Winnie got really quiet on the way back to her place. And it isn’t a contented, post-orgasm quiet. It’s also not a Shit, my friend just caught me sleeping with the enemy quiet either. It’s something deeper. Sadder. I want to talk to her about it, but I still have work to do on the kitchen tonight if I am going to meet the deadlines I promised Jude. And honestly, she doesn’t look like she wants to talk about it.
“I’m going to take a shower,” she says as we climb the stairs to the porch.
“Call me if you need someone to scrub your back,” I say and wink. She smiles, but her eyes remain filled with sadness.
She’s all I can think about as I head into the kitchen and start placing the cabinets against the now dry, freshly painted walls. I have to wait until Mike and Dave are back tomorrow to drill the top ones to the wall, but I get all the bottom ones in. As I’m adhering the last one, she wanders into the kitchen, hair wet, wearing pajama bottoms and a T-shirt. She’s breathtaking.
She glances at my work. “I love the Shaker style.”
I smile. “I thought it would match the character of the house.”
“It does.” She nods and walks toward the fridge. “Thank God you didn’t let Jude pick them. We’d have some weird modern cabinets made out of recycled hockey pucks or something and they’d end up melting in the Maine humidity.”
I laugh, but she doesn’t. Something is very up. But what? I watch her as she peers inside the fridge. “Well, these are made out of salvaged wood. Your brother is very environmentally conscious.”
“Yeah, he always cared more about saving the world than saving himself,” she mutters the profound statement almost absently. “Thank God Zoey came back into his life and made him want to improve more than just the world around him.”
She pulls a half-empty bottle of white from the fridge and turns toward where the cupboards should be. “Right, the glasses are in the dining room now.”
She starts to walk past me, but I step into her path. “The fact that your brother married Zoey Quinlin is amazing. He had such a crush on her when we were kids it was painful to watch. He must feel like he won the lottery.”
Winnie nods. “He did. She’s way out of his league.”
I’m blown away. “He threatened to murder me once when I flirted with her.”
“And that stopped you?” Winnie says, shocked. “You were pretty much into anything that would have wrecked shit back then. I’m surprised you didn’t sleep with her after a threat like that.”
“I knew your brother was serious,” I reply with a shrug. “I was a menace to myself, but I wasn’t suicidal. Besides your brother was the only person who put up with my shit. I mean aside from Kidd and a couple others who used my bad attitude to their advantage.”
“How’d they do that?” she asks and I follow her into the dining room where she sets the wine bottle down on the counter as she reaches for a glass.
“They were bad eggs. I was acting like one. They cheered that on instead of talking me out of it, like your brother constantly tried to do,” I explain, but I’m more focused on watching her pour a giant ass glass of wine and take a huge gulp. “We should probably eat something. When was the last time you ate? I’ve got a really good frozen lasagna I was going to cook. More than enough for two.”
“I’m not hungry,” she mumbles and gulps down more wine. “I’m going to go sit on the porch. Have you seen my sweater?”
“You mean your dad’s sweater?” As soon as the words leave my mouth a lightbulb goes on. This is about her dad. This mood. The sadness.
She nods curtly. “It’s probably upstairs.”
She turns abruptly on her heel and stomps upstairs. Fuck. I get this now…I just don’t know how to fix it. I head back into the kitchen to finish up my work and ponder possible ways to lift Winnie out of her funk. When I’m done about an hour later, she’s finished the bottle of wine. I offer again to make us lasagna but she declines. So I leave her, wrapped up in her dad’s sweater and a blanket in a rocking chair on her porch and head to my Airstream. I pop the lasagna in the oven and take a shower. I change into some clean clothes and throw together a salad.
When everything is done, I make two plates filled with salad and lasagna, and kick open the trailer door and carry them up to her porch. It’s really getting chilly, but she doesn’t seem to notice. There’s a new bottle of wine beside her, but it looks untouched. I balance the plates on one arm and open her door as she wipes away at tears she doesn’t want me to see.
“I’m really not hungry, Holden,” she says. “I’m just enjoying my time alone.”
“No, you’re not,” I reply and hold out a plate to her. “You’re enjoying being miserable and like I said from the beginning, when you hated me, that’s really not a path you want to fall down. Enjoying the pain.”
“I’m not fucking enjoying it,” she snaps and when she won’t take the plate I walk over and put it down on the small table next to her. “But I can’t just jump ahead with my life like everything is fucking peachy.”
“No one is asking you to, Win,” I say firmly. “But everything is pretty fucking peachy. You got yourself out of a shitty relationship. You’re in your favorite place on the planet and you’re falling for a really fantastic guy who treats you the way you deserve and gives you some pretty fucking spectacular orgasms. The world is definitely looking up for you. Letting yourself enjoy that isn’t dishonoring your dad’s memory.”
“I don’t want to talk with you about this,” she says with acid in her voice.
“Okay, then let’s talk about Dixie.”
Her hazel eyes blink. “Why?”
“Because I accidentally overheard you this morning and you totally cock-blocked her wedding,” I say and drop down onto the rocker next to hers. I cut my fork through the gooey, cheesy lasagna.
“First of all, mind your own business,” she says and sits up indignantly in the rocker. “And second of all, I didn’t cock-block it. She thinks it will be too sad without Dad, and it will be. For everyone.”
“Is that what your dad said to you in that letter you carry around with you?” I ask and brace for impact because she’s going to explode when I’m done confronting her with the truth. “Did he say, ‘Don’t bother doing anything meaningful or pursuing dreams and goals now that I’m gone. It’ll suck, so just give up’?”
