48
SLOW DANCING IN A
BURNING ROOM
Olivia
IT’S FOUR A.M., AND THIS is the third time I’ve woken up. There’s a pit of unease inside me that grows bigger each time, though I can’t explain why.
I haven’t heard from Carter. Yes, he’s out with his team, but he’s never gone this long without a word. Even when he knows I’m sleeping I often wake up to multiple messages telling me how much he loves me or what he’s going to do to
me when he gets home.
But tonight? Nothing.
It’s an irrational fear, probably. They won the cup. They’re celebrating; they deserve to.
But something feels wrong, so I bite the bullet and dial his number. When it goes directly to voicemail, the sinking feeling in my stomach grows exponentially.
Lying back in bed, I hug his pillow to me. It smells like him, fresh citrus with a hint of smoky woods, but it doesn’t help me fall back asleep. When anxiety creeps in, I have a dicult time reminding myself how to breathe properly.
When my phone rings twenty minutes later, I scramble over the edge of the bed.
“Liv?” Cara’s voice is low, but I hear the slight edge in her tone.
“What is it? Is everything okay?”
“It’s… yeah. It’s ne. Em just got home. He was wondering… is Carter there?”
“He’s not home yet. Didn’t they leave together?”
There are muted ramblings, like Cara’s covering the phone. “Emmett said Carter came back to the table after we left, grabbed his suit jacket, and took o without a word. He never… he never came back. Em gured he went home to you, but they’ve been calling him all night, and—”
“His phone’s o.” I breathe the words that burn like acid. “I can’t get ahold of him.” Throwing my legs over the edge of the bed, I grip my stomach, keeling forward. There’s a vise around my heart, squeezing tight, and I feel like I’m going to vomit. I can’t calm my thoughts fast enough to tell myself that Carter’s safe, that he’s okay. “What if… what if he got in an accident? What if he’s hurt?”
I rub at my chest, trying to ease the pain.
“I’m sure he’s ne,” Cara insists gently. It’s the voices in the background that are anxiously muttering, wondering where their friend is, their captain. “Do you want me to come over and wait with you?”
“No, I’m… I’m ne.” The lie tastes sour, like it disagrees with my stomach.
“He’s ne. I’ll text you when he gets home.”
I spend the next hour pacing the bedroom, sitting on the balcony, scrolling aimlessly through my phone, waiting for a text message, a phone call that never comes.
It’s shortly after ve in the morning that I’m tagged in the rst series of photos from a popular gossip account.
The rst is of me and Carter kissing outside the restaurant. The second is Carter from behind. It’s dark, but the people hugging each of his arms are unmistakably female, one with long red hair, the other blonde. They’re stepping
inside a building.
A hotel.
The caption?
Stanley Cup champ Carter Beckett can’t resist the bunnies post-win.
Beckett, seen here with girlfriend, high school teacher Olivia Parker, a mere hour before he disappears inside a hotel with two females!
The pictures keep rolling in. Endless photos, all from dierent angles, and my heart shatters when I catch a glimpse of the faces of the beautiful women on his arms.
The blonde from outside the bathroom in the restaurant.
And Courtney.
The captions, somehow, get worse. There are old pictures of Courtney and Carter, speculation that Carter is the reason Courtney and Adam broke up, that he’s been cheating on me with her the entire time. That I’m the young and naïve schoolteacher—and single mother of two, apparently—that fell for his charm, despite the warning signs. That Carter fooled me.
My phone rings, Cara’s face on my screen, but she’s not who I need right now.
I need Carter. Because this isn’t right. It can’t be right. This isn’t Carter, not the man who’s so obsessively in love, who treats me like his queen. Not the man that moved me into his home and talks constantly about marriage and babies and forever.
There has to be an explanation, something they’re missing. Something we’re all missing.
It’s 7:16 a.m. when I hear the beep of the keypad on the front door.
I y out of the bedroom and down the stairs as Carter steps into the house. I note his downcast gaze, the obvious heartache that weighs him down, but I don’t stop until my body collides with his. I wrap my arms around him as tight as I can, needing to feel him, to know he’s okay.
His broad body stiens at my touch before he sinks into me, one hand in my hair, the other at my lower back, pressing me closer, holding me tighter.
I try to force his gaze to mine, but it doesn’t come. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“I love you.” The way he whispers my three favorite words, laced with brokenness, sounds like they’re not quite meant for me to hear.
Or maybe they are.
Just one last time.
“Carter.” His face, over his rough stubble, the strong line of his rugged jaw.
“Look at me, baby.”
He doesn’t. He doesn’t move a muscle, except for the almost imperceptible tic in his jaw, the vein pulsing in the side of his neck.
“Carter. Look at me.”
“I can’t,” he whispers, the words weak, shattered. Something wet drops, splattering onto my forearms where I’m reaching between us, holding his face in my hands.
Something inside me stretches past the point of painful. My body makes the decision to move, to step back, putting distance between us that my mind is trying to convince me we need, even though my heart is telling me to hang on.
“Did you get a room with them?”
Silence.
“Carter. Answer me. Did you get a room with them? Did you go upstairs?”
“Yes,” he croaks.
