“You’re sexy when you drool.”
I glare at him, but he just chuckles, rubbing my thigh sweetly and leaning in to press a kiss to my lips — which I return with a half-hearted pucker of my own.
“Who needs wine?” Skyler purrs, coming in through the door right behind Brandon.
A little whimper is all the answer I give, but it’s enough, and Skyler hands me a damn sippy cup full of Sauvignon blanc.
I begrudgingly take the first sip, but feel marginally better afterward.
“I figured the nap wasn’t happening,” she remarks, climbing into bed next to me. She snuggles in under the covers and leans her back against the headboard. “Are you sore?”
“Yes. And irritable.”
“No, really?”
I give her a flat look.
Skyler smiles, patting my arm and sharing a glance with Brandon before she says, “You’re sad, babe. And it’s okay to be sad.”
That permission nearly breaks me, and I sniff, looking down at my bright orange sippy cup. “I just can’t stop thinking about my life without pole.”
“You’re going to pole again,” Brandon says quickly. “You heard Doctor Long after your surgery. He said once you get through these two months of recovery, you can start up at PT, and there’s no reason you can’t eventually get back to pole.”
“Except he also said my shoulder will never be the same again,” I remind him. “And that I may never get the full strength I had back. And that I might injure myself further.”
“Only if you don’t take recovery and PT seriously,” Brandon argues.
“Wait,” Skyler chimes in, brows popping up. “You really had a Doctor Long?” She smirks, waggling her eyebrows.
I snicker, too, which earns us an eye roll from Brandon.
“I’m just saying, we will get you the best physical therapy money can buy,” Brandon promises me, and he waits until I look at him, until I’m watching as he brings my knuckles to his lips and presses a soft kiss to them. “We will get you back to pole, okay? I promise.”
I close my eyes on a long exhale when he leans up to kiss my forehead, and I wish I could rewind to even two weeks ago, to when we were coming off the most perfect summer of my life. I wish I could go back to coming home and being ravaged by him before I could even drop my purse, wish I could go back to events at work being my biggest concern, go back to knowing at the end of every day, the pole studio was waiting for me to decompress.
“I love you,” Brandon whispers, and I don’t miss how Skyler smiles shyly down at her lap at the words of affirmation.
“I love you, too,” I say, but it comes out more of a whine that makes Brandon smile.
His phone buzzes from his pocket, and when he pulls it out, he frowns at the screen, standing. “Excuse me,” he says simply, and then he’s out the door and answering the call.
I turn to Skyler immediately with a dramatic sigh. “Tell me about your life so I can forget about mine,” I beg, taking another sip from my cup.
“Hey, go easy on that,” she says. “You can’t have more than one glass with the pain meds you’re on now.”
I flick her off.
“My life is boring,” she says with a shrug and a smile at my gesture, but the smile slips quickly. “Rounding out my final classes, recruitment is over. I’ve been focusing on new member events so we can get the pledges lined up with their new Bigs. Cassie has her eyes on this one girl, so I’ve been trying to get them in the same places as much as I can.”
“Little matchmaker, huh?”
“Something like that,” she muses. “I’ve been talking to my guidance counselor about what to do next, whether I should go for my MBA or start applying for jobs, or maybe formulate a business plan and try to get investors to get started.”
“Don’t you have enough money to do it on your own from winning second place in that tournament?”
He face goes ashen, but she doesn’t miss a beat. “Sure, but I think I’d like to have at least one other partner in on the project with me.”
She doesn’t have to say so for me to know she was originally planning on that partner being Kip.
“Have you talked to him?” I ask softly.
Again, no name needed. She shakes her head, eyes on her wine glass.
“Do you want to?”
“Of course, I do,” she says, finally lifting her eyes to mine. “I miss him every second of every minute of every hour of every day.”
Her eyes gloss with the words, and I frown, reaching over to grab her wrist. “So call him.”
Skyler shakes her head, sniffing away the tears that hadn’t quite formed yet. “No. I know it may not make sense to anyone else, and maybe it looks like stubborn pride.” She pauses. “Hell, maybe it is stubborn pride. But he still doesn’t see it. He still doesn’t understand what he did wrong, how badly he hurt me. He apologized, sure, but he doesn’t even know what to apologize for. He’s blind to Natalia’s true motives, blind to how he walked right into her trap, blind to how he put me behind everything else in his life and expected me to be fine with it.” She shrugs. “He’s sorry he lost me, but if he doesn’t even understand why he did, then what would I be walking into if I just brushed this under the rug and said okay?”