In my dressing room. I can’t breathe. It’s too intimate. He must know the dilemma I’m in as he stands up slowly. No smile. No smugness.
Just him, and God, I want him.“I had to see you,” he says.
He’s shaved, and the sleeves of his dress shirt are rolled up, baring his meaty forearms. I look to his eye to judge his sincerity, and either he fakes it incredibly well or he’s an honest man.
I grip the door frame like it will support me.
“Why?” I look him over, and damn if he’s not a picture. Hockey player or not, he oozes confidence and charisma. He’s the bad boy who made it big. His hard body is built for sin, and I know what he does with his stick. I loved every minute of it. I even begged for more.
He looks at my hand, before his eyes zero in on the ring, and then me.
“Because we’re married,” he says quietly, “and I think I meant it.” He says it so casually, like he didn’t just drop a bomb into the middle of my raw nerves. “I think I meant everything I said,” he whispers, like it didn’t sink in the first time he said it.
I blink at him from the door, still in my costume, my mascara smudged from sweat and my adrenaline crashing. My heart is pounding too loudly to think straight.
“What?” I ask in disbelief. My voice is barely a whisper.
He looks at me, completely calm.
“I meant it, Kate. Not just the show. The vows.”
Oh God.He’s serious.
I giggle. It’s a reflex when I’m nervous. It’s totally uncalled for, but it’s my reaction, and I can’t take it back.
“That’s not funny,” I say. “It’s not nice to play with someone’s emotions.”
“I’m not joking.”
I meet his gaze.“No,” I say, moving into the room too fast, like the movement can undo the words that threaten my resolve to discount his words. “No, you think youmeantit. You don’t even know me. Not really. We were caught up in the aftermath and the sex and the—whatever it was.” I shrug.
His brows knitted in confusion, but I didn’t stop. I need to get in front of the crash before it hits me so hard I’ll never recover.
“You’ll wake up in a week and regret this. You’ll realize I was just... a fun story. A disaster you helped off the dance floor and carried to a Vegas chapel. A mess you temporarily wanted to fix.”
“Kate—”
“I want an annulment.” My words hit him hard; they’re harsh, and I hated saying them. But I hated the thought of staying long enough to watch him change his mind even more. “You didn’t pick me. Not really. You picked the idea for me. You picked the version I sell onstage—confident, charming. The reality is, I’m a walking panic attack. A mess. What you picked is the fantasy.”
I walk into the room. I don’t know if I’m trying to hurt him, so leave me or what, but he’s impervious so far.
His expression doesn’t change. “We didn’t just exchange vows, Kate. Weconsummatedthe damn thing.”
My breathing pauses. “And that’s supposed to make it real?”
“I think it already is.”
I stare at him, unsure whether to run away or run to him and kiss him. But the cliff’s edge is too close, and I know how hard the fall will be. When he decides I’m broken and that he made a mistake.
I don’t want to be a mistake. I want to be chosen.
So I’m going to do what I do best. I’m going to push him away before he dumps me. And if I’m lucky, it will happen before he has thechance to break my heart into a million pieces. I turn toward the door, but he doesn’t let me open it.
He puts himself between me and the door, like he anticipated my move.
Damn him.
And when I look into his eyes, I realize he’s still as devastatingly handsome as the night we met, if not more so.
