But she shook her head.
My throat constricted. It took everything in me not to grab her right then, throw her over my fucking shoulder, and steal her away. Possession and protectiveness surged from me like smoke billowing from a building on fire.
But that wasn’t what she needed.
I knew it as much as I knew my playbook.
This was a delicate situation, and I had to approach it as such.
“Can you look at me?”
She shook her head again.
Carefully, I pushed off the counter, taking three slow steps until I was right in front of her. Her gaze was on my chest now.
“Please,” I asked again. “Look at me.”
She blinked a few times before she did, and as soon as her eyes met mine, they watered fiercely again. She clapped a hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry.”
I frowned, my heart fucking breaking at the sight of her so distraught. “Ari, what happened?”
She shook her head, again and again, like it was impossible to say, like she didn’t believe her version of the truth enough to speak it out loud.
“Talk to me. What’s going—”
“Coach!”
Ariana winced, jumping back, and ice slid through my veins at the familiar voice.
Nathan waltzed into the kitchen with a tumbler of brown liquor in hand. He wore a grin that spread from ear to ear, but his eyes were lazy and calculated, sweeping from me to his wife and back again.
I saw his grip around his glass tighten.
“I thought you left a half hour ago,” he said with that slick smile of his in place.
“He was leaving,” Ariana said, and I didn’t know how I missed it, but she’d somehow cleared her tears. There was still evidence there on her cheeks, but she looked so different than she had just moments before — more put together, like nothing had happened at all.
Red flags were waving so aggressively in my head I couldn’t see straight.
“But then he saw me in here with all the dishes,” she said, laughing as she swept a hand over the clean kitchen. “And I couldn’t lift that big cutting board since I hurt my wrist.”
She gave her husband a very particular look with that last part, like she was reminding him of something I didn’t know.
“So I asked if he wouldn’t mind helping. And he was so kind to oblige.” She smiled, nodding my way. “Thank you again, Shane. I appreciate your help. But you should get going! I know you want to get rest before morning skate.” She turned to Nathan then. “Is everyone still on the patio? I can bring limoncello?”
Nathan was quiet for a long, heavy moment.
His eyes narrowed so slowly I’d have missed it if I wasn’t watching him so closely. And once again, he looked long and hard at his wife.
And then at me.
Suddenly, he smiled, the gesture warping his face into the perfect picture of amiability. “Very kind of you to help, Coach.” His smile slipped, his gaze hardening, and then he turned the grin on his wife. “Limoncello would be lovely, sweetheart. Why don’t you pour up some glasses and I’ll meet you out there?”
Ariana nodded, and she didn’t so much as chance a glance at me before she was slipping out of the kitchen on her way toward their bar.
Nathan slid his free hand into his pocket, sipping his liquor. He smiled at me again. “Well, have a good night then, Coach.”
The last fucking thing I wanted to do was leave, but what else could I do?
