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His gaze rises to meet mine, and he bites his bottom lip. “There’s something I should probably tell you.”
Shit.Has he been keeping secrets too?
Twenty-Two
Rowan
This isn’tsomething I share with anyone. Other than Ruby and Jagger, no one else knows. Not even Tweetie or Henry. I like to keep this part of my life private because I don’t like answering a lot of questions about it. The only reason I ever told Jagger was because he was adamant I tell him about anything that might come out in the press that could be perceived negatively. That if he was caught by surprise, he’d cut me off, and I wasn’t going to risk not having the best sports agent in the business.
She places the bottle on the bar while I rise from the stool, rounding the bar to the other side—her side.
“Let me show you how to make my drink.”
“Okay.” Her voice is shaky.
I’m still not positive that giving her this information about me is the right call, but for some reason, I trust her enough to do so. I think she’ll keep this secret, and I hope my judgment isn’t wrong.
I fill the glass with ice by using the scoop and grab the soda nozzle. I pick up her hand and place it over the button, pressing the button for the club soda to fill my glass close to the rim. Grabbing a lime from the fridge, I drop it in.
Her hand holds the soda nozzle, and her eyes meet mine. “That’s it?”
I pick up the drink and take a sip. “That’s it.”
Our eyes stay locked, and I can read the questions in her eyes.
“You weren’t drunk that first night we met?”
I chuckle and shake my head. “Nope.”
“Oh.”
“Were you?” I didn’t think she was. I knew she had a few glasses of wine but not so much that she was hammered.
“No. But I guess I figured…”
I place my cup on the bar top and broach the distance between us, stepping into her and caging her back to the bar with my hands on either side of her body. “Figured what?”
“That you were, you know…tipsy, I guess.”
“Tipsy?”
“Okay, and horny.”
I step closer to her, letting her feel how hard I am. “I am horny.”
“Rowan.” Her hands splay on my chest. “You were going to tell me something.”
I could say the same thing to her. We’re both keeping secrets from one another. And maybe I should say a secret for a secret, but I don’t want to force her to tell me. I want her to trust me like I do her in this moment.
I bring one hand up, swiping her hair away from her forehead and tucking a chunk of it behind her ear. “My dad drank…a lot…and he wasn’t a happy drunk.”
She grabs my shirt in her fists but doesn’t say anything.
“I did drink in college and some of the early years in the league, but I stopped a long time ago. Not because I had a problem, although had I let it go any longer, I probably would have. But I didn’t like who I was. I didn’t like waking up in the morning and not remembering what I did the night before. It made me feel out of control and a lot like my father, so I stopped drinking alcohol all together. The longer I went without it, the happier I was.”
“Why hide it?” she asks, and I step back, leaning against the back of the bar.
“I don’t want all the questions that go along with a decision like this. It’s not people’s business.” I cross my arms, the defensiveness I’ve always felt showing. I force myself to loosen them to my sides. She can ask me whatever she wants now that I’ve told her my secret. “So far, I’ve been lucky that no one has noticed, and I’d like to keep it that way. I don’t want people to dig into my past. They’ll find all the police reports of domestic abuse. They’ll find my father’s death certificate stating he died of liver failure due to chronic alcoholism. They’ll find a lot of shit about my life that I don’t want random people to know.”
