by Amber Lynn
“He told Sarah he was staying over at my place while she was getting her stuff together, but he’s been staying at a hotel since they broke up. He can’t stand to be in the apartment without her. I knew he was taking his experiment to the extreme, but I didn’t think he was this far gone.”
“Sarah. Is. Not. An. Experiment.”
Reid’s lips curled back from his teeth as he punctuated each word. He knew when he’d opened the door that he probably wouldn’t like the guy behind it, but Trevor was looking to get punched.
The man seemed to sense it and took another step back, removing his hand from the door. His eyes darted around, showing the nervousness Reid thought was proper for the situation.
“I’m not saying she is, and clearly Aaron gave up on what he’d called an experiment a long time ago. He is crazy in love with Sarah and I’m worried about what he’ll do if she keeps ignoring him.”
“Hey, Reid, I’m pretty sure the smell of your shampoo is permanently ingrained in the bathroom walls. Do you know how hard that’s going to make it for me to get ready in here?”
Trevor put on an insincere smile as he waved behind Reid. Looking over his shoulder, Reid only saw a quick glimpse of Sarah’s bare butt as she dived back into the bathroom. Looking back at Trevor, it was obvious Sarah’s naked form didn’t interest the guy as much as Reid’s.
“What are you doing here, Trevor?” Sarah shrieked once she was safely hidden in the bathroom.
Reid knew that in order for her to get dressed, she had to come out of the bathroom and walk to the bedroom door next to it, so chances were slim she’d be joining them in person for the conversation. If she tried to go the towel method that he had, the door was going to be shut and whatever Trevor was getting at would have to wait for another day.
“I’m trying to warn you that Aaron isn’t thinking clearly right now.”
“He’s not my problem.”
Sarah didn’t need to yell. Her apartment was small enough to carry on a normal conversation anywhere in it. Reid figured the loudness on her part was because she hadn’t expected to walk out of the bathroom to find Reid entertaining a guest, if it could be called that.
“I think he’s a bigger problem than you think. I’ve been following him around, hoping to keep him out of trouble, and since he got wind that you and this hunk of flesh are more than the convenient dates to the wedding this weekend, he’s been tailing you.”
“Excuse me.”
Reid was the first to reply, but Sarah had her own almost as equally quick reply.
“We aren’t going to the wedding.”
That seemed like a very minor part of the problem with Trevor’s statement. Reid wanted the details of just how far Aaron was taking his stalking. If he was sitting out in the parking lot, Reid wanted to give him a piece of his mind.
“I don’t think whether or not you’re going to the wedding is the issue. Aaron wants you back and from what I’ve seen, he’s willing to go to extremes to get back the life he thinks he wants.”
“Where is he right now?”
Reid had been hearing about the guy for a week and it was about time he introduced himself. As hard as it was to not rough up Trevor, Reid thought he should probably get his lawyer on the phone and make sure bail was ready. If Aaron was set on getting Sarah back, there was no doubt in Reid’s mind that he’d press charges for the beat down Reid wanted to put on him.
“Obviously, he’s not around here if I’m here. Since you guys were out of town, he’s been holed up in the hotel he’s living in. I was afraid he was going to jump on a plane and follow you, but he just went back to the hotel and only God knows what he’s doing there.”
“So why are you here instead of there trying to work things out with him?” Reid asked.
“You don’t think I’ve tried? I already told you he isn’t taking my calls, and when I showed up at the hotel trying to talk in person, he had me escorted out.”
Other than the part about a guy stalking Sarah, which Reid conceded was a major part, he summed up the guy’s problems to a domestic issue that didn’t involve him. He wondered if his hurt feelings weren’t making things worse than they were. Aaron could have decided to move on and Trevor wasn’t taking the hint.
“And what are you hoping to get out of this little chat? Are you hoping to goad me into going over there and making sure he gets it through his head that Sarah isn’t available?”
“I knew you were here, but I wasn’t fully aware of what was going on between you. I mean, it’s only been a week and I know how long it took Sarah to warm up to Aaron. I wasn’t expecting to find you both naked. It’s a good thing it was me and not him. Seeing you at the door would’ve pushed him over the edge.”
“Are you going to get to the part where you tell me why you’re here?”
They’d been standing at the door for at least ten minutes and Reid was getting tired of being hospitable. If something useful didn’t come out of his mouth, the door was being shut in his face.
“I know you have no reason to believe me, Sarah, but I never wished you any ill-will. He’s planning something and I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“If she didn’t hear that herself, I’ll make sure the message gets delivered. Good-bye.”
Reid let go of the door and watched it shut. The hopes of going furniture shopping were clearly going to be put on hold as they figured out the new wrinkle in their budding relationship.
“Just don’t leave her alone, okay?”
There was a sound from the other side of the door that Reid equated to someone hitting their head softly against it. All the guy had needed to say were those words and the conversation could’ve been over.
“It’s safe to come out now.”
“Are you sure? It sounds like I’m better off staying in here.”
Reid didn’t hear any real fear in her voice, only frustration. He made his way over to where the bathroom door had been closed and pushed it open. Sarah sat on top of the closed toilet with her elbows on her knees and her head resting on the palms of her hands. She saw him standing there and looked over at him.
