WASN’T WRITTEN IN THE BOOK
NICK
WASN’T WRITTEN IN THE BOOK
The Toronto Blades lost three to four. Tomasini screamed at me for half an hour over it. It was hard to pretend like I gave a shit or was paying attention to him. I probably should’ve put on a better face.
I couldn’t. Not after Tallulah walked in on that.
I hated that she saw me like that. Hated that she stumbled in.
Outside the arena, I shouldered my bag, taking in Tallulah. To most people, there wasn’t a difference. To me, it was stark. The tightness in her face, her usual, anxious movements gone. She was stiff. Uncomfortable.
I forced the grin on my face. “You can’t win ‘em all.”
“What are you going to do?” she whispered, falling into step beside me.
“Play better next time? Stop trusting Gordo to block people when I could’ve done it myself?”
“No. About Tomasini—”
“What about Tomasini?”
“How are you getting out of the contract?”
I opened the trunk and tossed my bag inside. “With two weeks left now that we lost our chance at the bullshit playoffs? That’d be like—uh—what’s a Tallulah comparison?” I huffed a breath, pretending to be shocked. “That’d be like reading a book and stopping at eighty percent—”
“Nick.”
Tallulah stood next to the car, waiting for a serious answer. One I couldn’t give her.
Because I hadn’t told Tallulah everything yet.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I finally said, closing the trunk.
“Nick—”
“Tallulah, I don’t want to talk about it.”
The worst part was the look of deep-set pity, the wavering in her expression. She wasn’t crying, not yet anyway, but she was veering towards it.
We slipped into the car and Tallulah was silent for a moment, buckling her seatbelt. “Are…are you okay?”
I didn’t know how to answer. I wasn’t okay.
“Why did you even sign on with Tomasini?” she struggled to ask, her words unsteady.
“I didn’t think Tomasini was going to be involved,” I said honestly, eyes on the steering wheel.
“My coaches said he wouldn’t be around. Too busy, you know?
I guess that was the wrong way of looking at it.
I think…the more tense he is, the more he calls me in.
He lost a contract with the arts council and had me go at a punching bag until my hands were fucked up.
” I shrugged. “I think I’m like a stress reliever or something. I don’t know.”
I heard Tallulah unclip her seatbelt and I finally looked her way. Her lower lip trembled. I knew she was close to crying and didn’t want to.
She drew in close and pulled me down to her, her hands sliding in my hair, wrapping me in a hug.
I hesitated for a moment.
I was strung out from Tomasini yelling at me, exhausted from the game, and…ashamed. I never wanted Tallulah to see me getting pushed down like that. It was fucking embarrassing, and I didn’t know how to move on from this.
The longer Tallulah held on to me, the more I could feel my defenses cracking, sheathes of ice in my chest breaking apart. She gently tugged me closer.
I moved in, pressing myself against her, hugging her back.
I didn’t know what to say. So I didn’t say anything.
Now that she knew where I was going every day, the look of pity on Tallulah’s face never left. And now that Tomasini was throwing his dick around, I had to work three times as hard.
After another three hour gym session, my head pounded behind my eyes. It was brutal. My legs ached. I nudged open the door of my bedroom, letting my gym bag fall to the floor.
“Hey,” Tallulah whispered, setting aside her laptop.
I thumped into the bed, face-first into the blankets. “Hey.”
Rat meowed, rubbing against me, and in seconds, Tallulah moved across the bed, petting my hair.
Tallulah was handling me with kids’ gloves.
Like I was breakable. It created complicated feelings around it.
Humiliation was strong, the embarrassment pulsing inside, and then…
I also had her undivided attention from it.
Which felt good. It was this weird combination of pleasure and humiliation, nudging closer to her, and wishing she wasn’t touching me because she felt sorry for me.
She stroked the back of my neck. “How was your day?”
“Long,” I mumbled into the blankets. “Shitty. So much better now.”
“Better now? Why?”
I reached up to scratch Rat behind her ears, and put my other hand over Tallulah’s, weaving my fingers through hers. “I get to spend time with my girls. Makes every day better.”
“So, I have an idea,” she hurried to say. “I’ve been researching how different hockey players have gotten out of their contract, and if you fake an injury, you can—”
“Tallulah,” I sighed. Time with her was so precious, I didn’t want to waste it. “Not tonight. Please.”
“But—”
“I had a really, really long day today. I just want to pretend like everything’s okay and spend the night with you.”
I glanced up from the blankets and Tallulah gazed down at me, crestfallen. She opened her mouth and closed it again, shifting back on the bed. “Um…what do you want for dinner? We can order from that burger place you want to try. Do you want to stay in tonight?”
