Page 67 of On the Edge

I wonder if anyone else has ever loved me more than he has, or maybe even—according to him—still does. Certainly no one has ever hurt me more than he has. Is that just part of being loved and loving someone? Knowing that they can hurt you, but trusting that they won’t?

But he did, that little voice inside my head makes its presence known.

“I was going to retire,” I blurt out. It’s a total non sequitur, even though it’s intrinsically related to the conversation I’m having in my own head. He’s appropriately confused.

“Retire?”

Shut up, I tell myself.This and Marco are your last defenses. Don’t give him an in.I open my mouth anyway. “Yeah. Five years ago. I just wanted that one crystal globe, I wanted to be able to say that at one point I was the best in the world. I just ...” My words fade away under the intensity of his gaze.

“Why would you retire when you still had so much winning left to do? You were only a few years into your career. That doesn’t even make sense.”

His eyes have this look, like he’s searching my face for clues. Or at least, I think they do—it’s hard to know for sure because I’m starting to see double.This is bad. Why did I drink so much?

I pick up my toast and take a big bite, chewing and swallowing before I answer. “So we could focus on you, for a change,” I tell him, and take another bite. He doesn’t say anything, just watches me chew and swallow my toast. “I wanted you to be able to ski again, and I wanted to be there to support you.”

There, I’ve said it. At least he knows the truth now. At least he knows why his leaving hurt extra bad—I was going to walk away from my career for him, and instead he walked away from me.

Nate is moving back around the island, coming toward me quickly and I don’t understand why until he’s wrapped me in his arms and my face is pressed against his T-shirt. That’s when I realize my face is wet with tears I didn’t even realize I was shedding. And then, everything fades to black.

* * *

My mouth is filled with paste and my eyeballs burn as they scratch against my eyelids, but I’m warm and cozy curled up on my side under the weight of an incredibly heavy blanket. Without even opening my eyes I know it’s early. Too early. I feel like I could go back to sleep for a thousand years. Except there’s an annoying vibration along the base of my spine. It keeps buzzing a few times then stopping, then it inevitably starts again.

“What the hell is that?” His warm breath tickles the back of my neck and my eyes jolt open. I don’t recognize this bedroom, but the voice is intimately familiar.

The vibrating stops and I exhale, taking deep measured breaths and hoping he’ll believe I’m still asleep. I have no idea why I’m in bed with Nate. I lie there for a moment and by the sound of his even breathing I think he may have fallen back asleep, but then the buzzing starts again.

I hear Nate sigh and when he moves I realize that the heavy weight on me wasn’t a blanket, it was his arm, which is now pulling the covers down.

“Are you groping my ass?” I mumble when I feel his hand move across the top of my butt cheeks.

“No, I’m trying to figure out why your ass is vibrating.” I can hear the amusement in his voice, but I don’t understand why he’s so chipper and I feel half dead.

Oh, the drinks. The many, many drinks.

Nate lifts my sweater and I feel his fingers slide against the waistband of my leggings at the same time that the memories from last night come flooding back. The bar, that creepy guy who wouldn’t leave me alone, my narrow escape right into Nate’s arms. Nate bringing me here, feeding me toast, and me telling him that I was about to retire before my career ended.Shit.

That was an important conversation—the one that changes everything, because if he knows I was retiring to invest in his career, then he knows I was going tofinallymarry him. That conversation deserved to be more than a one-sided alcohol-fueled admission.

“Is your phone in your leggings?” he asks, and his husky voice has me wishing he’d slip his hand inside said leggings. I clench my core and mentally chastise myself for not trying harder to fight the attraction.

“Oh! Yeah, there’s a zipper pocket back there. I forgot I put my phone there before we got to the bar.”

How naive I was, thinking I was being “safe” by keeping my phone on me and not realizing that drunk me would forget I even had a phone. Not once during that entire encounter outside the bar did it occur to me to try to get to my phone or to voice activate a call to 9-1-1.

Nate’s finger drags along the skin of my lower back as he unzips the pocket, and his knuckles skim my spine as he pulls the phone out—the intimate but unintentional gesture has my thighs clenching together even harder. And I still haven’t even turned over and looked at him.

“Hmm,” he murmurs, and I can hear the teasing in his voice. “You sure have a lot of messages here.”

I flip over so quick he doesn’t even have time to move away before I’m grabbing for the phone. Of course, his arms are longer than mine so he easily stretches to hold the phone away and without thinking I lunge across his chest to reach for my device. I’m not able to reach it, but I am quite clearly able to feel the reaction his body has to mine pressed up against him.

I clear my throat and look over at him.

“You can’t rub your body up against mine first thing in the morning like this and expect my body not to respond.” There’s a playfulness in his voice that’s so familiar it makes me long for the past, when I could have acted on the attraction I’m feeling for him.

His eyes roam down to my lips. “Nate,” I say before this can go any further, “why am I in your bed? I assume you must have other bedrooms in this gigantic house.”

“As drunk as you were, I wasn’t leaving you alone in an unfamiliar house—especially in case you got sick.”

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