There’s a lighter, teasing tone to his words, but they don’t fit with his body language. It feels like he’s avoiding the question, putting distance between the truth and where we’re standing. That settles hard in my stomach. Maybe it’s intuition. Or maybe I just know him now.
“No.” I frown, my voice firm as I stop in front of him. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what, Maisie?” he responds roughly, yanking his gaze away.
God, this man is infuriating.
He’s got the emotional intelligence of a toddler, and it makes me so frustrated and confused, but also so… sad. Sad for him.
“This,” I snap exasperatedly, grasping his jaw in my hand and forcing his gaze back to me. “Stop acting like you’re okay when it’s clear you’re not. What happened between the bathroom and the parking lot, Wilder? Tell me.”
His steely eyes bore into mine, a storm brewing within the depths, and I feel the muscle in his jaw ticking as it works, but I don’t let go.
Not until I hear the front door of Jack’s opening behind me, the sound of laughter and conversation spilling out with it.
I quickly drop my hand from his face and take a step back, separating us.
Wilder exhales as he looks past me before dragging his gaze back once they’re gone. “What happened?That’swhat happened, Maisie.”
I don’t understand what he’s saying… whatthatis. My confusion must be written on my face because he continues, filling in the gaps in my head. “That’ll never happen for us…” He trails off, and his eyes bounce between mine as he shakes his head. “I realized tonight that as much as it is Legros that I’m jealous of, it’sallof them.”
My brows cinch together tightly.
What?
“My friends? Why would you be je?—”
“Because they get you, Maisie!” he says, his voice carrying around the parking lot. His gaze flicks around before he rakes a hand down his face and looks back at me. “All of you. They get to have you in ways that I never will. Ways I didn’t even know I fucking wanted until it was right in front of me tonight.”
My heart has fallen somewhere in my stomach, and I’m frozen in place, trying to understand what he’s saying, what he means.
“Wilder…” I say, and he shakes his head, stepping into me until we’re flush. He lifts my chin with his knuckle.
“I can’t take you to fucking dinner. Sit in a booth with you and share a pizza in public. I can’t touch you or act like I even know you when we’re around anyone. Not a single fucking person. Buttheyget to do that, Maisie. They get to listen to you laugh when you’re telling a story. Put an arm around you in a booth. I’ll never get to experience that with you.”
A lump forms in my throat, emotion clogging my ability to say anything.
I don’t even know what to say because… he’s right.
This is what it will always be between us, and I knew that, obviously. He made it clear from the start. And I’ve thought of it a hundred times in the last couple of weeks, but I guess hearing it out loud now, after everything, is different than it running through your head on repeat.
“I hate it too,” I whisper softly.
His palm traces the curve of my jaw as he holds me with both hands. “I don’t know what I’m even saying. Fuck, I don’t know… I’m not good with emotions and feelings and all of this. I just know that I fucking hate that I can only have you in the shadows when you’re the goddamn sun, Maisie. I’m jealous of your best friend. How insane is that? Jealous of Legros simply because he can do things that I’ll never be able to, whether you want him or not. It makes me reckless, and fuck, I can’t even think straight. You have no idea how much I have to restrain myself from doing something fucking stupid tonight. Because guess what, Maisie… that’s the man that I am. Volatile. The one who never thinks before he acts, who chooses violence. The one who hits first and asks questions later.”
The man who got kicked out of the NHL. The one who lost his career.
We’re both thinking it, I know we are, but I say nothing, only watchingthisversion of Wilder unraveling before me.
“That’s what happened between the bathroom and the parking lot, Maisie. I’m losing my goddamn head, and I don’t know how to stop it. I don’t know how to handle any of it,” he murmurs roughly, reaching up to gently brush my hair off my forehead with his scarred knuckle.
A parallel to the hardened man standing in front of me.
My exhale is shaky, my hands trembling along his chest, because I don’t know what to say or how to handle any of it either. But I do know that I’d rather be with Wilder in secret than walk away.
From whatever this is. Or whatever it isn’t.
“I might not be able to give you any of those things when people are around Wilder, but you’re the one that I text when I need to smile. You’re the one Ichoose, no matter how it has to be between us. The one I would choose if the world asked me to. That has to matter—it has to mean something. It has to be enough, even if it doesn’t feel like it.” My voice cracks, and emotion hits me unexpectedly harder than I anticipated. “You’re the one I want to have pizza with. No one else. So, will you take me?”