“Yeah.” A grin crossed my face, that sounded like heaven. The joke left my mouth before I could stop it. “Stay in? Am I limping that bad?”
Tallulah flinched. I must’ve been.
“Yeah, let’s stay in,” I quickly said, covering up the slip.
We put in our orders and ended up sprawled on my bed, eating burgers, a container of fries split between us. Rat only hung around until she figured out she hated the taste of french fries, abandoning us to nap in her cat tree.
It was our new nightly routine. Tallulah sat against the headboard, book in hand, and I had my head on the opposite side of the bed, also a book in hand.
I swear she was training me to enjoy reading.
For at least an hour every day, we hung out in comfortable silence like this.
It was nice to calm down after whatever bullshit Tomasini put me through.
My eyes skipped to the page number of my book. Page one hundred and sixty-two, I couldn’t believe I’d gotten that far. I thumbed to the back of the book and paused, taking in the last page number, three hundred and twenty-four.
Was that…?
I fumbled for my phone, opening my calculator.
Holy crap, I was halfway through.
Tallulah had finished eight or ten books in the time it took me to get halfway through, but she’d be so psyched for me. I placed it over my chest, ready to nudge her and tell her the news.
Tallulah was maybe a foot away from her own book, eyebrows knitted in deep concentration, lost to whatever was happening on the page. Her ankles were crossed, thighs pressed together.
Her eyes hooded. Heated.
She had my attention.
I slid the receipt in my book, setting it aside. “What are you reading?”
Nothing.
I prodded her hip with my sock. “Tallulah?”
She resurfaced, cheeks flushed. “Hm?”
“What are you reading?”
“What? Nothing.”
Bullshit. I was beginning to recognize the types of books by their covers. This one had pretty pink flowers on it with a nondescript title. If I knew anything about Tallulah’s reading habits, there was some hardcore fucking between the pages. The more innocent the cover, the dirtier the books were.
I arched an eyebrow, waiting, and Tallulah flushed darker. “It’s their first…scene together.”
“Yeah? Tell me about it.”
“I can’t do that—”
“Tallulah.”
“It’s—I—” She sank her teeth into her bottom lip. “It’s…an arranged marriage…”
“Tell me about your book while you sit on my lap.”
Tallulah realized I wasn’t joking, and she crept up to slowly swing her leg over, straddling me.
She was in a pair of dark blue leggings from her day of touring the Olympic stadium, and I had on a pair of basketball shorts.
My cock stirred when she took her seat on top of me, I could feel her through the leggings.
“It’s an arranged marriage,” she managed.
“She’s trying to escape it or something?”
“No…she has to be in for…these complicated family reasons and her dad’s business empire, and…”
“And?”
She shifted on top of me. “Her husband wants a baby.”
“Yeah?”
“From her. So he wants to get her pregnant.”
“Why don’t you read to me?” I murmured.
“The book?” She blanched, eyes widening. Tallulah immediately moved to leave. “Oh my god, no, you’d laugh at me—”
I held on to her waist, fingers sinking into her soft skin. “Read to me.”
“It’s a sex scene, Nick—”
“That’s why I want you to read it out loud.” I grinned. “Maybe I’ll learn something.”
It took a lot more soothing and convincing before Tallulah was coaxed into it. She was so cute when she was flustered. And I had a semi already from her squirming on top of me.
Slowly, ever so slowly, Tallulah began to read.
I watched her pupils dilate in real time. Her thighs flexed against me. She wasn’t aware of what she was doing, too entranced in the scene. I had to keep very still to prevent her from realizing that she was grinding on me.
My cock couldn’t.
It hardened, stiffening beneath her, aching to feel her wet heat without layers of fabric between us. Tallulah glanced down, her breaths sharp.
“Fuck,” she whispered.
I nodded. “Keep going.”
Her eyes darted between me, the page, and my hips underneath her. She swallowed. “Um…and Dante—um—took my hair in his hands, and said, ‘because we’re both getting tested regularly, and only sleeping with each other, maybe we don’t have to use condoms—’”
What? It was a complete one-eighty from the rest of the book’s short sentences and snappy dialogue. Literally, it broke the tension of the sex scene.
Because it wasn’t written in the fucking book.
I grabbed it. “Let me see that.”
“No, no, no—” Tallulah tried to yank it away from me. I pried her fingers off of it, holding the book far enough so she couldn’t reach. “Nick, no—I—”
“Are you telling me the mafia boss talking about impregnating her is worried about condoms?”
“Give me the book,” she pleaded.
I pushed it against her chest, smug. “Liar. It doesn’t say that.”
Tallulah couldn’t have possibly blushed harder. “I—I—”
“You want bareback sex?” I taunted, heart soaring in my chest. “Ask nicely, sweetheart.”