CHAPTER SEVEN
It’s Tonight
SIA
WARD: I’ll be late. Be ready.
SIA: Not even asorry? You are cruel.
WARD: You’ll like it.
SIA: If you say so.
WARD: Brat of a wife. Stay out of my office.
SIA: Don’t send me more junkie, overdone presents. I don’t need two of everything. And it wasn’t your office.
WARD: Then stay out of my AV room.
WARD: I only sent you the best.
SIA: If you call cheap ‘the best’.
WARD: Keep it up, brat, and we’ll be playing a different game than I had planned later.
SIA: Which one?
WARD: Denial. My favorite.
SIA: I can’t wait.
WARD: Oh, you will.
SIA: Happy Anniversary, Ward.
He didn’t reply after that, leaving me hanging.Asshole. At least he was consistent. Not that he’d hold to his promise of denial. At least, I didn't think he would. A year without screwing between us, all that build up and he’d just walk away?
No chance in hell. Ward’s control was good, but it wasn’tthatgood.
…Right?
I knelt on the floor of my room, everything close to prepared for tonight's encounter.Our anniversary. My phone hadn't yet bleeped out its ten p.m. alarm, and I knew Ward would be delayed well past that marker, due to his game. I was okay with that. Hockey—especially tonoight—came first. That had never been the problem between us. Oddly, work never divided us, despite working in the same location. Neither had promotions, or lack thereof in cases, when he dropped back from pro to trainer.
No, what split us apart was simple:
Us.
We did it.
Hours of ignoring each other’s needs when we should have been focused on the person rather than the ideal of the one we put on a pedestal who no longer existed. Maybe they never had. The person we fell in love with was still there, but both our hearts got ignored while we tried to be something for someone who would never reciprocate because they were mirages made from our own egos.
And now, we paid the penance for that.
Years of separation, of torment spent apart while never actually being able to separate.
At first, I wondered if it was because I was clingy. That I was the one who couldn’t let go. But when that anniversary turned into the next year, and then the next, and Ward’s presents grew more obsessive, his touches damaged and reverent all at once, the brand of him I’d always loved, I understood.
Neither of us could leave.
