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I quickly add in the part so she knows I’d trust her, always trust her, for the rest of our lives.
“You couldn’t know he was going to do that,” she says.
“Yeah, I get that. But there were signs. Like I said, the way he acted with women, how erratic he became toward the end. But he was…”
“What?” she urges.
I nod at her sub, forgotten on the table. “Eat your food, Rosie.”
“What were you going to say?” she says, in a tone of voice that will accept no argument.
It’s the way I imagine her speaking to our children when they’re being particularly stubborn, staring down with that you-better-answer-me-mister glint in her eyes.
Despite the conversation, I can’t help but laugh.
“Why are you laughing?” she says, but she can’t say much… She's laughing too.
“Why are you?” I counter.
She giggles a sweet sound. “Because you are, I guess.”
I want to capture this moment, relive it a thousand times. It feels like a moment couples share.
“I was going to say he was my friend, my closest friend. So maybe I didn’t want to know the truth. But I corrected that mistake. He’s never touching my business again. He’s never risking what I built. If he tries, it won’t end well for him.”
“I’m so sorry all of that happened,” she says softly.
“Don’t be. Like I said, it was four years ago – five, really, since it all got started. I’m over it.”
“Then why do you look like you want to snap this table in half?”
I bare my teeth like a wolf, like the animal I am. “Because maybe I do. Because maybe it still drives me fucking crazy. Because yeah, Rosie, you’re right. I’m not over it. But I can’t do anything, not unless he breaks any laws, so there’s no point obsessing about it.”
“Focus on what’s in front of you,” she says. “That’s all you can do sometimes. Everything else will take care of itself.”
“Wise words.”
“Josephine said that to me, once, when I was very young. About painting. But I think she was talking about more than painting.”
“Yeah, I think so too,” I agree. “Who is she?”
“Oh, my adoptive mom.” Rosie waves a hand. “But look at you, distracting me from this delicious sub. What a meanie.”
She takes a big bite, leaving my curiosity to flare at the word adoptive.
What happened to her family? Did she ever know them?
But I can tell she doesn’t want to talk about that right now, so I take a big bite of my sub and try to push away the past.
We eat in silence for the rest of the meal, but it’s not the sort of silence that comes from not having anything to say. It feels more like the silence I’ve noticed in couples who have been together for a long time – married couples in parks and restaurants – who don’t feel the need to fill every moment with conversation.
It’s a silence we choose.
Afterward, once we’re standing outside the deli, she makes a gasping noise and turns to me.
I’m on high-alert right away, my body ready at the thought of somebody threatening my Rosie. My instincts are primed and I look around, set to royally fuck up any bastard who’s caused her harm.
But then I realize she’s looking at me with that cute-as-fuck quirk to her lips, her head tilted at me curiously.
“Sorry, it’s just I left my phone at the gym.”
The tension in me deflates and I force out a laugh, even if it sounds phony as hell. Even I can hear how forced it sounds.
“Okay, we’ll go and get it. I have the keys.”
I stride away before she can read any more burning need in my slipping mask or I give her another preview of the raging inferno she’s prompted inside of me.
Chapter Ten
Rosie
What the heck was that?
When I let out that admittedly melodramatic gasp, it was like Ryker was going to leap into action to defend me or something. Right away he stood straighter, his wolfish eyes scanning back and forth across the street as though searching for a threat.
My body gave a shudder when he looked around, telling me that this is a sign of how badly he wants me, a sign that I should listen to the messages reverberating inside my head instead of pushing them down deep.
Now I stand back as he opens the door to the gym, waving me inside.
As I walk by him, I can feel the heat radiating from his body, sending tendrils of heat up and down my body. My sex can hardly stand the closeness. Everything shivers hotly, brightly, thundering deep inside of me.
“There it is,” I announce, nodding to the table in the waiting room.
I was on my phone out here when I heard him bustling around in the small private gym, and that’s when I decided to make my ‘sassy entrance’. The only problem was my heart was pounding with nerves and a bitter voice was hissing in my mind that I was going to make a fool of myself, hence why I jolted up from my seat and quickly made my way into the room… forgetting my phone.
