Page 61 of Tempest

“What’s the story there?” she asks.

“We graduated high school and went our separate ways,” I say, trying to sound very unattached and casual. “Didn’t see him again until I moved here and met his daughter at work.”

“You teach his daughter?” she asks.

“Mentor,” I correct. “I’m not a professor.”

“Are you dating?”

“Yes, but not him.”

“So, he’s a free agent?”

“I didn’t say that,” I say, taking another long sip of my drink and not looking up to see the various women laughing.

My defenses are lowering with Gavin, I can admit that. He’s not as far off the table as I’ve kept him before, but he’s not part of my place setting yet, either. The week between him telling me he was marrying Caroline, and the day of their wedding, shaped the person I am. It’s not so easy to set that aside. I live by the rules that hurt girl made for me. They’ve protected me well, so far.

Willa quickly shut the conversation down by saying there’s nothing wrong with a woman going after what she wants if the man is single and willing.

Maybe Gavin isn’t willing and that’s why he hasn’t been back at my door. Or maybe he’s who he says he is and I just don’t know how to trust him.

And that’s exactly why I keep going back to Preston. Because he doesn’t cause this mental turmoil. He also doesn’t cause the same explosive orgasms or the knot of anticipation in my tummy when I’m about to see him.

“There’s some piping hot tea there,” Britton whispers to me. “Isn’t there?”

“Scorching hot.”

20

Gavin

“When you bringing Quinn back around, Vaughn?” Letty asks when we get off the ice after morning skate. “I miss her.”

The coaches kicked our asses today, the price you pay when you lose in spectacular fashion like we did last game. We’re usually a cohesive unit, but something was off. I chalk it up to the holidays approaching, life always feels busier from Thanksgiving to New Years, and even though we’ve all been doing this for so long, it’s never easy to not be home with our families.

“I’m trying to get her to come with me tonight,” I answer. Willa is hosting a bowling night for the team and families. A way to get together, have some fun, blow off whatever funk we’ve been under.

I can’t see Odette bowling, but she hasn’t said no. She hasn’t said yes, either. But a win is a win, and I’ll consider it that, unless she declines. It’s been a good couple of weeks with her; I haven’t seen her, but she’s answered all my calls and texts.

We’ve been talking like friends. Little by little, I’m gaining ground. Regaining the trust she once had in me that I shit all over.

She laughs more with me now, though. There’s less defensiveness in our conversations and she’s starting to tell me of her escapades over the years. Like the first time she met George Clancy, one of the biggest A-list actors of our generation. She immediately disliked him, saying he was the epitome of a nepo-baby. He hated that she didn’t swoon for him and pursued her for weeks, until she told him she had an STI so he would leave her alone.

Or how her first summer in the City she’d gotten an internship and couldn’t go home but didn’t have the money to stay, either. She slept on the floor of a friend’s closet-sized apartment in Harlem. It was infested with roaches and had a single shared bathroom for the entire floor. When it got to be too much for her, she’d find some random guy at a bar to take her back to his place so she could sleep in a bed and catch a shower uninterrupted.

I hated that story, but she said it made her more determined and driven, she called it her “blood in the cut” summer. Basically, she was overwhelmed with so much anguish that she learned how to own it and focus it into another direction.

There were also the tales of the first client that she dressed for the Oscars, and the first time she released a limited collection of her own designs, something she’s only ever done four times.

Odette always downplays her success by saying anyone could do it if they just keep their head in the game, but that’s not true. Not the way she has, anyway. Anyone in the public eye for any length of time gets bad press or has to maneuver through a scandal or two.

Not her.

I searched and couldn’t find a single negative comment about her online. Everyone that knows her, loves her. She’s an enigma. Stoic, but funny. Posh, but kind. Relatable, yet unattainable…the kind of woman other women want to be and be friends with. The kind of woman men want to befriend, fuck, and wed.

“Great, she can be on my team. Her ass is going to be amazing throwing the ball,” Letty says, side-eyeing me.

“Keep running that mouth and you won’t make it to tonight,” I grumble to his uproarious laughter.

---