by Maria Luis
I watch her eyes fall shut. “King Sin Bin is becoming respectable, Andre. I almost don’t know what to think of that.”
I kiss her. I stamp my mouth down on hers, and absorb her squeak of surprise. Her fingers dive into my hair, tugging me closer, as if we aren’t already one. Hell, I missed her this past year. I rock my cock against her belly, and grin wildly when she arches her back and begs for more.
This. This is what I’ve been needing.
Zoe.
“Careful,” she whispers against my neck, “if you don’t stop, you might just fall.”
I know what she’s talking about. “Don’t mind if I do.”
And then I put my mouth back where it belongs, on hers.
Mine.
Chapter Twenty-Four
ZOE
One Day Left…
I’ve never been so happy in my life.
It’s true.
It’s crazy to think that a month ago, I hadn’t seen Andre in a year. That we’d been on the outs completely. And now . . .
I clutch his hair as his mouth lands exactly where I need him to be. His tongue finds me, hot and insistent, lapping at my clit like it’s his new job. From my precarious angle on the bed, all I see are his wide shoulders, his dark, messy hair. He woke me up this morning at the crack of dawn, his hands molding to my body, his scratchy stubble scraping against the curve of my shoulder as he nuzzled my neck.
Nuzzled.
Andre Beaumont.
I’d be just as surprised if I wasn’t on the receiving end of the nuzzling.
But the two of us are insatiable—maybe because we have a year to make up for—and when he threw back the covers and slid down my body, there wasn’t a single peep out of me.
“Oh, my God,” I whisper now, curling my hands into his hair. “Andre . . . ”
His gaze flicks to my face, his dark eyes like sin. He doesn’t stop. He pushes my legs wider, slips his hands beneath my butt, and tilts me to him like a veritable buffet.
Oh. Oh, wow.
My fingers clutch the sheets. I need him.
And so I take action—I hike one foot up and plant it on his shoulder, pushing him backward. With a jolt of surprise, he teeters over the side of the bed and falls to the floor with a grunt.
Oops. Totally not my intention.
I clamber to the side of the bed to peek over at him, only to see his shoulders bouncing. With laughter. Oh, my God, he’s laughing at me, and a grin has split his face, and he is the sexiest damn thing I’ve ever seen.
He catches sight of me, and holds out a hand. “Get over here, Zo.”
“On the floor?” I ask, eyeing the carpet with a skeptical eye.
“You know that you want to.”
I do, and he’s right, and I slither off the bed and crawl over to him on hands and knees.
I don’t expect his next move.
Andre swoops in, hauling me up against his body so that I’m seated on his lap with his back against the bed. My breasts are in his big hands, and it feels so fantastic that I drop my head back.
“Guide me inside you, baby,” he rumbles, thumbs flicking my nipples. “Let me feel how hot you are for me.”
I’m on the pill, something we discussed the other night, and so I don’t need further prompting to do exactly as he ordered. I align his cock with my entrance, and then sink down onto him. Oh, God. He feels huge—just right. Using my knees as leverage, I slip up, up, up, before crashing back down on him.
He groans his pleasure, head falling back against the bed, as his hands go to my waist. Up, down, up, down.
With each downward thrust, I feel my heart open a little wider. Become a little less careful when it comes to this man who has been my closest friend and the only person I’ve ever truly despised.
“You feel so damn good,” he whispers, eyes still screwed shut. “I’ll never get enough of you, Zo.”
Selfishly, I don’t want him to. So, I make it good for us both. So good that he’ll never want to walk away again. I twist my hips, taking him all the way inside me. He hisses, nails biting my skin, as he takes control of my movements. Each time that I come back down on his cock is a little harder, a little less controlled.
It’s wonderful.
Because Andre is a man who only knows control, and the fact that I’m the one who can make him lose it?
Heaven.
My fingers go to his chin, demanding that he look at me. He does, dark eyes blinking open, fevered with lust and . . . something else. Maybe I shouldn’t go for it; maybe I shouldn’t read too much into something that’s so new.
