“No. She found out. It’s a long story, but I trust her to keep it a secret,” I reply and he looks doubtful. “Maggie and I aren’t going to hurt each other. No matter how this ends.”
How this ends.Ouch. As soon as I say it out loud, my heart feels like it’s wearing a jock strap two sizes too small. I don’t want things to end but they’re going to—and that’s not a stupid cliché, the truth really does hurt.
“Look, Tate, I’d be worried if I were you about her knowing that potentially devastating fact,” Hank says frankly. He scrubs his beard with his palm again. “And I would talk to her about the farm. Tell her I’m the one who thinks they want you to fail so they can buy it. I don’t care if Daisy stops talking to me.”
“Yeah you do.”
Hank chuckles. “Yeah I do, but if she is only talking to me to steal your farm, then I’d rather go back to admiring her from afar. And you should be the same way with Maggie. Except you’d go back to the whole loathing her from afar thing you used to do.”
I nod. But deep down there is no way I can allow myself to think that she’s just sleeping with me to convince me to let the farm go. She isn’t that girl. She wouldn’t. I just…can’t believe that. Hank walks around the bar and pours himself another coffee, holding up the pot to offer me one too, but I shake my head. “I got to get home and get some protein in me. But…are we cool?”
“We were always cool, Tate,” Hank says with his trademark easy smile. “Just don’t be a stranger anymore, okay?”
I nod. “Yeah. Okay.”
I give him a smile and head out the front door. As I make my way back to the hockey house, I have my face buried in my phone drafting an email to Maggie, but by the time I reach my front door, I discard the draft. I’m going to see her later, so I’ll just talk to her face-to-face. It’s the only way I’ll know for sure if Hank’s suspicions are right. Because Maggie isn’t great at poker face and I’ve gotten incredibly good at reading her like a book. God I hope there’s nothing to read tonight.
15
Maggie
I have the entire apartment to myself tonight—completely unexpectedly—which is why I texted Tate immediately and told him. That “your place or mine” dilemma solved itself when my roommates decided to go to a frat party and my sister went back to the farm to do laundry and texted me to say she was spending the night. Tate had responded with a thumbs up sign, but that was almost two hours ago, and there is no sign of him.
Is he still with Hank? Is he doing hockey stuff? Should I text him again? Is that desperate? Why do I feel desperate? Ugh.
I head into my bathroom and decide to take a long, hot shower. I turn on the water in the tiny stall and start to undress while the water warms up. If he doesn’t come by tonight, a hot shower is the only way I will be relaxed enough to sleep and not stare at my phone all night.
I open the glass door and step into the shower, closing my eyes as I dip my face under the stream, careful not to get my hair wet, which I twisted into a messy knot on top of my head.
I’m squeezing my favorite body wash onto my poof when the shower door opens. I open my mouth to scream but a hand covers it so I swing, clocking my attacker in the gut. “Kopf!” I blink the water out of my eyes in time to see Tate double over and crash into the sink.
“What the hell are you doing in here?” I whisper-scream. “Are you okay?”
“You invited me,” Tate gasps and groans, still doubled over. “And you have one hell of a left hook.”
“But how did you get inside?” I hiss and he looks up at me with a “really?” expression.
“Your downstairs neighbor opened the main door. He thinks I’m a maintenance guy. And you have a key under your front door mat,” he says. “Which is really dangerous and stupid, Maggie.”
“Caroline and Jasmyn do that when they go out drinking so they don’t have to worry about losing their keys and don’t wake the rest of us up,” I reply. “Do you know Caroline lost her dorm keys four times last year?”
“Do you know you could get murdered?”
“Are you here to murder me?” I ask coyly and shiver. “Because if your method of choice is hypothermia, you’re doing a bang-up job.”
“Sorry to keep you from your shower,” Tate replies and his eyes sweep my naked body which I don’t bother to cover because he’s seen it up close and personal anyway. “Do you want me to leave?”
“No,” I say without a moment of reflection. I want him here. I have been dying to be alone with him since I came home from class and found all those chrysanthemums, asters and pansies on my balcony.
“What do you want me to do?” he asks as he finally straightens up to his full height and his hand falls away from his abdomen. His eyes sweep across my naked, wet body again and it makes the butterflies in my belly go crazy and my nipples harden. His eyes seem to darken.
“Join me,” I whisper and step back under the warm water, leaving the door ajar. It takes all of ten seconds and then naked Tate is climbing into the shower stall with me. As the door closes behind him, his mouth finds mine again and the kiss is scorching. He’s demanding and needy, pushing me back against the tiles and sweeping his tongue through my mouth with a dominance that makes me wet in places the water isn’t hitting.
He’s hard as a rock and pressing into my abdomen but when I reach for him, he steps back. His hands slide up my neck, to my face and his thumb brushes water droplets off the curves of my cheek. His eyes bore into me, serious and dark for a moment before he speaks. “Do you want to take my farm?”
The water doesn’t suddenly turn cold, but the atmosphere around us does. I blink and can’t quite catch my breath, for all the wrong reasons. “What are you talking about and why are you talking about it right now?”
He sighs and runs a hand over his wet hair. He can’t seem to look me in the eye. “Hank told me that he thought Daisy and you have this plan to scoop up my farm if it went into foreclosure. That you’ve been itching for that to happen so your family can buy it and expand your business.”
