He didn’t know why she trusted him. Especially after whatever she saw that night. She shouldn’t. He was fucked up in more ways than one. Drugs were just the side effect of the bigger problem: a broken heart, one too afraid to love and too wary to trust. What happened with Emily proved that the greater the love, the deeper the pain.
He walked down the hall toward the stairs, thinking of the look on her face when she’d stepped away from him. It had almost been fear. It had certainly been cautious. In his mind, everything had changed when she’d turned eighteen. He needed to remember that, for her, it was just another day on the calendar gone. It didn’t change her outlook on things. It didn’t make her ready for something that his cock was frantic for.
He could be patient. He could wait.
He stepped into the stairwell, and leaned against the wall, the door settling closed behind him.
She shouldn’t trust him.
He should have the strength to stay away.
There was no way any of this would end well.
The door creaked open, and the most gorgeous blonde on the planet stepped quietly through, a backpack on her back, hair down, smile peeking wide below mischievous blue eyes. “Ready?” she asked.
And there was no way this wouldn’t end well.
For that smile? He could be a better man. He would be a better man. And everything would be okay. It had to.
49
Twenty-seven flights of stairs was a bitch; it didn’t matter who you were. Well, unless you were a Major League freak of nature who barely wheezed while the blonde beside him struggled to stand. Not that I was wheezing. Or had sweat dripping down my cheek (I think they had the heat on.). Just hypothetically speaking.
We left the hotel through the stairwell door, coming out in a back parking lot. Chase grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the street. I gave one last glance back at the building, then followed.
I had told my Dad goodnight, in those minutes before we left. Same as I did every night, his voice tired and sleepy, the light under his door already out. He wouldn’t know about this, couldn’t, but I still worried, my phone tucked into my back pocket.
“What if someone recognizes you?” I hissed. They would. His face was too beautiful not to notice, too famous to forget.
“We’re not going anywhere that I’ll be seen.”
And, thirty minutes later, he was right. It’d taken three phone calls, five hundred dollars in cash and a photo op with two security guards, but we were standing in the one place that no one in a city of millions, would see him. The Newport Aquarium, at eleven o’clock at night.
Before us, glass stretched to the ceiling, a thick divider between us and a million gallons of salt water. Floating gently, lit bright blue, the biggest stingray I had ever seen.
“He’s beautiful,” I said quietly, watching his giant fins silently pass through the water. Chase nodded, crouching beside the tank and watching a group of seahorses bob along colorful grasses.
“Have you been here before?” I asked, lifting my chin and following the path of the ray as he soared above me.
“As a kid. Not at night. You?”
I came here as a kid also, my hand tight in Mom’s. I had a small memory of a coloring book, purchased at the gift shop. And of holding a starfish. I remember those moments, but not the sight of her face when she looked at the fish. Or the sound of her laugh. I was too fixated on the things that hadn’t mattered. It seemed unfair that I’d remember those and not her. I told him so, and he pulled me to his chest, his arms wrapping around my shoulders, pinning me to him. I looked up into his face and memorized the line of his nose, the dent of it where a break once occurred. The thick brush of his eyelashes, framing eyes that searched my soul. I dropped my gaze to his mouth, his lips pale and smooth, tilting toward me as he softly brushed them against mine. I stayed still, the delicate skin of our lips against each other, and vowed never to forget this moment. I smelled the faint scent of chlorine, and his cologne, and felt the tighten of his hand, our lips parting, tongues meeting, and held onto each detail desperately. I would not forget this moment. I would never forget this moment.
I laid in the backseat, my head in his lap, his fingers in my hair, absentmindedly playing with strands. The SUV, a fleet car from MLB, drove slowly, bumping over occasional potholes, the driver clueless to my identity and highly-paid to ignore Chase’s.
We passed over a train track and the clatter made me think of my mom. Of the sounds in the kitchen when she cooked. Pots clattering, the scrap of metal spoons against a pot. Funny how odd things can take you to new places. I looked up, into his face.
“My mom was a great cook.”