But I’ve known this man for so long, and the words tumble out of me as my climax lights a fire inside me. “I love you, Andre.”
The only hint that he’s heard my declaration is the momentary stalling of his hips. But then he picks up smoothly, turning us over, so his body is over mine, my legs locked around his waist, his elbows holding him up.
He kisses my forehead. “Say it again, baby.”
I moan.
He kisses my cheek. “Zo, say it again.”
My fingers shake with the force of my orgasm. “I love you, Andre.”
His kiss lands on my mouth, a little off-center. He thrusts once more, and again, and again, until he comes inside me with a quiet roar.
We haven’t even pulled our clothes back on before the doorbell rings downstairs.
Andre drops his head to my chest, his damp hair plastering itself against my skin. “Fuck, this is not a good time.”
I laugh a little. “Why, you have something to say?”
He lifts his head and meets my gaze head on. “You know that I do.”
My heart thunders in my chest. “Say it.”
“Not yet.” Sliding off my body, he makes a grab for his clothing, which has been discarded . . . Well, everywhere. “Get comfy on the bed, baby,” he adds, as he slips on a T-shirt over his head. “I’ll be right back as soon as I send whoever it is packing.”
It’s not quite a declaration, but I’ll take it.
Hell to the yes, I will.
He gives me a quick kiss after tugging on a pair of shorts, then heads for the doorway. I want to call him back and tell him that I love him again. I never once thought that Andre and I would get to this place. Sure, there are speedbumps that we still have to get over. Lingering issues, like the fact that I’ve signed a lease on an apartment, and haven’t spent a single night there. Instead, I’m here with him. It’s probably too soon to move in together officially though.
Although I guess we are a bit of a special case.
It’s not like we’d only met a month ago. That’d be different. I think.
Then again, Andre has a way of making me forget about the rules. Although I do agree about Golden Lights Media. It’ll be less difficult for him to find a new company than for me to find a new job. And, honestly, it’s sweet that he’d even suggest it in the first place.
Raised voices steal my attention, and I quietly tug on my clothes. I know that Andre told me to wait upstairs, but I can hear the frustration in his voice.
Against my will, my feet carry me to the stairwell, and I glance down into the foyer below. Andre has his hands on the back of his neck as he paces. And . . . my breath catches at the sight of a pretty woman opposite him. Her hair is thick and blond, her body trim from exercise.
I shouldn’t be standing here. I shouldn’t be listening.
Tell that to your feet.
“You can’t just swing by here,” Andre is saying, his voice pitched low.
The woman takes a step forward. “Andre, honey”—honey?!—“I’m not trying to cause any trouble.”
The man who spent all morning bringing me to climax laughs harshly. “Hannah, all you do is cause trouble.”
“That’s unfair.”
“What’s unfair,” Andre mutters with a retreating step, “is that you show up wherever I go, Hannah. You show up and you stir the fucking memories, and you just don’t get it, do you? Y
ou left me. This wasn’t the other way around.”
I . . . I think I’m going to be sick.
Neither of them have noticed me standing up here on the second-floor landing, which I suppose is a good thing, because I don’t want to be noticed. Andre had been in a relationship? The man who refused to do relationships had been . . .
The Fame interview. His request not to answer the question about a time that he’d had his heart broken. Oh, God, I am such an idiot. Idiot, idiot, idiot.
“Andre,” Hannah says pleadingly, “it was a mistake.”
“No. No, Hannah, a mistake is sleeping with someone else once and then never doing it again. A mistake is not having affairs with multiple men each time I was on the road for games. A mistake is not breaking up with me, leaving me for someone else, and then informing me later on that you’d given birth to my son and that my son had died without me even knowing he existed.” Andre’s voice cracks, and my heart does right along with him. “Those are not mistakes, Hannah. Those will never be mistakes, and I swear to fucking God that if you ever come around here again, I will get a restraining order on you so fast, you’ll have fucking whiplash.”
