Page 66 of The Spice Play

My freeze response was threatening to take over, and I fought it, shoving my hands beneath the faucet and rinsing the leftover smears of concealer from them. My heart thumped hard against my chest, little palpitations only heightening my anxiety, but I tried to breathe through it. This wasn’t satisfying anymore.

This justhurt.

Ruby’s laugh hit just as hard as I thought it would, and I wanted to grab my bag and either run out the door or hide in a stall and wait for them to leave, but the idea of them passing Seb alone in the hall and putting two and two together stopped me from doing the latter. But I wasn’t going to do that.

I could stand my ground. If I could do it with Sebastian, I could do it here.

The lock clicked open and I gave myself one more glance in the mirror to make sure I didn’t look like I’d been crying — I just had to hope that the blood vessels in my eyes gave the impression I’d had a few drinks instead.

“Shit.” The word was so quiet, so muffled, that without looking at them, I couldn’t tell who it had come from.

I turned from my reflection, locking eyes with Ruby from across the bathroom. “Hey, Rubes.”

She blinked at me, her fingers clutched in the layers of tulle that made up her ridiculously large skirt. “Hi, Nelly.”

“Really thought you’d have a private bathroom just for the bride. Wasn’t that in one of your binders?” I said, and I watched, my mouth almost salivating from satisfaction as she flinched.Who was I?“Or did you let Morris decide against that, too?”

Ruby’s jaw steeled, and Sarah crossed her arms over the corset of her blue satin bridesmaid dress, her eyes rolling.

Adrenaline surged through my veins, and I was surprised as I moved, slipping my hand into my purse, and pulled out my phone — normally, I’d be stuck in place, nothing but the words in my mouth to propel me forward if they weren’t locked behind my teeth. But I just…moved. It was so easy.

I pulled up a photo Seb’s teammate, Luke, had taken after the game before the last one I’d been to. In it, Sebastian and I stood along the boards at the rink with Matty on my back, his little arms squeezing the crap out of my neck with his head poking up around my shoulder between us. I flipped my phone around, holding it out in Ruby’s and Sarah’s direction. The other girl, the one I didn’t know, was far too busy playing with her hair in the mirrors to give a rat’s ass about the conversation.

“Does this look like a favor?” I asked, swiping across to the next image. It was Seb on the couch with Matty in his lap, both of them grinning ear to ear as Matty held up his brand-new skates. The white box beside them held the skates that Seb had bought me, and as I turned my phone back to me, I couldn’t help but feel a little pang in my chest for leaving those behind in the guesthouse.

Sarah opened her mouth to speak but closed it a second later, pushing out a frustrated breath of air through her flared nostrils.

Ruby, on the other hand, had no problem talking. “Come on, Nelly, you showed up here withhim. It’s wildly convenient,” she scoffed. “What were we supposed to think?”

I slipped my phone back into my purse and smiled half-heartedly at her. “You don’t have to think anymore, do you? Morris can do that for you now,” I said, clicking my tongue on a swallow as I stepped back toward the door. “He can do it for the rest of your miserable, married life together.”

Ruby’s lips and eyebrows went flat, a ripple of…is that regret?… flickering across her face.

I pushed on the swinging door as I turned, letting my heels click noisily as I moved from tile to carpet. “Hope you enjoy the honeymoon I’m sure he picked out for you! Let me guess, Cancun?”

Giving her one last glance as the door swung shut, her head turned in frustration toward the mirror instead.

Seb had been right — leaving when I’d originally asked him to wouldn’t have been worth it. I wanted to stay, I wanted to piss them off, wanted to upset them more than I could have ever imagined. But more than anything, more than any revenge I could have dished out, I wanted to make them painfully aware of howokayI was, how much better off. And I couldn’t have gotten to a point where I could do that with any amount of confidence without Sebastian.

He wasn’t just giving me lessons on how to be better in bed. He was giving me lessons on how to stand up for myself.

Chapter 28

Sebastian

Icouldn’t have asked for a better evening. I’d have even taken her storming out of the ballroom and crying on the porch of that goddamn estate over and over again if it meant I could relive it over and over and keep her endlessly.

It wasn’t because of the way she’d come out smiling from the bathroom, her makeup pristine, after I’d heard her speaking on her way out. She’d told me what had happened and grinned the whole way through it.

It wasn’t because she’d dragged me back to the ballroom and forced me back onto the dancefloor.

It wasn’t because she’d kissed me in the middle of a slow, romantic song that Morris and Ruby clearly adored as they danced ten feet from us, her hands holding my face and neck just beneath the ears as she smiled the whole way through. She hadn’t even looked at them.

It wasn’t because of her insistence to stay until the crowd started to drastically thin and the bride and groom made their exit.

And it wasn’t because of the way she’d failed tostifle her laughter as we walked in through the revolving door of the fanciest hotel I could find close to the venue and found Morris and Ruby standing at the check-in desk, Morris’ card clutched in his hand as he breathily shouted at the poor man behind the counter who looked like he’d rather be anywhere else.

It was because of the moment when I’d leaned down and whispered to her that our final act could come from me, I could offer to cover their honeymoon suite upfront since there was clearly an issue with the card Morris had brought — and she’d laughed, the sound so sweet it could give me a fucking cavity, and grabbed me by the lapels on my jacket and said, “I don’t care about that. I just want to go to our room.”

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