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Gazing down at me with his angry eyes, it was easier to defy him. If he’d looked hurt, I probably would have followed him back to bed. But if he was going to defend his position, that it was okay for women to throw themselves all over him but I couldn’t take a phone call from a source, I couldn’t let him have that one.
Even worse was the feeling that I was losing control of my feelings for him. We were having fun, loving each other in new ways, enjoying the closeness, but to what end? When we talked about living together, he really hadn’t made it clear which house he wanted me to occupy. Did he want me to house-sit for him here while he was gone next year? Live here among friends and leave New York for good even though he was never here? Or did he want me to stay in Charleston? Or somewhere in between? Or was I supposed to be his go-to girl and travel with him so he could fuck me every night? Was that who I wanted to be?
At the time, those words he said to me about taking his cock were like a dirty promise, but now they seemed more like an empty threat. He couldn’t make good on it anyway. After the new year, he would be gone for a week at least. The guys were headed to Canada to play three games there with three different teams. Thinking he could even be in my bed half the week was ludicrous during hockey season. And it was almost always hockey season.
When he saw I wasn’t backing down, he left. Since I couldn’t sleep anyway, I got back to work. Studying the numbers and letters the mysterious caller gave me, I ran a few searches to see if it pulled anything up. He seemed to say them in chunks, so I wrote them that way. Some numbers were small. Others were very large. I took a deep breath and scrubbed at my eyes. It was too long to be a password. It didn’t look like a code. Although maybe that was exactly what it was. I tried using numbers for letters, but that just led to some strangely-spelled nonwords.
Dropping my pen, I rolled to my belly and stretched my back. It couldn’t be that hard. People in the fashion industry weren’t criminal masterminds. I was making it too hard. Or maybe I was just too fucking tired.
Stretching one arm above my head, I dropped my head to my thick upper arm. It made a rather nice pillow, I thought, in the moment before I fell asleep.
In my dreams, I felt weightless as I floated from one cloud to another. By the time my eyes fluttered open, my brow furrowed with confusion. This wasn’t where I went to sleep.
Turning over, I found a note stuck to Ransom’s pillow with a clothespin. “I’m an asshole. And I’m sorry. See you at lunchtime.”
I felt a little melty and gooey at the thought of him carrying me to sleep in his bed. With the ceiling fan going above and no covers on, my body temperature was perfect. Snuggling in, I let myself get another hour of sleep. Then I forced myself to get up, shower, and head into town. Today, I was going to the library.
26
RANSOM
“You look like shit,” Calder told me with his usual enthusiasm.
I grunted.
Calder scowled. “No, really. What happened? It looked like things were good with you and Phoebe yesterday and now you look like this. What did you do?”
That got my ire up. “Me? Why did I do something wrong?”
Calder tilted his head. “Ilya, tell me something. If Kiley’s pissed at you, does she look bad or do you?”
Ilya ran his hand through his hair. “I’m a mess when she’s angry. My heart races, my palms sweat, and I’m a nervous wreck until we square things away.” He looked over at me and winced. “So, what did you do to Phoebe?”
I growled. “Why does everyone assume I’m in the wrong here?”
Hank skated up throwing ice at us upon his stop. “’Cause you are. It’s a statistical thing. Men are in the wrong 85% of the time.”
I narrowed my eyes at him.
He shrugged. “Ask anyone. They’ll tell you the same, big fella. So, what’d you do?”
I huffed. “She got a phone call in the middle of the night from some guy. I saw she was gone and got up to find her flirting with some jackass on the phone, but that somehow got us into a conversation about panties in my pocket. So, to stop arguing, I tried to distract her.”
Milo turned away from me, running his hand through his hair hissing. Chris and Ilya cringed.
Hank slapped me on the back. “You’re ten pounds of stupid in a five-pound sack.”
I shoved him away from me. “Distraction is a perfectly good way of ending an argument, right?”
Ilya grimaced. “Not if you’re going to work it out. That’s more of a bandage where you need a cast.”
I grunted. “So, what? It’s my fault that we have to do photo shoots with fans who sometimes shove their underwear at me?”
Ilya leaned on the boards. “Your fault? No, but your reaction to it is important.”
I grunted at him. Someone had better fill me in fast.
Chris tipped his chin. “See, you have to talk about the fact that fans come up to us sometimes. That someone could recognize us and want to take our picture or slip us a phone number. It’s just part of being in professional sports. Then give her a chance to ask all her questions and answer them honestly. It makes the tension go away.”
