RIVER
“This is why I have to hate you. Good night, River.”
I was a fucked-up bag of mixed emotions as I paced inside my hotel room, knowing that Sky was just a wall away. That damn door between us taunted me with every step I took. I could break it down if I wanted to. Rip it off the fucking hinges and kick at it until there was nothing but splintered wood and sawdust.
Dropping to the bed, I put my head between my knees and tried to focus on calming down. But there were too many things happening at once in my head.
Who the hell is Stacy? And what did she say to Sky that made her hate me without even knowing me?
I still couldn’t place the woman. I knew that made me sound like an asshole, but it was the truth. Stacy who? It was driving me crazy.
And then there was Chad. I was still pissed at all the things he’d said to Sky tonight. He had been out of line, unprofessional, and lucky I didn’t break his jaw just to get him to shut up. The worst part was that through all of the sexual propositions he’d made, it had forced me to realize something I hadn’t expected.
If anyone was going to be fucking Sky, it was going to be me.
The idea of her and him together made me feel things I wasn’t used to and didn’t necessarily like. I was not the jealous type. At all. But imagining another man’s hands touching her skin was enough to make me seethe with it. I was used to being on the winning side of things, and with Sky, I was constantly losing.
I didn’t want to lose when it came to her anymore.
Realizing that I wanted her opened up a whole other set of complications. I’d sworn off coworkers. Decided to stop hooking up with them for the betterment of my career, but there was something about the fiery redhead in the room next door that made me want to throw all my self-control out the window and fuck her until we were nothing but a tangled mess of sweaty and exhausted limbs.
Sky wanted it too. I had seen it in her eyes. Her hatred for me had been replaced with something else entirely. I had seen the way she stared at my mouth, wondering what I was going to do with it. She’d wanted me to kiss her just as badly as I’d wanted to do it. And she wouldn’t have stopped me once I started either. Which was a good thing because I was certain that once I got a taste of that woman, I’d never want to quit.
My dick started throbbing, and it only made me more frustrated. There was no way I’d be able to sleep anytime soon even if I went and jacked off to mental images of Sky in the shower. I was too worked up. Too deep in my own head.
Grabbing my duffel bag, I searched through it and quickly changed into my gym clothes and Adidas.
This was nothing a good workout couldn’t fix.
Punishing myself with cardio and heavy weights didn’t quite help the way I’d thought it would. I should have known better. I’d never been able to outrun my mind … but it’d never stopped me from trying.
All my thoughts did were grow stronger and more intense with each set. My dick even got hard. AT THE GYM! I couldn’t get Sky’s face out of my head. The look in her eyes, her full ruby-red lips. I wanted all of it. Thoughts of her were consuming me like a drug. The more I tried to push her away, the more forceful she became.
Fuck it, I said out loud as I dropped the dumbbells to the floor with a thud.
There was only one way to deal with this.
I took the elevator upstairs and knocked on her door. My body was covered in sweat, but I didn’t care how I looked or smelled. Her door flew open, her body wrapped in only a towel. When she realized that it was me standing there, she reached across her breasts, holding the flimsy white fabric in place.
“I have to do this,” I said as I reached for her.
My mouth covered hers before she could speak or question what I was doing. She tasted like pizza and wine and toothpaste. My tongue snaked inside, dancing with hers, while I held her tight against me. Her body arched into my grasp before I felt her tense up. I broke the kiss even though I didn’t want to.
“I was going to die if I didn’t get the chance to do that,” I admitted before noticing the horrified look on her face. “I know I’m not that bad of a kisser.”
“You’re definitely not.” She tried to hide her grin, still holding on to her towel with both hands. “But I can’t do this with you, River.”
“Because you hate me?” I asked, knowing that she damn well didn’t. Not anymore. Not after tonight.
“No. Because Stacy still likes you.”
“I’m not trying to be a dick here, but I really don’t know who you’re talking about.” I pressed a hand against the doorframe and leaned against it.
She propped her hip to the side, stretching the towel to its limit. “Are you messing with me?”
“I’m not. What did she tell you I did to her? I really don’t know.”
I was being dead serious, and I wasn’t sure if that made Sky question my character even more or if she wanted to give me the benefit of the doubt, but she let out an exasperated groan.
“Come inside,” she directed before turning her back to me. “Let me get dressed.”
I wanted to argue and tell her no. That she should sit next to me in nothing but a towel so I could do all the things I’d been daydreaming about doing to her for the last hour. But I didn’t.
It was crazy how quickly emotions could flip. One second, I’d thought she was a stuck-up snob, and the next, I wanted to bury myself so deep inside her that she’d feel me for weeks.