“I don’t blame you if you want to run out of here as fast as you can. You didn’t sign up for crazy ex-boyfriend.”
“I didn’t?”
Walking the whole two extra steps it took to get to the toilet crammed in one of the corners of the room, Reid reached out his hand to help Sarah up. She’d wrapped a towel around her body, but it looked like she hadn’t bothered trying to dry her hair, which was dripping down her back onto the towel.
“No, you signed up to exchange our services for events neither one of us had dates to. What’s happened in the week since then was nothing more than my life exploding all over you. If I were you, I’d get out before you have to witness my pure and utter downfall.”
Reid shook his head and pulled Sarah out in the hall so they could go sit on her bed for a little chat. He knew her parents lived in town, which to him meant she had two choices. Go stay with them for a while, or learn to cohabitate with Nico.
Chapter Fifteen
There were countless reasons Sarah hated sleeping in the house she grew up in, and one of them was standing in the doorway of her room. She could feel her mother’s eyes on her even though the woman hadn’t said a word acknowledging her presence. Sarah had been focused on getting chapters written now that words were finally flowing from her fingertips, but she’d started feeling the heat burrowing into her from the glare five minutes before she bothered speaking.
“It’s impolite to stare.”
Sarah looked up from her incomplete thought to figure out what had drawn her mother upstairs for the visit. It had been a while since Sarah had surfaced for air, but that happened when she got on a roll. She supposed her parents had never witnessed the phenomenon since she hadn’t gotten serious about her stories until college. Back then, she’d barely got any sleep as she wrote out scenes and then scrapped them, only to rewrite them again.
&nb
sp; “I’d say it’s also impolite to move back home for a month without giving us an explanation as to why you’re here and how long we’re supposed to expect you to stay. You stay up here almost all day, and most nights you disappear until well after midnight. Not to mention the days you’ve just disappeared. What are we supposed to think about that?”
It had seemed like a good idea to not let her parents worry about what was going on with Aaron. Reid was right to insist she stayed anywhere other than her apartment, but she didn’t want to burden him with watching after her. Plus, she wanted to prove to him even without constant supervision from him, she wasn’t running back to Aaron’s arms. She’d told her parents she needed a change of location to try to concentrate on her work and, surprisingly, she’d found that to be exactly how she was using her time.
It was crazy how fast the month had gone by. With no word at all from Aaron, Sarah was long past thinking Trevor was just imagining things. When she’d first heard his warnings, she’d been worried because deep down she did think Aaron was capable of snapping, but he’d clearly moved on. She’d tried to tell Reid it was fine for her to move back to her apartment, but he was being protective and didn’t want to chance anything.
Their relationship had slowed from the frantic start. A little distance tended to make that a necessity. If Sarah wanted things to move faster, all she had to do was move in with Reid, an option he had offered more than once. Instead, they were trying to play normal boyfriend and girlfriend, if normal was something that could be defined.
“I’d recommend thinking that I have an interesting love life,” Sarah said as a joke to answer her mother’s request for an explanation.
Lynne laughed at her daughter. She’d known about Sarah and Aaron breaking up, but she didn’t know Sarah had met someone new. Sarah had left out the parts about Aaron cheating on her when she explained why she wasn’t still at his place. She didn’t figure that detail was particularly important, especially since neither of her parents had pushed for a reason.
“If it’s so interesting, what are you doing hiding here?”
“Trying to make sure I don’t screw it up. Do you want to come with me tonight?”
Sarah looked down at her computer and saw that she had about an hour before she needed to be ready to go to a game. She’d lost track of time and was going to need to hurry, especially if her mom agreed to come.
“You want me to go on a date with you and your boyfriend?”
Lynne crossed her arms across her chest and her green eyes looked at Sarah doubtfully. Sarah’s general characteristics all came from her mother. Lynne was a few inches shorter than her and had started dying her hair to battle some gray hairs, but overall they looked a lot alike.
“It’s not really a date. I mean, we usually grab something to eat and head over to his place for a little bit, but there’s a few hours where I’m just sitting around watching him.”
Sarah was purposefully vague to see what kind of response she got. When she’d asked for the company, she hadn’t considered the fact that Reid set her up with a ticket to the suite, but it was a singular ticket. If her mom tagged along, she was going to need to get a pair of tickets for down in the stands. It was way too late to call Reid and ask him to make arrangements since he was probably already getting in game mode.
“Is he in theater or something?”
There was a distaste to her voice that would have echoed in Sarah’s if the concept of spending a night watching a play was on the table. Sarah thought about leading her on so she’d be surprised when they got to the arena, but decided it was best if her mother didn’t go into meeting Reid thinking it was going to be torture.
“Reid’s a hockey player. About half of the nights that I disappear I’m sitting with thousands of other people cheering him on, otherwise we’re on more traditional dates.”
“A hockey player?” Lynne sounded completely confused. “Like one that makes money doing it, or is it just some recreational league?”
“Definitely the former. The days I’ve disappeared were away games. So far they’ve been pretty close, but next month there’s a California trip and I’ll be gone for a whole week.”
