It’s been almost three weeks since Petra left and I’ve only talked to her three fucking times. Her lack of availability is driving me crazy. Every conversation is the same: I’m so busy, I don’t know when things are going to let up, I miss you but I don’t have time for you.
At least she figured out the exhaustion issue. After collapsing at work, they sent her straight to the ER, where she was diagnosed with severe anemia. They gave her iron intravenously and prescribed iron supplements which she promises she’s taking regularly. The doctor said it might take as long as a month or two for her to start feeling back to normal, but she insists that just a few days later, she’s already feeling much better.
Even though I know she’s truly busy, and even though I know her exhaustion was a real thing, I can’t help but wonder if she’s holding me at a distance because her feelings are changing.
As the driver navigates his way through Hollywood, I check my phone again for my instructions and hope she’s going to be excited to see me. I know how she feels about surprises, and I just hope she’s not pissed off at my presence here. But after we won our second round of playoffs in Game 5, I found myself with a free weekend. I’d already scheduled Raina to stay with Stella for the weekend because I thought I’d still be in St. Louis and so instead of flying home to New York, I flew to LA.
God, I hope she isn’t mad. It’s too late now, because the driver is pulling up to the studio gate and giving them my information. She’s going to have no clue this is coming, no clue it would even be possible for me to visit her on set. I had to be backdoor sneaky to make this happen.
I watch the nearly identical white buildings pass as we drive through the lot, thinking back to the first conversation we had after she’d arrived in LA. She’d been telling me about her first day on set, where she jokingly said she’d met the president of my fan club—a girl named Jolene—who’d recognized Petra from our playoff game against Philadelphia where the cameras had caught us with our eyes locked on each other. Apparently Jolene was gushing with effusive praise about me as a hockey player, and was a bit star struck that Petra knew me.
Jolene was an uncommon enough name that when I asked Tom to have his people find her, he was able to get back to me with a name and phone number in about fifteen minutes. From there, it was easy enough to call and convince her to help me surprise Petra. She got my name on whatever lists were necessary, and is meeting me to take me backstage so I can watch the show as it’s filmed. I could not have emphasized the need for secrecy more than I did, so I just hope she’s kept her mouth shut. She insisted that all she wanted in exchange for helping me was an autograph, so I pray that she’s holding true to her word and isn’t going to sell the story of my surprise visit to some gossip rag.
Each building we pass is marked with a large black painted number and a sign that indicates which show is currently filming on that set. Finally we arrive at Petra’s show, And Yet We Rise, and a woman with long auburn hair is standing outside looking at her phone. When the car door shuts behind me, her head snaps up and a huge smile spreads across her face.
“You made it,” she calls out as she takes a few steps toward me.
“You must be Jolene,” I hold my hand out and when she places her hand in mine, I worry for a moment that she’s going to pull me in for a hug, but she steps back, keeping it professional.
“Indeed. Here,” she says as she reaches into the bag slung over her shoulder, “would you mind signing this before we go in?” She hands me a New York jersey and a Sharpie.
“Where’d you find this on such short notice?” I ask. I mean, I only called her yesterday.
She looks up at me with a distinct eye roll. “I already owned it.”
Ah, that’s right, president of my fan club and all that. I flip the jersey over and find my name and number on the back, scrawl my signature across the number, and hand it back to her, along with her pen. Then she’s leading me and my suitcase through the door.
“So, how long have you and Petra known each other?” Jolene asks casually as she leads me down a long hallway.
“We’re childhood friends.” I keep my response brief, so I don’t say anything Petra might not want people to know. I’m not in the business of sharing my personal life with strangers anyway—too easy for something to be taken out of context.
“Are you in town for long?” she asks, clearly attempting to make polite conversation as we take a left and head down another hallway.
“Just a couple days.” Luckily we arrive at a door labeled with Petra’s name, and my stomach flips because holy shit, I wasn’t quite ready to see her yet.
“She’s on set,” Jolene says, “but you can leave your suitcase here.”
“Okay,” I say, opening the door. The room is tiny, lit mostly by the twenty or so bulbs that frame the large mirror above a counter on one wall. There’s a chair in front of it, and a couch on the opposite wall. The third wall, across from the doorway, is taken up by a rack stuffed full of clothes.
