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WREN
Antigua was bright and balmy. Or it would have been if we had arrived before midnight. The game had taken every ounce of energy that I had left after surviving the week from hell.
Tatum and I gave each other space in the airport. Gideon Carmichael and T.J. Bryant Jr. strolling through LaGuardia after an upset that gave the Reds the win was less than subtle. I minded my business, chugged an overpriced coffee, and waited at the gate, scrolling through emails that I’d answer tomorrow after a full night of sleep.
The minute I flopped in my seat on the plane and slid my sleep mask on, I was out. I didn’t stir until Tatum elbowed me, letting me know that we were about to land. A four-hour nap on a plane should have given me a second wind, but Heidi’s yawn in the car on the way to the hotel had me yawning, too.
Maybe it was just my exhaustion, maybe it was his, but Tatum had been oddly quiet, too.
Heidi and I stood in line at the front desk while the boys unloaded our bags. It should have been weird to spend bye week with the quarterback of the team and his wife. But flying to a resort for a few days with the Carmichaels seemed like the most normal part of my life recently.
The man behind the front desk handed us two sets of keys followed by a paper map with an ink-pen line that noted the quickest way to our respective bungalows.
“Okay,” Heidi said as she commandeered a lobby coffee table and spread out the brick of brochures she had procured from the kiosk near the front desk. “So tomorrow I was thinking that we could get up early and head out to Devil’s Bridge. Then we could come back, shower and get cute and shop our way through Redcliff Quay. And then for dinner, this guy I was chatting with on the plane said that we should—”
Heidi was cut off by Gideon throwing her over his shoulder like a ragdoll. She let out a squeak and swatted at his ass.
I was laughing right up until the moment my world turned upside down. I shrieked right before my nose smacked against Tatum’s left butt cheek. My torso swayed back and forth as he marched out of the lobby with my body hanging off his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. “If you fart in my face, you’re sleeping outside.”
“But the brochures!” I heard Heidi whimper from a few feet ahead of us.
“We’re not getting out of bed until dinner,” Gideon said. “You can have female bonding time next week when Tatum and I play in Miami.”
Gideon peeled off to the left with his wife while Tatum continued to march a few thousand more feet. At least that’s what it felt like. I was getting a migraine from all the blood rushing to my head. My lips were tingly, and my feet were numb.
“Key?” Tatum asked as he walked up three shallow steps. Moths flitted around an outdoor floodlight. My view of the stone path and Tatum’s feet was lovely.
“Put me down. It’s in my pocket.”
He snickered. “Nah, I like you like this.” I felt his fingers slip into my back pockets.
“Front right,” I yawned.
His strong fingers wiggled between my thighs a little more than necessary as he felt around the pocket of my jeans for the key to the bungalow. That was the problem with leaving Rhode Island and flying to the Caribbean in December. It had been flurrying in the Red Cocks stadium during the game, but Antigua was a warm eighty degrees. I’d bundled up in layers for the trek to Queens, then stripped down to a tank top in the bathroom of the island’s airport while we were waiting for our luggage at the claim area.
I heard the click of the key turning in the lock and waited with anticipation for Tatum to put me on my feet. Of course, the big lug didn’t. He stomped through the one-bedroom bungalow, flipping on lights as he went.
Having found the room he was looking for, he unceremoniously tossed me onto a comforter that felt like falling on a pile of cotton candy. I rolled over on my back. Tatum loomed above me, hands on his narrow hips, and a frown on his stupidly gorgeous face.
“Where’s our luggage?” I murmured as my eyes grew too heavy to open. I needed to—at the very least—take a bird bath to splash away the airport funk and brush my teeth.
“The doorman said a bellhop would bring it down.”
I nodded and yawned.
“Wren,” Tatum said as he lowered himself down onto the bed. There wasn’t an ounce of humor in his voice. “What’s going on?”
I rolled on to my side. “What do you mean?”
“You haven’t fucking talked to me all week, you didn’t look at me once during the game, and you fell asleep on the plane.”
“You know that if I get caught looking at you during a game—”
“Bullshit,” he snapped. “Cut the excuses. What’s going on with you?”
I winced. Apart from his time spent outrunning and shoulder checking human freight trains, Tatum was the gentlest man I knew.
His brows knitted together, and he pinched the bridge of his nose. Sighing, he softened his tone and said, “Something’s been off with you—with us—since New York and I need to know what it is.”