Sarah was starting to get used to the frequent flights. There hadn’t been a question of whether she’d follow along like she had to Florida. Since Trevor’s claims hadn’t scared Reid off as far as the relationship went, he was afraid to leave the city without Sarah, readily admitting the fact.
On her side of things, Sarah wouldn’t lie and say she wasn’t looking over her shoulder everywhere she went. As the weeks passed, she’d been doing it less frequently, but she still felt like eyes were on her anytime she left the house, even when she looked around and found no one there.
“You’re dating a professional hockey player. How long has this been going on?”
“A month, so it’s still really new, but at the same time, it feels like it’s been years. There’s something about Reid that,” Sarah paused as she tried to think of how to finish that sentence.
From the very beginning she’d felt the connection, and it had only grown stronger as time went on. There was part of it that scared her, especially how the need to be around Reid consumed her. The decision to not move in with him when he asked was mainly not to burden him, but there was a part of Sarah that wanted to see how long she’d make it before she begged him to let her move in.
“He makes me want to be me, when it feels like everyone else wants to make me who they want me to be. It’s kind of hard to explain, but he sees my flaws and celebrates them instead of trying to fix them.”
The only thing he tried to get Sarah to change was her self-doubt. He made it clear that he wanted her to feel comfortable in her skin. Sarah believed it was that trait that made it so easy to open up and talk to him. When pretty much everyone in her life had always been trying to shape her and make her feel like she wasn’t good enough, Reid told her that she was already perfection.
Just thinking about it brought a smile to her face. She knew she was in love with the man, and it scared her. For months she’d hemmed and hawed over whether her relationship with Aaron was going anywhere, and when she didn’t come to a real conclusion, she’d just started going with the flow. As far as Reid was concerned, there was no doubt where she wanted things to go. The only question was how she could convey that information without scaring him away.
“And he’s a professional hockey player?”
Lynne didn’t seem to be able to get over that fact. Sarah’s parents had always wanted what was best for her, which meant like everyone else, they had pushed her outside of her comfort zones. They didn’t give off the feeling that she couldn’t do something, like the Mays and Aarons in her life had, but they didn’t let her just be her.
“He is, and he’s a pretty good one if his stats are telling the story. Do you want to come tonight? If you do, I need to get tickets bought and get ready. I like to be there early.”
Bringing up early reminded Sarah that with her suite ticket, they let her in some special doors, but general admission probably wouldn’t get her through the doors that opened early. If her mom was coming with her, Sarah really didn’t want to sit with the wives and girlfriends in the suite, even if her and Kellie were inseparable at the games. Getting another suite pass was too much to ask, but Sarah thought Reid might be able to do something about getting them in early.
“And you’ve been with him a month?”
The conversation wasn’t progressing at the speed Sarah needed it. She could see by her eyes that her mother was doing the math. Since Sarah hadn’t mentioned the break-up with Aaron until after it was completely official, there was a little overlap in the relationships.
“Were you cheating on Aaron?”
Sarah couldn’t help laughing. Taking her eyes off her mom for a second, she reached over and closed her laptop. She’d been hunched over it for hours and she needed to get up to stretch. Leaving Lynne in suspense for a few moments, she stood and mo
ved her neck from side to side and rolled her shoulders. Reid liked to give her massages, and she was in desperate need of one. Sadly, it’d be hours before he could work it into his schedule.
“Aaron and I were broken up before Reid and I got together. We actually got together because I was looking for someone to fill in for Aaron at June’s wedding.”
“But you didn’t go to the wedding.”
Lynne had. She’d gone on for almost an hour about how beautiful the winter wedding had been. Apparently, everyone had asked where Sarah was, turning the attention away from the bride and groom at times. Sarah imagined it had driven both June and May insane, which didn’t bother her one bit. The break from May to think about things had remained intact, and Sarah didn’t miss her best friend. She thought that said a lot about their relationship.
“No, we ended up sitting it out because Aaron was supposed to be there to propose to me.”
Sarah looked back at her mom just in time to see her face go totally blank. The statement basically served as a nuclear bomb in her brain it seemed. While she tried to work out any follow-up questions, Sarah walked over to the lone dresser in the room and started looking through her clothes.
When she’d made the temporary move back home, she hadn’t thought it would last very long, so she’d dumped the suitcase she packed into the three-drawer dresser. At some point, she should’ve started hanging things up, especially after doing laundry, but she kept putting the clothes in the dresser in hopes she’d be able to one day dump the drawers back in her bag and head back to her place.
“You broke up with Aaron because he wanted to get married?”
An odd sounding scoff escaped Sarah’s lips as she grabbed an Aces t-shirt. The wives and girlfriends didn’t wear team apparel, for whatever reason, so Sarah hadn’t either. If she was going to sit in the stands, she figured it was best to blend in with the screaming fans around her.
“I broke up with Aaron because he was cheating on me.”
Sarah had hoped that information would never reach her parents, but she couldn’t let her mom think Aaron was some angel. She had adored Aaron, and had multiple times asked Sarah when she thought they’d get married. Sarah hoped that same adoration would pass on to Reid.