I set my suitcase to the side of the door and tell my body to calm the hell down. The realization that I’m going to see her shortly has the adrenaline running through my system. I don’t even get this nervous when I’m on the ice, facing five 200-pound players who want to body-slam me into the wall or knock my ass over onto the ice. The potential damage from physical threats doesn’t hold a candle to the kind of damage Petra could do to my heart. But I’m tired of treading carefully, waiting for her to come around. Three weeks is too fucking long to go without seeing her. Even if she doesn’t know she needs to see me, I know it.
I shut the door behind me and follow Jolene down two more hallways. “Oh good,” she says when we come to the end. “They’re not filming yet.” She points to a light by the door that’s not illuminated. “Let’s slip in and watch from the back.”
I follow her through the door, which she only half opens, and we slink along the back wall. The lights are off in this back section of the studio, and there are cameras and about eight or nine people between us and the stage. But the first thing I see, as if all the equipment and people are invisible, is Petra. She’s sitting on the edge of a beige high-backed chair reviewing some flash cards. She’s wearing a black dress with a bustier top and spaghetti straps. The dress itself is fitted down past her thighs and the hem has a four-inch row of pleats that comes just to the bottom of her knees, revealing the curve of her muscular calves.
“What’s your role in all this?” I whisper to Jolene as people continue moving around us, checking equipment, moving things into place, nodding to Jolene as they pass.
“I’m her stylist,” she whispers back. “I decide what her aesthetic will be for each show: what she wears, and what her hair and makeup will be. Today she’s interviewing one of the first female billionaires, a rocket scientist who funded the development of a life-saving technology for kids with heart problems. So we’re going for high-powered sexy today. Like they’re meeting for drinks.”
“Nailed it,” I mutter under my breath, and out of the corner of my eye I see a slow smile spread across Jolene’s face.
“Man, you’ve got it bad.” Her laugh is a low chuckle, quiet enough to not attract attention to us.
My eyes swing over to her, and I’m sure the look of alarm is written all over my face.
“Don’t worry,” she says, and pats my arm. “Your secret is safe with me.”
“Is it, though?”
“I signed the same NDA that everyone else here did. We can’t talk about anything that happens on set, or about anyone who works on this show, to anyone outside of the show. In fact, I will probably get my ass canned if you don’t sign one too. I’ll have legal bring the paperwork down when filming is done, okay?”
“Sure.”
She looks down at her phone, shooting off a quick text. “All set.”
I’m about to respond when the action starts. I’ve been a guest on late-night shows in New York before, but the format of this show is so different. Instead of the host interviewing several guests, playing some silly games, and interacting with the live audience, the entire show is just one interview. And all the pressure is on Petra to lead this dance. Watching her onstage is a next-level turn-on. I
As the cameras roll, she takes on a variety of different personas: she’s curious and hard-hitting with her questions, but also comes across as an understanding friend you can share anything with. The questions she asks are so far below the surface-level fluff that TV shows tend to ask celebrities and athletes, like Petra wants to not only get to know the person she’s interviewing, but wants to drill down to the essence of what makes that woman who she is. It’s like she’s trying to draw out all the life lessons that could be learned and she manages to cast her guest as sympathetic without leaving you feeling sympathy, makes her guest relatable even though her life is so completely unlike anyone else’s, and fashions the woman as an inspiration for other women.
An hour and a half later, as Petra is thanking her guest and shaking her hand, my feet are rooted to the spot. I’ve been utterly transfixed the entire time. So much so that I didn’t even notice that Jolene wasn’t next to me anymore. I glance around and see that she’s hovering by the door we came in. When the lights come back up, Jolene opens the door, grabs a piece of paper and pen, and is heading back toward me.
I don’t even read the NDA, just sign it and ask that she have legal send me a copy of it. Then I’m looking back up, hoping Petra’s still onstage. She is. She’s reaching down to her chair, collecting her flash cards as she chats with the woman she just interviewed, and when she stands and turns toward the back of the room, we lock eyes.
I know she sees me because the look of recognition is there—the way her eyes widen and her lips part for a split second before she turns her attention back to the woman she’s speaking with. They exchange a few more words and a hug, and then Petra is making a beeline toward me. Other people around the studio are starting to notice me too. There’s a low murmur as people look at me and then at Petra as she walks toward me.
Her face is stony as she approaches. Knowing how much she hates surprises, I didn’t expect her to jump into my arms, but I also didn’t expect her to look like she’s on a warpath. She walks right by me and shoots a “follow me” over her shoulder. Jolene looks at me and shrugs, and I take off after Petra.