“Of course he fucking didn’t.” The anger in her voice borders on yelling. She slams down the empty wineglass on the table as her bottom lip wobbles. “But it’s too fucking hard. He never got to walk any of us down the aisle. We never got to share that with him. He…it just wouldn’t be the same.”
Tears are falling freely down her high cheekbones now and my heart is cracking down the middle for her. I put my plate in my lap and lean forward to wipe her cheeks with my thumb, but she swats my hand away. I sigh.
“My mom was the first one who told me I was good enough to be a professional hockey player. She wasn’t just blowing smoke up my ass either. She believed it, so I believed it. And every time I had dreams of it happening, of skating out there in an NHL jersey, she was in the stands.” I feel a lump start to grow in the back of my throat and try to swallow it down. “My dad was never into sports and never came to a game, let alone encouraged me to play. Bradie didn’t give two shits either. So, when my mom died, I let myself believe that even if I made it to the NHL, it wouldn’t be the same. It wouldn’t feel worth it anymore. So I stopped practicing as hard. I stopped playing as hard. I goofed off at practice. I mouthed off to coaches. I started fights on and off the ice with players. I tanked my own dream.”
She’s listening and she’s stopped crying, which I take as a small victory. “And it wouldn’t have been the same, to play in the big leagues without her watching. But it still would have been great and worth it. I fucked it up all on my own. Dixie will regret not marrying her crazy-ass goalie boyfriend. She’ll regret it more than her dad not being there to see it. So don’t play into that. You will regret encouraging it.”
She doesn’t look angry anymore, but she still looks like a wounded animal. I grab my fork and scoop up another bite of lasagna. “And you’ll regret not eating this. Especially if you’re going to drink another bottle of wine.”
I hold the fork out to her. She doesn’t take it, but she also doesn’t slap it out of my hand so it’s not a total fail. Her eyes are glued to mine. “Do you regret not making the NHL?”
“Every goddamn day of my life.” I rock forward on the chair, fork still poised in front of her mouth. “Eat. Please.”
She opens her mouth and I feed her. She heaves a heavy breath as she chews and tears pool in her pretty eyes again. “I shouldn’t have given into my grief like that. I’ll call Dixie tomorrow. I don’t know how I will get through it. I don’t know how she will. Just thinking about such a big life moment happening without him makes me feel like my soul is being crushed, but you’re right. I will call her. And it will happen. And I will survive.”
“Yes, you will,” I promise her. I lean forward with another forkful of food and she takes it while wiping the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. I kiss her forehead. “You’ll do more than survive, gorgeous. You’re one of the strongest women I’ve even known and I’m not just talking about your right hook.”
She gives me a wobbly smile and then takes my plate out of my lap, stealing my fork next. “This is really good.”
I chuckle under my breath and grab the second plate off the table. We eat in silence but it’s comfortable. She looks tired. Exhausted, really. But even I’m not stupid enough to think that’s something you tell a woman, so I keep my trap shut and eat.
When we’re done, I force myself to yawn. “Been one hell of a long day.”
She nods, lifting a hand to stifle her own yawn and then she reaches for my empty plate. I cover her hand with mine, stopping her. “Leave them. We can do them in the morning. It’s late,” I remind her, standing up and pulling her to her feet in front of me. “Come to bed with me.”
“Your mattress is really comfortable,” she murmurs.
“I’m surprised you noticed,” I laugh. “Every time I wake up there’s more of you on top of me than the mattress.”
“You’re comfortable too,” she says with a pink tint growing on her cheeks. “Is that a complaint?”
“Hell no.” I brush my lips softly against hers again. “I’ll be your human pillow any day of the week, Larry.”
“If you don’t stop with that nickname you will be my human punching bag,” she warns, but I can feel her smile against my chest as I pull her into a hug.
We head down to my trailer, and inside we get ready for bed. She’s still a little tipsy from all the wine she consumed and it’s making her frisky. As we crawl into bed her hands are everywhere. I don’t mind at all, but I’m not having sex with her right now. She’s too vulnerable and too tipsy. So I take her hands and pull them up and out from under the blankets. I kiss both her palms before moving them on my chest.
“Are you turning down sex?” she gasps in an overly dramatic, drunk fashion.
“I’m not turning it down. I’m postponing it,” I explain and she sighs in defeat and nuzzles closer to me, dropping her head onto my chest and draping a leg over my midsection and my rock-hard erection.
“I don’t think that gorgeous dick of yours got the memo,” she mutters and I laugh.
“He’s usually the last to know,” I reply and run a hand through that long, silky magical hair of hers, which isn’t going to help that erection die anytime soon, but I can’t help it. “And I don’t think he’s ever been called gorgeous before.”
“You have a history of being underappreciated,” she says sleepily. “We’re going to change that.”
“We are, are we?” I can only assume this is the alcohol and exhaustion causing this conversation so I’m trying really hard not to take it to heart even though, damn, she’s drunkenly saying everything I wanted to hear for a very long time.
“Mmm…,” Winnie coos, definitely on the brink of sleep. “You’re a good man now, Holden Hendricks. I think maybe you always were. People will see it. I’ll make sure of it.”
“Winona Skye Braddock, my own personal superhero,” I joke and tenderly press my lips to the top of her head.
“You know my middle name?” she whispers. “Stalker.”
I chuckle but don’t bother to explain I saw it on that letter I almost accidentally threw out. The one she won’t tell me about. I close my eyes and concentrate on the soothing tickle of her breath against my chest. And then, when I think she’s already asleep she lets out a long sigh and says, “Your mom would be proud of who you’ve become.”
Fuck, this girl is everything. I am never letting her go.