I must make a sound because Hannah glances up and spots me clinging to the balcony railing.
Her shoulders stiffen. “I didn’t realize that you had company.”
Andre doesn’t even turn to look up at me. Instead, he moves to the front door and swings it open in silence.
Hannah gets the hint, this time at least, I suppose, and struts her way out without another word.
The door closes.
And then finally Andre meets my gaze. His cheeks are bright from emotion, more emotion than I’ve ever seen from him before.
Hannah.
The girl he loved.
The son he never knew.
I’m so stupid, and it hurts even more to realize that now after I just professed my love for him.
“We need to talk,” he says softly, though his tone remains hard, and I don’t think he’s referring to his plan to tell me that he loves me.
I nod, sucking in a quiet sob because I know what’s coming, and then move down the steps to meet him in the foyer. It’s then that I remember the picture of the little boy I’d seen a few weeks ago, when I’d first come to his house. The boy I thought belonged to his sister.
Not to his sister, though.
To him.
He doesn’t ham around, waiting for the “right way” to tell me. In a way, I appreciate the forwardness of his speech, even though I want to know why he waited all this time to say something. I wouldn’t have judged him. I wouldn’t have looked at him differently.
If anything, knowing his past would have opened the door to his soul—all the crevices and the wounds and the shadows.
His Adam’s apple dips with a swallow. “Hannah and I met in college at Northwestern. She was the sister of a buddy, and I’d be lying to you if I said that I didn’t notice her right off the bat.”
Although it stings to hear him say that, I nod anyway. Isn’t this what I wanted? To learn everything he hid away? My fingers clench into balled fists. I guess I didn’t think his “secrets” would be something as momentous as this.
“We started dating in my senior year, right before I got drafted by the Red Wings. She moved with me, you know, never even put up a fight about not wanting to live in Detroit. I was her home, she told me over and over again. She’d go with me anywhere.”
I bite down on my lower lip, wanting to ask so many questions but not wanting to throw him off.
He continues softly, “Best years of my life and worst ones as well. Hannah had a way about her that kept me hooked onto the relationship, even though it should have ended in college. The more my career took off, the less she wanted to be seen with me in public. I didn’t understand. It was one thing if she was camera shy, but the way Hannah acted . . . it didn’t feel that way. We’d go to the movies, and she’d slip her hand from mine. We’d go to dinner, and she’d invite my teammates so it looked like we were one big party going out.”
My heart breaks when his mouth opens and then clamps shut, his fist coming up to rub his chest. I want to touch him, to bring him comfort, but something tells me he doesn’t want that. That if I touch him, the story will end and this is . . . this is something he needs to let out. Something, I suspect, he’s never told anyone.
His caustic chuckle catches me off guard. “Eventually, I caught onto her game.” He moves to the entryway table, picking up the picture of the little boy. “She didn’t want the media knowing about us, because if they had, then all of her lovers would have known she wasn’t, actually, single. In the house, she slept in my bed and rubbed my back and sat on my lap. In public, we were strangers. Friends, at most.”
“How did you find out?” I ask, already dreading the answer.
“The usual way.” He laughs again, lips turning up in a smile I know isn’t real. “Came home early from being on the road to find another guy in our bed. After that, she came clean and I was done. She left without a fuss, didn’t even try to fight for what we had . . . or didn’t have, I guess. What I didn’t know then was that she was pregnant with our child. She’d never mentioned anything.”
My stomach plummets. This time, I don’t stop myself from going to him—I can’t stop myself from going to him. I press a hand to his arm, dragging it around me so that I can slip my hands to his back and pull him into a hug. His hands hesitate briefly before following suit, tugging me close.
His chest is rock-hard against my cheek, and I can feel the shiver that racks his body when I press a kiss to his heart.