We wind through the same long white hallways back to her dressing room. She holds the door open for me, and when I follow her through into the dressing room, she turns and shuts the door with an eerie silence. The only sound I hear as she turns slowly toward me is her breath, she’s inhaling and exhaling like she’s trying to calm herself down.
“What are you doing here?”
“I found myself with a free weekend and an intense need to see you.”
The hard lines of her face soften and she rubs her palms against her thighs. “I thought I told you not to come.”
“I know, and I know you hate to be surprised. But Petra, it’s been too fucking long.” I cross the room in two steps and stop right in front of her. “I couldn’t wait until you came back to New York to see you.”
She leans forward, resting her forehead against my sternum and looking at the ground. “I missed you, too, but I’ll be in New York in a couple weeks. I needed this time to focus on this new phase of my career.”
“I don’t want to take away from that by being here. I just want to see you. Even if it’s only to have dinner with you and hold you while you fall asleep.”
The hot breath of her exhale is a balm across my chest. Then she tilts her head up and looks at me as I slide my hand around her neck, reveling in the feel of her hot skin on my palm. “You’re in luck, then. Tomorrow’s filming is canceled. Without saying too much, because I can’t tell you who she is, my guest had to fly to the Middle East to negotiate some sort of situation.”
“Does this mean you now have the day free?”
“It does.”
“And what were you planning to do with your extra day off?”
“Sleep?”
“Hmm.” I nod, as I trace the line of her jaw with my thumb. “I’m sure we can negotiate some sleep in there somewhere.”
Her eyes dance and her lips curl into a predatory smile. “I don’t negotiate.”
I take a small step closer to her, so our bodies are touching. “Is this like when you told me you don’t ask, yet you ended up begging?” My voice is so low I almost don’t recognize it, but the longing flowing through my veins and what it’s doing to my body is achingly familiar.
“I let you make me beg, remember?”
“Like you’re going to let me win these sleep negotiations?” I dip my head and slide my lips across her forehead.
“Exactly,” she says as she tilts her face up, her lips begging for a kiss. And who am I to deny her?
From the top of the hill, Los Angeles spreads out before us in all her hazy glory. It’s clear enough to see the tops of the skyscrapers downtown, but the sun hasn’t quite burned through the smog.
“I don’t hate this view,” Petra says, taking a sip of her drink, then leaning back on her elbows. Her long legs stretch out across the blanket and her smooth shoulders shine at the edges of her tank top.
“Just the climb to get to it?” I tease.
“I did hate that climb. It reminded me so much of the conditioning we used to do before the snow fell to get in shape for ski season.”
“Except you were walking up a gentle path in the hills of LA, not climbing the Alps.” Petra’s body is all slim, graceful lines now and she clearly is not in the same athletic shape she used to be. This hike wasn’t hard, even for someone carrying around as much muscle mass as me. It should have been easy for her.
“Yes, but it’s been a week since I was taken to the ER for exhaustion, remember?”
Oops. “Okay, I’ll stop teasing you about it. I’m sure once your energy levels are back to normal . . .” Her energy levels were just fine last night in her bedroom and this morning in her shower.
“I think my legs are just tired from last night.” She winks and a laugh bursts out of me so quickly I don’t even have time to consider holding it in. And then my body reacts to the memory of her riding me in the cool darkness of her bedroom with the moonlight flooding in through the windows.
“You can tell me if this is too personal,” I say, not sure where the question comes from but desperately wanting to know the answer, “but who was your first?” Given that she was still a virgin when I left her in Austria, I’m expecting her to say that it’s someone she met at boarding school, or even later while she was skiing on the World Cup circuit.
“You don’t want to know,” she says and glances away, gazing into the distance like I’m going to forget I asked the question.
“What if I do want to know?” I ask. I lean back on my elbow so I’m resting next to her, but she still hasn’t looked at me. It doesn’t matter, with those movie star sunglasses, I wouldn’t be able to see her eyes anyway. All her emotion lies in her eyes.
“Trust me,” she says. Her voice is as flat and cold as a sheet of ice as she turns her head back toward me. “You really don’t.”
I turn on my hip so I’m facing her. “Why don’t I want to know, exactly?”
“Too close to home,” she says.
What the hell? I furrow my brow as I try to think about what she could mean. Who the hell would be too close to home? “Not Niko?”
She laughs. “Oh God no. Definitely not Niko. I never so much as looked at your brother.”