When she stepped out of the bathroom, she was in a tank top and baggy sweatpants. Neither of those items did anything to turn me off. There was a chaise lounge in her room, and I moved to sit there instead of the bed. It seemed like the safer option if I wanted to stay focused on the subject matter and not stare at her tits all night.
Sky sat on the bed and crossed her legs, staring at me. I wasn’t sure if she was waiting for me to initiate the conversation, but I took it as my cue to say at least something on the matter.
“So, Stacy,” I said, dragging out her name like it was unfamiliar and I’d never said it before.
“Don’t say her name like that.” Sky tried not to laugh, but it slipped out anyway.
“Sorry. So, what did she say?”
I’d never cared what the flight attendants said about me before, but now, I was more than curious. Whatever had been told to Sky was enough to make her treat me like shit from day one and never give me a chance to get to know her. We had gone straight from being introduced to enemies.
“She said you guys dated, and then you basically ghosted her.”
“She said I Ice Cream Chad’d her?” I asked, horrified at the comparison I’d just done to myself.
“I guess, yeah.” Sky was grinning, and then her face looked like she had bitten into something sour. “Ew. Please don’t compare yourself to him again. He’s foul.”
I was grateful that she didn’t think we deserved to be in the same category. That was definitely a win for me. “He is, right? Kind of a jerk?”
Her eyes swung to mine. “Kind of? He’s abhorrent.”
“But I’m not?” I questioned, forcing her to say out loud that I wasn’t, for both my benefit and hers.
“I’m not sure yet.” She smirked.
Still a win.
“Anyway, back to Stacy and this whole we dated, and I stopped talking to her thing. I didn’t do that. I don’t do that. I haven’t dated anyone in a long time.”
I’d hooked up with women in the past, but I wasn’t a dick about it. And I’d never dated anyone from work. I hadn’t had a real girlfriend since high school.
Sky looked around the room, her eyes bouncing from the floor to the ceiling. “Maybe you slept together and then never talked to her again?”
“I know you’re not going to believe me, but I don’t do that. I don’t fuck women and never speak to them again.”
She started coughing. “Why not? That seems like a very River Santos thing to do.”
“How would you know?” I asked, my tone bordering on rude, but her assumptions were agitating, and I was tired of this game.
Her lips pressed, forming a straight line. “No. You’re right. I wouldn’t.”
“You do realize that you’ve hated me this whole time because of something one person said to you that might or might not even be true.”
I was finally calling her out and clearing the air. I wanted to get to the bottom of this so we could pack it up and put it behind us for good.
“I’m starting to realize that, but still …” She looked almost embarrassed, like she might not finish her thought.
“But still what?” I pressed, urging her to continue.
“You just seemed to fit the profile. The way you act. The way you look.” She waved her hand toward me. “Stacy said you leave a trail of broken hearts across the airline, and when I heard the other stories about you, I just believed them all.”
“You ladies are really gossipy,” was all I could muster up as a response without getting into specifics of my sexual history.
“We are. Plus, it’s not like you were ever nice to me, so hating you was easy.”
I let out a loud, warring sound. “Me? You were rude from the start. I only reacted in kind.”
She gave me a soft look. “Yeah, I can see that.”
“So, you admit that you started this.” I grinned, and her lips tilted up.
“Maybe.”
“I want to finish it,” I said, and her jovial expression instantly dropped into something far more serious.
“Finish what?” She sounded so nervous.
“All of this. Whatever this shit is between us. I want it dead and buried so we can move past it.”
“Move past it to what exactly?”
I was scaring her. Coming on way too strong and way too fast. She’d spent the last three years hating my guts and thinking that I was a typical guy who didn’t give a shit about women or their feelings. I couldn’t blame her for feeling a little jarred by my relationship whiplash. We’d gone from trading barbs in the bar earlier to me shoving my tongue down her throat and telling her I wanted more.
But I did want more. That much had become blatantly apparent. And now that I’d realized it, I couldn’t get the desire out of my head. I wasn’t the type of man who gave up easily once he set his mind to something.
“Do you have a picture of Stacy?”
“I do,” she said before lunging for her phone, which was charging on the nightstand next to her bed. I watched her scroll through what I assumed was her gallery in search of one. “Here. She’s all the way on the left. Dark hair.”
I grabbed the device and enlarged the photo so I could see it better. The memory came crashing back in that instant.
“You remember, don’t you?” Sky asked as I handed her cell back to her. She sounded sort of disappointed, like she had wanted this all to be a misunderstanding of some kind.
“Yeah. Stacy. I haven’t seen her in a long time. I forgot all about her. But it’s not what you think,” I said, and Sky straightened her legs in front of her.
“You didn’t hook up with her?”
