Page 49 of The Spice Play

I hated this. This hurt. Why did thishurt?

“No?” he asked breathily. “What does that mean?”

“I know what you were going to say. And I’m sayingnoto it.”

His jaw tensed as he watched me, a moment of hesitation hitting like the heavy silence, but he broke it before it could settle again. “Your response to my apology isno?”

“Is that confusing for you?” I chuckled, but the soundwas hollow and wrong, and it ached through my chest as it rang out.

“No, I just wasn’t…” He took a deep breath in through his nose, exhaling heavily from his mouth. “I just wasn’t expecting such an outright refusal to an apology. But it’s fine, Penelope, I’m capable of hearing and understanding the wordno. I’m just not sure where to go from there if you’re shutting it down.”

“You can go to bed,” I offered.

He huffed out a breath. “Yeah,” he said. “I can go to bed.”

Chapter 20

Sebastian

Ihated this.

Every step up to my room without the back door opening and closing behind her felt like torture. Just knowing she was still down there, still upset, still locked in place as I left her in the kitchen felt like the worst thing I could do — but if she was going to go cold on me, I didn’t have another choice. I couldn’t fuck this better, and we weren’t close enough for me to feel comfortable pushing the boundary she’d clearly set.

You can go to bed.

She didn’t even want to talk it through with me.

I knew I’d been an asshole. I knew I’d gone over the line and snapped at her, but she wasn’t even giving me the chance to atone for that.

Even with the win on my shoulders, the day had been awful from the moment I’d stepped through the arena’s doors, and I knew the second they closed with her and Matty on the other side of them that I’d truly, horribly fucked up. If I was being honest with myself, I knew whenthe words came out of my mouth, when I was saying the things I’d said back at the rink before I’d gotten back on the ice and scooped up my son. I just hadn’t had the strength to stop them from hurting her.

But if she wasn’t capable of giving me the grace to fix the problem, then I’d begrudgingly meet her where she was. I’d go cold with her like she was with me. I’d leave it where it lay and let the problem either fizzle itself out or grow and rupture and explode.

If that’s what she wanted, that’s what she’d get.

But that didn’t stop me from waiting for the notification from the alarm system to tell me she’d left the main house to wander back downstairs and pour myself a double of whiskey. I carried the bottle up with my glass back to my room, shut off the lights, turned on an old episode ofSurvivor, and listened as Jeff Probst prattled on about the challenge rules while I stood in front of my window.

I sipped from the glass, and I watched, back turned to the television, as Nelly paced back and forth in her fully lit little living room, her phone clutched in her hand but her eyes anywhere and everywhere else. I watched as she picked up a throw pillow and shoved it against her face, watched as the air left her lungs in what I could only imagine was a dulled, frustrated scream.

I wanted to fix it. But she didn’t.

This was what shewanted.

————

“What are you doing?”

At six o’clock in the goddamn morning, with the sun just barely poking over the horizon, I stood on my front porch with a cup of black coffee in my hand and my head pounding, watching as Nelly uninstalled the car seat from the Porsche with less-than-precise movements.

Her ass stuck out from behind the wide-open car door, covered in a pair of tight black shorts and a loose shirt, her feet bare and her hair up in a loose bun. She nearly hit her head on the top of the car as she stood up straight, her gaze locking on mine in surprise.

“I’m…” She blinked at me, looking back and forth from my barely-awake form to the piece of the car seat in her hand. “I’m putting it in my truck.”

“No, you’re not,” I said.

“Try to stop me, then,” she grumbled. She set the cushion and plastic down on the cement. “I’m not driving your car anymore.”

“Then you might as well put it back.”

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