“Good. I was too old for you back then, so he was really too old for you.”
I can’t read the look that passes over her face. “Petra”—my voice is soft but insistent—“tell me.”
“No.”
“Why not.”
“Because once you know, you can’t un-know it.” She looks away again, as if downtown LA is the most interesting sight on the planet. Meanwhile, I can’t take my eyes off her in that maroon spandex tank top that’s barely containing her cleavage.
“You can’t say shit like that and expect me not to be even more curious.” I reach over and tilt her chin back toward me. “Tell me.”
“Fine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She pauses and waits for me to nod in agreement. “Felix.”
“Who the hell is Felix?” I ask, but she doesn’t say anything. Then it hits me. “Not the fucking gardener?”
A slight nod of her head is all the response I get.
“Are you kidding me?”
Her forehead wrinkles above the top rim of her sunglasses. “See, this is why I didn’t want to tell you.”
“He was ten years older than you!” A shiver runs up my spine at the thought of sixteen-year-old Petra being mauled by the attractive but creepy gardener.
She gives me a curt nod and takes another drink from the can she’s holding with a look of utter indifference. Does she really not see why this is such a big deal?
“Was it that summer before you went to boarding school?” I ask.
Another nod. “After you left.”
“Did you sleep with him because I left?” My voice is loud, even to my own ears. I need to get a fucking grip. This was over a decade ago. Why am I so upset by it?
“In a way, yes. I was just so sad, and he was there and paying attention to me. It felt like . . .” she says, then trails off for a few seconds. “Like it would help me get over you leaving.”
“And did it?”
Her derisive snort is her answer.
If I’d have known that my breaking off our friendship like that would lead her straight into the arms of that perverted asshole, I never would have done it, even though my father demanded it. In trying to protect her from a truth and a marriage she didn’t want, I led her to seek comfort from someone with the power to hurt her. As much as I’ve thought about it over the years, I don’t know what I could have done differently—but I really wish I’d tried harder to figure out a different solution.
“Was it any good?” I don’t know what makes me ask this. Maybe a morbid sense of curiosity, or an instinct to make sure she wasn’t hurt.
“It should have been. He should have been.” Her nostrils flare, but I can’t tell how she’s feeling because of those damn reflective sunglasses covering her eyes.
“Petra, look at me,” I say, and she moves her head a quarter-turn so she’s facing me. “Without the sunglasses.”
She shakes her head, a tiny movement back and forth.
“Did he hurt you?” I ask, reaching my hand over and resting it on her forearm. Her skin is soft, but the muscles beneath them ripple with tension.
“What do you want me to say?” she asks, her voice thin and sad.
“What happened?” In my mind, I’m calculating how long it’ll take me to track him down, and how I can kill him with the least chance of getting caught.
“He didn’t hurt me physically.” Her sigh is enormous, and the part of me that wants to tell her she doesn’t have to tell me anything she doesn’t want to is eclipsed by the part of me that needs to know what happened to her. In the end, I stay silent and she continues. “Except that it was my first time, and I really wasn’t ready, but he was incredibly persistent and persuasive. And in the end, he wasn’t exactly gentle—with my body or my feelings.”
“Bastard,” I spit out. “Wait, you had feelings for him?”
“No. But I had feelings about him being the first person I had sex with. And it didn’t mean anything to him. He’d pull me into the potting shed for a quick fuck, then push me out the door and tell me I had to stop distracting him from work. That kind of thing.”
I can tell by the way she studies me that she doesn’t like the reaction she sees on my face. Then she tilts her head down, focusing on my hand and the vicelike grip I have on her. I exhale, trying to let the tension out and loosen my grip. I slide my thumb along her skin, caressing the red mark I left behind. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. But this is why I didn’t want to tell you.”
“He wasn’t good enough for you,” I growl.
“Even now you’re jealous?” she teases. She has no idea how I watched him watching her that summer. How I saw that predatory look in his eyes. I almost insisted Petra’s father fire him, I even went to him to make the demand, but I lost my nerve. How would I have explained it? I don’t like how he looks at your daughter the same way I do?
“Even now I feel responsible.”
“Don’t.” She sits up, her back ramrod straight as she crosses her legs under her. She looks like she’s doing yoga, if pissed-off yoga was a thing.
“I can’t help it. I should have been there to protect you.”
“No, you should have been there so it could have been you.”
