Page 94 of Only for Tonight
“She’s—” I start to say.
“A bitch,” he finishes and I laugh. “But that’s Kirby’s problem and not mine.” He stands up, grabbing his sweater from beside me. He takes off the one he was wearing on the ice and puts on the one I was wearing. “Now, I smell like you,” he comments, bending to kiss my lips, “and I love it.”
We walk out of the room and I look around once we get into the food hall, seeing tables all set up in front of a buffet of food. “I’m going to go to the bathroom.”
“Okay, I’m going to go and sit”—he looks around, spotting Kirby—“there.”
“I’ll find you.” I turn to walk away and head to the bathroom when I’m pulled back and he wraps his arm around my waist and my back is pressed to his front.
“You forgot something,” he whispers in my ear and I look up to the side and he bends his head to kiss me. “Now you can go.”
I laugh, shaking my head as I find the restroom, walking in and going to the stall. I’m pulling up my pants when I hear them. “Can you believe he would bring her here?” one of the girls snarls. “How disrespectful.”
“Please,” another voice cuts in, “you know it’s just a fucking fling with him.”
“From what I heard,” the last voice starts in and I know that voice, “he’s with her because he feels guilty that he got her pregnant and now he has to be stuck with her.” I close my eyes, hating that her words bother me. “He’ll be over it in no time, and then he’ll be begging Tiff to take him back again.”
I look up at the ceiling, blinking away the tears and getting pissed at the same time. I flush the toilet and open the stall, seeing them all lined up, one next to each other. Each of them applying their lip gloss and their eyes go from their own reflection to me standing behind them. Two of them open their eyes wide, knowing they were caught, but not Angela. She just looks at me like her words didn’t matter.
I walk over to the empty sink and put my hand under the soap dispenser and watch the soap come out. The whole time my heart is pounding in my chest and the back of my neck is hot. “I don’t think it’s disrespectful”—I look at them through the mirror—“for him to bring me since he ended things with Tiffany even before I was in the picture. Well, actually, I guess I was always in the picture.” I smile at them. “Since we’ve known each other since we were kids.” I shake the water off my hands before reaching and grabbing a couple of paper towels from the middle stack. “I’m not psychic or anything like that,”—I lean my hip on the counter—“but even if I wasn’t in the picture, I don’t think he’ll go crawling back to Tiff.” I repeat her words as I toss the paper in the basket and smile at them and start to walk out but stop. I look directly at Angela. “By the way, tell her I said thanks.”
thirty-four
Jaxon
I pull out the chair and sit down, leaning back into it as Kirby looks around. “You good?”
“Not really,” he admits to me, “but it’s fine, I guess. You look…” He shakes his head. “I’m fucking jealous of the way you look.”
I look down at myself. “How do I look?”
“Like you don’t have a care in the fucking world,” he states, laughing. “I’ve never seen that look on you before and I like it.”
“Not going to lie,” I say, “never had this feeling before and I got to tell you, man, once you get this feeling.” I shake my head. “It’s a feeling you are going to fight to keep.”
“I bet,” he finally replies. “I’ll let you know when I’m even remotely close to that.”
“You keep dating the wrong people and you’ll never get to this feeling.”
“All of a sudden he’s the love doctor,” Kirby jokes, leaning back in his chair.
I laugh with him as I look around and my eyes find her coming out of the bathroom. I know right away something is off because she shakes her hands as if she’s shaking something away.
She looks down at her feet and I see her breathing in and out. She puts her hand on her stomach before she mumbles something to herself. “What the fuck?” I curse and Kirby’s eyes look at what I’m staring at.
She looks fucking pissed by the time she realizes I’m looking at her, and I see her put on a fake fucking smile. “Hey,” she greets, pulling out the chair beside me and sitting down, “did you guys grab something to eat?”
“What happened?” I ignore that she’s smiling, and my body goes on alert.
“Nothing happened.” She shakes her head. “It smells good.” She rubs her hands on the thighs of her jeans. “Is it cold in here?” She glances around, avoiding looking at me. “It’s a bit cold in here.” She’s having a conversation by herself, which means something is up.
“Ariella,” I say her name and she looks back at me, “what the fuck happened?”
“Nothing.” She tries to play it off and I can see something happened. I just don’t know what it is, but I’ll be fucking damned if she feels uncomfortable here.
“You were fine when you went into the bathroom.” I look around, not seeing anything that would have made her switch like that. Until I look over to the bathroom and see Angela coming out with two of her cronies who follow her around everywhere. They aren’t even dating anyone on the team, but because of Kirby, they let them in all the time. She is in the middle of the two and she’s saying something and the other two just nod at her the whole time.
“Did she say something to you?” Kirby is the one asking her now, and his look isn’t one I want to mess with. It’s a look I’ve seen often over the years, especially on the ice. “Ariella,” he says her name, his voice tight, “what did she say to you?”