My hand ies to my mouth in an attempt to stie my gasp. It doesn’t work.
“What happened? What happened, Carter?” I beg him for an answer, but he doesn’t give me one. “You didn’t cheat on me, Carter. You wouldn’t.”
Carter’s head whips up, and for the rst time since he’s walked in here, he looks at me. His bloodshot eyes, red rimmed and glossy, swimming with pain, bore into me. He takes a half step forward, reaching for me, but pauses. His gaze drops to his outstretched arm, then back to me, cowering away from him.
“I—I… Olivia.” My name is a cry on his lips, a plea, or maybe an apology. I’m not sure.
But the next sound from my mouth is a garbled, strangled sob that makes his green eyes wild, and he nally takes that step toward me.
“No,” I cry, spinning out of reach. My chest heaves like it’s breaking, ripping wide open, and I can’t breathe properly. I place my palm over my heart, willing the pain to stop, but it doesn’t. I don’t know what to do, and when Carter whispers the next words, everything inside me feels like it’s broken.
“I’m so sorry.”
Tears freefall down both our faces.
“No.” I shake my head. “No.” This isn’t real. This isn’t Carter.
“Baby.” He moves cautiously toward me.
“No.” I rip my hands away. I can barely see through the tears as I stare up at him, the man I gave my everything to, the love that changed my life. “I trusted you.”
“I—I… I don’t… Olivia, I just…” Carter stops, dropping his face to his hands and muttering out a fuck I almost don’t hear. “What’s wrong with me? I don’t know how to… it’s not… It’s broken, Ollie.”
Racing up the stairs, I grab my bag from the closet and ll it as fast as I can with whatever ts. Moving into the bathroom, I sweep my things o the counter and into the bag, and Carter’s behind me, shaking, frantic.
“No, no, no,” he chants, following my every move. “No, Ollie, you-you can’t.
You can’t.”
He tears down the stairs behind me, looking like he’s on the verge of having a heart attack while I slip my sandals on. That’s how I’m feeling, anyway. Like this heart is never going to function properly again.
Carter follows me into the garage, and the only word he seems to be able to say is no as he watches me slip the key to his truck o my key ring and grab my car keys o the hook. I haven’t driven this thing in four months. I’m only sure it’ll still run because Carter turns it on once a week to keep the battery from
dying. So considerate, always.
So, why? Why?
I can’t stick around to nd out the answer to that question, since he seems intent on not communicating with me right now. I hit the button for the garage door, and Carter turns feral, slamming my car door the second I open it.
“No! I won’t let you!”
With two hands on his chest, I shove against him. I’m sobbing now, making my next words weak and broken, even if I’m yelling. “You don’t get to tell me what to do! You’re not in charge! I put all of my trust in you! All of it, Carter!” I choke on a sob, burying my face in my hands as I cry. “And you don’t even have the decency to tell me what happened. You’re not answering me! Talk to me!” I beg, gripping his shirt. “Please, Carter!”
His eyes bounce between mine, strong hands gripping my wrists. “I—I—I… I can’t. I don’t know how.” He hangs his head in shame, defeated.
The end is supposed to be easier than the start. Because this isn’t the way this was supposed to go. Or maybe it’s exactly how it was always destined to end.
In this moment, I’m taken back to the night Carter convinced me to dance with him, the night I realized I was falling for a man I had no business falling for.
And I think the exact same thing I thought back then: we were slow dancing in a burning room.
That’s all we’ve been doing. Pretending the inevitable wouldn’t happen. That this all wouldn’t go up in ames.
But it is. This life we’ve built together, the future I put so much stock in, the forever I was so sure about it. It’s been doused in gasoline, torched.
My heart will never be the same after Carter Beckett.
He steps away from the car, allowing me to open the door. I throw my bag inside before I climb in.
“I love you.” His words are shattered, lifeless. “I love you, Ollie.”
“You know, I never doubted that until now.” Truth be told, there’s still some desperate, sadistic part of me that believes him, or wants to, at least. Because I don’t think there’s a person alive who loves the way he does, unwavering, wholesome, passionate, and obsessive.
And yet here we are. This is what kept me afraid and at a distance for too long, but he’s spent the last six months grinding all those preconceived notions to dust.
I look up at him through blurred eyes. “I’ll never stop loving you, even if you’ve broken me beyond repair.” I don’t know if that makes me weak or brave.
I just know that even though I back out of the driveway, it’s the last thing I want to do.
I watch Carter fall to pieces in the garage while I fall to pieces on the inside, and everything feels so utterly wrong, so devastatingly broken.
I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t have a home, and the person I need more than anything, the only one who can take all of this away, the pain, the heartache, is the one who’s brought it all in the rst place.
Visiting hours don’t start until eight, so I sit in the parking lot and fall apart some more, until I’m sure I can’t be put back together. When I burst through
the door of the suite, I nd the man I’m looking for sitting on his balcony, looking nearly as defeated as I feel.
He lifts his head from his st, weathered blue eyes searching for his visitor.
Whatever’s left of my heart crumbles to pieces as I cry out his name. “Hank.”
“Olivia.” He stands, spreading his arms wide. “Come here, sweetheart.”