“I mean, we kissed, but that’s it.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah,” I said, remembering everything about that night now that I’d seen Stacy’s face.
“So, you didn’t sleep with her?” Sky was trying to make it all make sense.
“No. She was really drunk.”
Sky’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe she doesn’t remember. Maybe she thinks you guys did something you didn’t, and that’s why she’s so hurt over it.”
“It’s possible.” I leaned forward, putting my elbows on my knees. “But I promise you, Sky, we didn’t sleep together. She was way too drunk for that. I did walk her to her room and put her in her bed. But I didn’t stay there with her. I left right after I made sure she was safe.”
Her green eyes held on to mine as she delivered three words I never thought I’d hear her say. “I believe you.”
“You do?”
She nodded. “Yeah. For whatever reason, River, I don’t think that you’re a liar.”
“Thanks?”
“I know that didn’t sound like a compliment, but it was. Hating you has been exhausting. But it’s also been kind of fun. You’re always quick with the comebacks, which I appreciate. Keeps me on my toes.”
I stopped myself from laughing. “I want to disagree with you, but whenever we fly together, it’s as infuriating as it is exciting. I never know what you’ll say next. It pisses me off, but a part of me enjoys it.”
I pushed to a stand and pulled her curtains back to look outside. The snow was falling so heavily that I couldn’t see anything, except for a solid blanket of white. We were definitely going to be stuck in this hotel for the foreseeable future.
“I am sorry though. For being so mean all the time. I know I take it too far sometimes.”
“I accept your apology. And I’m sorry too. About earlier.” I let the fabric go and turned to face her right as she took a step closer to me. I hadn’t even heard her get up from the bed and move in my direction.
“For which part?” She was looking up at me, her eyelashes batting, tempting me to take her in my arms and worship every inch of her.
I grabbed one of her hands and brought it to my lips, pressing a gentle kiss there. “For what I said about your dad. I obviously didn’t know.”
The hand I was holding tensed, and instead of dropping it, I held on tighter.
“Thank you. I appreciate you saying that.”
“Were you two close?” I asked, knowing that I was opening myself up to the same line of questioning from her. I was willing to go there.
“We were.” She pulled her hand from mine, but didn’t step away. “The holidays hurt so much without him. It’s not the same, you know?”
“I can imagine,” I said because I didn’t know what it was like to lose a parent to death. Both of mine were still alive. Even though I had little to no respect for my father anymore, he was still breathing and around whenever I visited.
“Are your parents still married?” she asked, and I gave her a curt nod.
“If you can call it that,” I said, and she looked sad for me.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that my dad was a habitual cheater, and my mom felt stuck since she didn’t have a job, so she stayed with him instead of leaving.”
Sky sucked in a long, deep breath before blowing it out slowly, digesting everything I’d just said. “And that’s why you don’t lie.”
“Huh?”
I’d never put the two things together before, but she was probably right. I hated the way my father constantly lied, even after getting caught. I never understood why he didn’t just own up to his indiscretions, but maybe it was because he wasn’t sorry for them. Admitting that he’d had multiple affairs should have been followed by an apology, and that was something he didn’t want to give.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard my father apologize in my entire life now that I thought about it.
“When you grow up with someone who lies a lot, you go one of two ways. You either adopt that behavior because it’s familiar. Or you despise it so much that you become the polar opposite. I think you took the opposite route.”
“I think you might be onto something,” I agreed because she was right.
That was exactly what I’d done. I didn’t want to be anything like my father, so I’d made sure that I wasn’t. Not in that regard anyway.
“Were you supposed to go home for Thanksgiving?” I asked, redirecting the conversation a little. Not because I was uncomfortable, but because there wasn’t anything else to say really. Those few sentences had told Sky more about my personality and upbringing than an hour’s worth of conversation could have.
She nodded. “Yeah. My mom’s going to read me the riot act when she gets my message in the morning.”
“It’s not like you control the weather,” I said, pulling back the curtain once more as she moved to the side of me and looked outside.
“No, but I took this job, knowing that I’d be gone all the time. I’m not sure she’s forgiven me for that.”
“But you love it, right? The job?” I wondered if she enjoyed her side of the business as much as I did.
The way her face lit up told me everything I needed to know.
“I do. There are so many perks and so few drawbacks. The irritations are minor in comparison to everything else.”
I wrapped my arm around her middle and pulled her body against me. She was stiff as a board before quickly melting into my side like we’d done this a thousand times before. It didn’t escape me how well we fit together, like two halves of the same mold. Glancing down, I pressed a kiss to the top of her head, and she looked up at me, her lips begging for my attention.
“I’m going to kiss you,” I warned before leaning down and doing exactly that.