Page 109 of Secrets on Ice

“Yeah,” he says, grabbing his own clothes. “Me too.”

We move around the living room in silence, picking up the evidence of last night’s chaos, my dress, his shirt, my bra hanging off the back of the couch. The air feels heavy between us, the easy intimacy from the night before gone.

As I pull on my own clothes in the bathroom, my mind spins. Cassidy thinks it was just a one-time rebound. She has no idea it’s been happening for weeks. I feel a sharp pang of guilt for lying to my best friend, but I tell myself it was the right thing to do.

When I come out, Sully is in the kitchen, filling up a water bottle. He looks up when I walk in, his expression guarded.

“I’m going to head to the gym to let you two talk.”

I nod, feeling a pang in my chest. “Okay.”

He grabs his stuff and heads for the door, pausing for a second like he wants to say something more but doesn’t.

I stand there in the kitchen, feeling the weight of everything that just happened.

28

SULLY

Ineed to get out of the apartment. I need space and to clear my head. I need to stop thinking about how good it felt to wake up with her in my arms and how much it hurt when she made it clear this is still just casual for her.

Fish finds me on the bench press, eyebrows raised.

“Jesus, Sully. You look like you’re trying to murder the bar. What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” I grunt through another rep.

He doesn’t buy it. “Come on, if you keep going in your current mood, you’re going to hurt yourself. Let’s head to the wellness center and have a swim in the mineral baths.”

He’s right, so I rack the bar and follow him, too tired to argue.

We head over to the wellness center and check in for the mineral baths. The place is quiet this time of day, the air thick with the faint scent of eucalyptus and minerals. The mineral baths are a series of large, natural stone pools filled with magnesium, known for helping with muscle recovery. The lighting is soft and dim, with steam rising gently from the surface of the water. It’s one of the few places in the building where you can actually relax and let your mind quiet.

He changes into some swim shorts, and I keep my gym shorts on and sink into one of the hotter pools, the warm water immediately soothing my overworked muscles. Fish leans back against the edge, closing his eyes for a moment before looking at me.

“All right, spill. You’ve been off for weeks. What’s going on?”

I stare at the steam rising from the water for a long moment, then finally break.

I tell him everything. It started with the kiss in Maine. That night on the beach after Fish’s wedding. I told her I’d help her forget for a moment, and then I kissed her. It was supposed to be one kiss. One moment. But it turned into something neither of us could stop. She ran afterward, and I thought she regretted it. She thought I did. But it opened the floodgates.

After we got back to New York, it started happening again. She’d sneak into my room late at night. No words, just need. We thought it was one night, and then it became almost every night. Her creeping into my bed. It’s been intense. I’ve become addicted to her again.

I even tell him about the past, how each time she broke up with Kevin she would run to me. And then every single time she would get back with Kevin. And then the last time when I thought they would have broken up for good, I told her I loved her, and I begged her to choose me over Kevin, that I could love her better than he can. But in the end, she didn’t or couldn’t. I confess to him that I have stupidly never really stopped loving her.

Fish listens. “Damn, man. You’ve been carrying that for a long time and never told anyone?”

“Yeah. Not like I can tell Cap, hey, I have feelings for your sister.”

“True, he would kill you, but it’s not like he has a leg to stand on, seeing as he is with Jo.”

I get what he is saying. “The thing is, Cassidy busted us this morning.”

Fish’s mouth falls open in surprise. “Ah, that’s why you are down here. She lost it?”

“Quite the opposite actually, she laughed.”

“Laughed?” Fish repeats, eyebrows shooting up.