
Bunny had not actually participated in the games herself for years.
The year after James died was when Bunny had decided the Sterling Cup needed to become a whole weekend event, she announced she’d be retiring from competition and promoted herself to host, judge, scorekeeper, emcee, and—her own coinage—the heart of the broadcast, which basically just meant she narrated all three days through a megaphone from a raised platform like a woman calling the Kentucky Derby.
All of which required infrastructure, including her speaking platform—which was essentially just some wood pallets they’d dress up—and the custom lifeguard chair with the built-in umbrella that Bunny insisted she needed after an incident last year involving a folding chair, a diving volleyball player, and gravity.
“Aspen, darling, thank God.” Bunny swept toward her across the sand, both arms out. “Maddy has been putting that net up at the wrong height for twenty minutes and refuses to listen to reason.”
“It’s regulation height, Mom.” Maddy didn’t look up from the net. She was cranking the wench on the pole, hair pulled up, a streak of sand up one forearm, and Aspen’s eyes snagged on the long line of her back before she forced them back to Bunny.
Bunny threw both hands toward the heavens. “It is aesthetically the wrong height, darling. Have I taught you nothing?”
“That’s not a thing,” Maddy said flatly, fully focused on her task.
Bunny turned toward Aspen and pointed her arm at Maddy. “Do you see what I’m working with?”
Aspen pressed her lips together so the laugh wouldn’t escape. “I’ll take a look,” she said, knowing it would make Bunny beam and Maddy finally look up at her—even if it was just to shoot her a look that said traitor. It was a trick Aspen had gotten quite good at and was also quite proud of.
She flashed Maddy a smug grin, and Maddy rolled her eyes, but wasn’t quite able to hide her own smile. Another thing Aspen was getting good at.
It was also, conveniently, the fastest known method of getting Bunny to leave.
Bunny handed down their marching orders—fix the net first, then set up the shade tents, the scoreboard, the game stations, and the throne, in that order—then announced that she had a wardrobe fitting and a stack of menu cards to hand-calligraphy before tomorrow and could not possibly stay to help, as though she had at any point intended to lift something.
She patted Aspen’s cheek gently and told her she was so glad she was there to make sure things were done right. And she told Maddy to listen to Aspen, which prompted Maddy to flip Aspen the bird. And then she was gone, and they were finally alone.