Her words slay me. She’s right, it should have been me. But also, how much could she really have cared if she turned to someone else, gave herself to him just because I wasn’t around?
“You shouldn’t have gone running to him when I left, Petra. If I really meant something to you back then—”
“You shouldn’t have broken my heart,” she spits out.
I don’t think I look down quickly enough for the brim of my hat to cover the way I wince at that statement. I can’t go back and make it right. There’s only now.
“I shouldn’t have, you’re right.” I look up at her. “Can you forgive me?”
“Sasha,” she says, her voice so low it’s practically a whisper. “You haven’t even told me why you cut me out of your life like that. This isn’t about forgiving you. It’s about figuring out how I could ever trust you again.”
This is your chance. Tell her the truth. I watch the way the warm breeze blows a few strands of her ponytail against her neck and shoulder. I want to reach out and brush them away. I want to curl my hand around her neck, brush my lips across hers. I want to hold her and be with her, and I don’t want to do anything to jeopardize the possibility of a future between us. She’s not ready for the truth.
I don’t stop to ask myself when she could ever be ready, I just plow ahead with a flimsy, minuscule piece of the truth. “I had to. I can’t explain it, except that there was so much pressure. I needed a clean break from everything and everyone in Austria, so I could fully commit myself to hockey in Russia. I couldn’t be thinking about you all the time. I swear I spent more time that first year trying to find you that book you wanted than I spent practicing hockey. I would have done anything to make you happy, and it was jeopardizing my hockey career. I needed distance and clarity. I needed to focus. I would never have gotten where I am now if I hadn’t left like that.”
Do I believe my own words? I don’t know. There’s a kernel of truth in there. I’ve thought many times over the years that breaking things off like that with her allowed me to make hockey my obsession instead of her, and so in a way, it led me to the NHL.
“You thought about me all the time, huh?” Her lips curve into a small smile.
“Every. Single. Minute.”
“I wish I’d known that then.”
“You were my best friend’s baby sister. You were too young. And most importantly, you were just about to launch your skiing career. I couldn’t get in the way of that.”
She gives me a small nod of understanding. Both of us, at the beginning of promising athletic careers, headed to different countries. It’s a plausible reason to have pulled the brake, even if it wasn’t my only reason.
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” I tell her. “In fact, I was trying to make sure you didn’t get hurt.”
An acerbic laugh slips out. “Trying to make sure I didn’t get hurt by hurting me?” Her eyeroll is legendary. “Men are always trying to make decisions about me, for me. No thanks. If this”—she gestures between us—“is going to be something, you have to know that about me. I make my own decisions, and I always do what’s best for me. I spent too many years getting hurt, taken advantage of, and left. I don’t even do relationships, Sasha.”
“Why not?”
Her swallow is convulsive and for a minute I think no words will follow. Finally, she says, “The best way I know to protect myself is to always be the one leaving.”
“Before someone else can leave you, you mean?”
“Exactly.”
She’s so strong and independent and fiercely protective of the people she loves. I didn’t realize that front hid so much damage.
“I would never leave you. I would never hurt you.” She has to know that. If she didn’t already know it back in New York, she has to know it now that I’m here in LA. Now that I came out here even when she told me not to, because I literally could not conceive of not seeing her for even a few more days.
I soft hiss escapes her lips. “Really? Because you were the first one to do both.”
“Petra, we were teenagers. We are not the same people now that we were back then.”
“I hope not,” she sighs, then she leans over and lays her back against my chest. “I really hope not.”
“At some point,” I say as I pull her foot into my lap and slip her heel off, “we are going to need to talk about this relationship.”
Her eyes roll back in her head as my thumb runs across the ball of her foot and then down the arch. She makes a soft, indistinct sound of contentment, a rumbling deep in her throat that is distinctly sexual.
“That is amazing,” she says.
“Imagine what I could do if you were naked.”
She glances around the small but crowded outdoor seating area of the restaurant, taking in the tables of other diners scattered amid the brick patio and surrounded by ivy-covered walls. String lights hang above us and hurricane candles sit on the tables, giving the space an ethereal glow. I want to recreate this ambiance on my terrace, so Petra and I can eat out there every night and be reminded of this dinner.
Our teak table is against one of the courtyard walls and the nearest table is a good six feet away, but still, she looks nervous that someone will hear me. So what if they do?
