Page 11 of Not Because You Loved Me

"Hey! What are you doing?" I squeaked, my face bursting into a bright flush as I tried to bat his wrists away. "Trent, stop it, we're standing right in the front hall!"

"What happened?" His voice was low, taut, completely stripped of any warmth or small talk. His brow was drawn into a deep, furious line as he completely ignored my attempts to push him off. "You're favoring your right side. And you gasped when Gid lifted you."

"I'm fine, it's literally nothing…"

"Kat." He didn't raise his tone, but the razor-edged command in his voice made me freeze.

Carefully, he pulled the side of my sweater up past my waist, his thumb brushing the fitted band of my skirt to expose my skin.

There, stark against my pale skin, was the top edge of the bruise.

Trent went still. His breath hitched in his chest, his eyes darkening into something raw and wildly intense, an immediate, terrifying flash of protectiveness that took my breath away. "What is this?"

"I slipped on the ice during warm-ups, okay?" I whispered frantically, trying to yank my sweater back down while his mother and Gideon hovered right there in the hall. "It was an accident! I was running a player through a routine and one of the other players crashed into me. I'm completely fine!"

"You're limping, Katerina," Trent said, his hand remaining locked against my uninjured hip, anchoring me flush against his side. "We're going to the hospital."

I stared at him, completely dumbfounded. "For a bruise? Trent, that would be a waste of the hospital's resources. I can take care of it on my own."

He opened his mouth, a rebuttal sitting right on the tip of his tongue, his jaw clenched so hard a muscle twitched violently in his cheek, his whole body humming with a bizarre, overprotective desperation that felt utterly disproportionate for a slip on the ice and a bruise.

"Here, sweetheart," Trent's mother stepped in smoothly, holding out a dish towel wrapped tightly around a flexible ice pack. She shot her son a fond, knowing look. "Sit her down on the couch, Trent. Stop hovering over her like a mother hen."

Trent let out a long, heavy exhale through his nose, but he didn't argue. He took my hand and guided me into the living room, easing me down onto the sofa with a gentle care, as if I were made of glass. Taking the ice pack from his mother, he carefully slipped it under the band on my skirt, holding it there, refusing to remove his hand from beneath my skirt.

"It really doesn't hurt that much," I murmured, looking up at him through my lashes. "I promise you."

Trent stayed crouched on the floor in front of me for a long, silent moment, his dark eyes searching my face inch by inch, scanning for any hidden flicker of pain. Slowly, his free hand reached up, his thumb tracing over my cheekbone before settling against the line of my jaw. "You tell me when you get hurt," he gritted out softly, his voice thick with an intensity that made my chest ache. "Every time."

"It only happened a few hours ago!" I let out a soft, breathless laugh, my heart doing double time against my ribs at the sheer weight of his focus.

When dinner was called, Trent didn't relax his grip. He pulled my dining chair right next to his, angling it slightly toward his seat so he could watch every breath I took. Throughout the entire meal, while discussing work with his father or answering his mother’s endless questions about wedding plans I had no answer to yet, his hand stayed firmly on my thigh, or resting against the small of my back, a constant, warm heat anchoring me to him.

I sat there, feeling a deep, comforting warmth blooming across my chest.

I had spent my entire life being the resilient one. The professional. The person who absorbed everyone else’s pain and shrugged off her own. I had never been hovered over like this. I had never felt so fiercely, uncompromisingly guarded.

When Trent finally stood up to clear a stack of dinner plates, leaving me at the table, Gideon leaned across the space, watching his brother’s back as Trent walked into the kitchen, his head turning back twice to check on me through the doorway.

Gideon smiled softly. "He loves you, you know," he said.

I blinked, shifting in my seat to look at him. "He... he doesn't really say it out loud."

"He doesn't have to," Gideon chuckled, nodding toward the kitchen where Trent was already marching back out, holding a fresh glass of ice water meant specifically for me. "I have never seen him like this with anyone. You're his entire world."

I looked up as Trent slid back into the chair beside me, setting the glass down and immediately resting his hand on the back of my seat, his eyes searching mine to make sure I was comfortable.

The throb in my hip faded into nothing, replaced by an overwhelming sense of security. Trent might express himself in sudden, silent bursts of fierce protection rather than soft words, but sitting here surrounded by his family, my family now, I knew it without a single shadow of a doubt. He loved me. And I was finally home.

CHAPTER 6

Trent

December 31

My heart was beating so hard in my chest I could hear it ringing in my ears over the sound of my mom’s New Year's Eve playlist.

I’d been living in a pressure cooker with the lid duct-taped shut. Thirty days since I’d slid that diamond onto Kat’s finger. Thirty days of watching her wear my ring, sleeping beside her, and waiting, begging in silence, for her to just hand me the burden she was carrying alone.