“For two years, I didn’t know a thing, Zo. How does someone do something like that? She didn’t call. She didn’t message me.” His big shoulders hunch around me, and I realize he’s trying to get closer. Heart squeezing, I palm his big back, rubbing in circles. “And then one day, she shows up at my old house in Detroit. Tells me that we’d had a son and that he’d caught bronchitis and had passed away. I didn’t want to believe her. It honestly seemed like just the sort of fucked-up shit that she’d do to get back at me, but she shared the birth and death certificates with me. Offered to have me do a DNA test before he was cremated, so that I knew she wasn’t lying.”
My breathing is rough when I ask, “Did you?”
“Yes.” I feel his nod against the top of my head. “I got the results back the day that you and I slept together.”
For a moment, the words don’t register.
And when they do, I reel back in shock, disengaging from his arms. No. No. My gaze searches his face, looking for any hint of dishonesty, but there is none. If anything, he looks more exposed, more uneasy, than I’ve ever seen him.
“So you used me?” I whisper, and wow, it hurts. I’d always known that I’d just been a random hookup for him. But this . . . The urge to vomit returns twofold. “Did you know that I would be an easy lay? That I wanted you so badly, and it wouldn’t take much effort on your part to charm me out of my pants?”
Andre lurches forward, his expression a mask of regret and panic. “No,” he hastily exclaims, “Wait, yes. But not because of how you’re thinking it.”
I lift my brows. “How else am I supposed to think of this, Andre? You slept with me. You let me suffer the media alone when everyone found out from that stupid security footage. You used me.”
The aftereffects of our night together have always stung, but knowing the truth is like a knife to an open wound. In that moment, when his large hands had been holding me up, and my nails had been digging into his back, I had let myself think that it was just the start of something new. That Andre and I had a future ahead of us. The words “I love you” had been on the tip of my tongue, and meanwhile Andre had sought me out because he knew that I’d give him what he wanted. Sex. Uncomplicated sex with someone he never planned to sleep with twice.
None of this is news, but emotions aren’t rational and right now . . . right now my lungs heave in an attempt
to yank in air.
Andre’s fingers encircle my wrist, stilling me. “Please, Zo, baby, just listen.”
I pull away from his grasp. “I listened, Andre. And I can commiserate with your pain. I can understand why you’d be upset and how your world quite literally turned upside down. But we were friends, and you used the fact that I loved you against me. And when the pieces fell apart, you didn’t even bother to help put them back together. You walked away. Just like Hannah.”
He flinches at the sound of his ex’s name. “I’m nothing like Hannah.”
“No?” I poke him in the chest, then plant my hands on my hips. “For the two years that I’ve known you, Andre, you’ve slept with women without thought as to how they might feel.”
“It’s not a crime to—”
I cut him off with a wave of my hand. “No, it’s not a crime to sleep around. But you let what Hannah did to you turn you into a man who had no thought to other people’s emotions. You slept with women. You barked at the media. You got mean, Andre. What Hannah did to you? Unforgivable. If she was still here, I’d yank her hair out. But none of her actions make yours acceptable.”
Our heavy breathing fills the foyer, rapid and panicked because we both know that we’re hurtling toward the end.
We can’t come back from this.
“I don’t know what to say,” he rasps. “I did use you. I used a lot of women who didn’t deserve it. I—”
“What was his name?” I ask. “Your son?”
His eyes squeeze shut before cranking open. “Aaron,” he tells me. “Hannah named him Aaron.”
Aaron. I don’t ask if Hannah listed ‘Beaumont’ as the boy’s surname. Something tells me that she did. But I do shift closer to Andre, so that I cup his cheek. His stubble tickles my palm.
I swallow, hard. My fingers tangle in his messy hair. “I think you need to ask what kind of man Aaron would have wanted as a father. A man who spends his days living in the sin bin, even when he’s off the ice, or a man who greets life head-on, whatever it throws at him.”
“Zoe—”
I shake my head and step back. “Just answer me this, Andre. The moment that you saw me while Hannah was still here, what was your gut response?”