“Just keep doing that, and we’ll get to the rest later,” she says, keeping her voice low. It’s the huskiness of it that turns me on more than anything. As it always does for her and only her, my body reacts.
“Your calves still sore from the hike?” I ask as I slide my hands up her leg and massage her calf gently. The heat of the LA day is abating, and it’s comfortably cool out tonight. I still can’t get over how amazing the weather is here. Sunny and dry and perfect almost all the time.
“Yes. Even those amazing views weren’t worth this soreness.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t be wearing those heels, then?” Her heeled sandals make her legs look sexy as hell, but I don’t understand why she’d wear them if her calves are sore.
The way she rolls her eyes suggests she’d never be caught dead in anything else. But even though I appreciate how she looks tonight, all dolled up in a strapless sundress and these gorgeous sandals, I prefer her completely natural—just out of the shower, makeup-free and hair wet, in her pajamas, settling into my couch for the evening.
I want her permanently back in my apartment.
“Don’t think that your legs are going to distract me from talking about this relationship.”
“You’re the one who started talking about my legs.” She bats those impossibly long eyelashes at me.
“I need to know what you’re thinking, Petra. Before you left, you said you didn’t want to go. But once you were gone, you cut me out of your life. What happened? And how do we make sure that doesn’t happen again when I leave tomorrow?”
I’m not dumb enough to think that just because things have been relatively normal while I’ve been here—that just because the sex has been amazing and the company has been easy, that just because we finally talked about our past—she won’t try to remove herself from my life again once I’m gone. I think one of the keys to her success is her ability to hyperfocus on what’s in front of her, whatever challenge or opportunity that might be. The by-product of that is pushing away everything else.
“I don’t know what to say, Aleksandr,” she says, and I try not to visibly cringe at the use of my full name. She seems to be using it more than my nickname now. “I am filming an entire season of a show in less than two months and also running a company from seven hundred miles away. Even though I’m not facing medically diagnosed exhaustion anymore, it’s still exhausting. It’s two full-time jobs. I don’t have anything left to give.” She leans back in her seat and crosses her arms. “The only reason we’re even having this dinner, the only reason we had a great day today, is because of a freak coincidence that you happened to be in town right as my schedule cleared.”
“Would this be a bad time to tell you that I manufactured a crisis to get her out of the country?” I give her a small smile, hoping that some humor can lighten her mood.
She leans forward, her face serious. “I want to be with you, Sasha. I love how things are between us, how easy and good everything is when we’re together. But I just can’t make that commitment right now. I don’t know what my life is going to look like in two months when we finish this show. Maybe it’ll flop and I’ll go back to my life in Park City. Maybe it’ll do well and I’ll need to be in Los Angeles full time.”
It doesn’t escape my notice that she doesn’t mention an option that involves her being in New York. “So, what are you saying?” I don’t know if this means she doesn’t see a future for us.
“I . . .” She sighs. “I can’t make any promises right now. I thought maybe I could, back when I was in New York, before I knew how crazy my life was going to get. It’s not that I don’t want to be with you. I really do. And it’s not that I don’t want to help you adopt Stella. It’s just that right now, I don’t think I can commit to anything more than trying this long-distance thing and seeing how it goes.”
“Like I told you before, I don’t want to pressure you into anything you’re not ready for. Just because I know what I want this to be, what I’ve always wanted it to be between us, doesn’t mean that I expect you to be in the same place mentally or emotionally. I understand why work has to come first right now,” I tell her, because hockey has always had to come first for me. Even when Stella first came to live with me, I couldn’t just not show up for games or practices. I had to learn both balance and compromise, and she will too, eventually. “I’m okay with long-distance, if that’s what you’re comfortable with. But Petra, I have to know that you see the possibility of some future between us. Even if you have no idea what that could look like or how it could work out, I need to know that’s what you want, or there’s no point in us moving forward.”
She slides her foot up my thigh and sucks her lower lip between her teeth. “Yes, I see a future. Even though I have no idea what it will look like, and even though it scares the shit out of me to trust you.”
“I swear to you,” I say, leaning forward and taking her hand, “I will do everything in my power to protect your heart. I know I screwed up once. I will not make that mistake again.”
Her breath hitches and she opens her mouth to say something but the waitress arrives with my credit card slip right then. There’s so much heat in Petra’s eyes, I can’t wait to get her home. My signature at the bottom of the slip is an illegible scrawl, and I slide her sandal back onto her foot and usher her out of there as quickly as possible.
