“I’ll cut back on the drinking,” I promised him and I meant it. Like I said, I would’ve done anything he’d asked of me.

Picking my head up off my hands, I sat back and dragged them over my face.

“That’s not what this is about. Everybody goin’ through something has got to find their own bottom. You don’t find it, it finds you later. But I’m guessin’ it’s gonna take you awhile.”

In the pause my heart began to race. The puzzle was slowly coming together, even as my brain swam in whiskey. I could almost hear Rowdy’s next words as if I’d written the script myself.

“My granddaughter is meant for greatness. She’s worked hard for it. She’s earned it. Let her have it.”

“I love her. I would never––”

He held up a big hand, fingers crooked and disfigured from arthritis and the countless injuries he’d sustained in his career. “She loves you more than anything. And I know that girl, she’ll give you everything––” His voice was low and steady. I got the sense he was cherry picking his words, trying to be as gentle as he could with me. His eyes drilled into mine as he continued. “Everything that isn’t yours to have, she’ll give it.”

“I wouldn’t,” I rushed to reassure him, the cinderblock sitting on my chest making my voice reed thin. I knew Maren meant the world to him and I needed him to know it was the same for me. She was my world. My everything. Without her, I would’ve spun off the planet to be lost forever.

“She’ll give it to you anyway.”

The truth of it hit me like a wrecking ball. I’d heard Maren speaking on the phone with her coach, arguing about whether she should transfer to UCLA. I knew she would never leave me. Not willingly.

Face wet. Eyes stinging. I stayed quiet and let him deal the last blow.

“You’re gonna drag her down with you and you’ll end up losing her anyway…Let her go. Let her have her greatness. You’ll find each other again. Later…later you’ll get the best of her.”

I was nodding, crying like a fucking baby by the time he finished.

“When you love someone you do right by them––even when it’s wrong for you,” he said as he slid out of the booth.

When I crawled into bed that night and wrapped my arms around her, pressed my body against hers, I knew what I had to do. Maren snuggled closer and as the words left my lips I knew they were a lie. “Promise me we’ll never be strangers.”

Half asleep, she curved her hand around my neck and nodded. “Hmm.”

“Promise me.”

Eyes closed, she whispered in the dark, “I promise.”

* * *

Maren

We are two people playing catch-up, cramming ten years of hot, vigorous lovemaking into weeks. Days pass in a blur of naked Jenga. Noah still has a business to run so we eventually leave his bed. At Rowdy’s, he finds the flimsiest excuses to call me to his office. I get to know the couch in there pretty well.

We workout together in the gym and when I finish before he does, because I can’t lift with my cast, I make excuses to hang around and watch him.

We get on his bike and ride and ride and ride. I tell him I feel guilty for not training harder, and he kisses me until I don’t remember why I feel guilty in the first place. He takes me to a little out-of-the-way Mexican restaurant he and Knox discovered and we eat too much and talk about traveling, his business, how I’m considering taking a year off from the circuit. Every night in bed, I sleep with his arms wrapped around me like steel bands and before he falls asleep he presses his mouth to the back of my neck.

“Come on, I wanna show you something,” he tells me. After spending all day by the pool, night has fallen and so has the temperature.

Snuggling closer to him on the lounge chair we’re sharing, I cry mercy. “Let’s stay here. I’m getting cold.” He rubs my back, chasing it away with his big warm hands.

“You want to see this, trust me.” Looking up into Noah’s smile, full of mischief and promise, I know I can’t say no to this man.

He takes my hand, pulls me up, and guides me to a spiral staircase. We climb up to a small patio adjacent to the roof, its only occupant a doublewide lounge chair.

“What’s this? Your little love nest? If you brought other girls up here––”

Noah falls backward onto it, taking me with him. I land hard on his chest and he lets out an, “Oomph,” and laughs, then tickles me. My cast presses awkwardly against his thigh and he grunts loudly.

“Jesus––leave the good parts out of this, baby.”

I pet his booboo and promise to make it better later. Our mutual laughter slowly fades and he cups the back of my head, fingers digging into my hair, and kisses me. Really kisses me. Full of tongue and teeth and passion, it’s hot enough to snuff out whatever else I was about to say.

Tags: P. Dangelico It Takes Two Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net