Page 50 of Not In Love

Burying his face in his hands, Diego groaned. Ever since Muriel had begun her manic wedding prep, his mother was extra motivated about getting him hitched.

“Use your Mama’s eagerness to get you settled as fuel. Ask Muriel to invite a couple of her friends. You know the pushy, handsy ones that always liked you, even before your star blew up?”

“Make Kash jealous, you mean?” Diego asked.

“No, make her see what she’s got to lose. Let her fight for you,” Coach said, eyes sharp. “Maybe that’s the way this has to go down with her, you know? Instead of going to your knees and asking her, you let her claim you.”

Diego sat back, the gears in his mind turning. The weight on his chest lingered, but the air felt clearer somehow. The idea of Kash claiming him made his knees weak, his breath short.

“That’s an idea,” he said slowly.

Coach clinked their glasses again. “Now that’s the kid I trained. Go play the damn game.”

* * *

The house had gone quiet,finally.

It was just past midnight on Tuesday, before Kaif and Muriel’s wedding on Sunday. Kash had worked a long shift at the hospital—mostly admin and a late consult that had dragged on.

As she sat curled on the worn sectional in the front lounge, dressed in soft sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt, the night pressed up against the big picture window beside her. The dim table lamp cast a honeyed glow across the room. Her tea had gone cold long ago.

She hadn’t meant to wait for Diego to come home. But here she was. Something in her refused to settle without talking to him.

It had been two days since the incident with Josh and their subsequent ‘fight’, if it could be called that, and she was certain he was avoiding her.

He hadn’t answered a single one of her stupid, desperate texts. Both related and unrelated to the wedding.

And now, she was regretting taking the rest of the week—leading to the wedding—off. Not if he was going to barely look at her.

Surprisingly enough, his anger didn’t feel like an unwanted weight. Whether casual dating or a serious relationship, she’d always been the one to keep chugging away at what needed to be done, without wasting time on hurt feelings, hers or her partner’s. Maybe because she’d never trusted them enough.

Maybe because she had assumed that something about her would make them leave.

Even with Simon, it had been one version of her that she had let him see.

With Diego though, everything felt upside down, inside out. Like his anger with her was also a sort of claim on her, even if he hadn’t let it spill. Like he had some, unnamed expectation of her that she wanted to fulfill with every fiber of her being.

She wanted to clear the air and cajole him, make it up to him. Make him happy. Which was a strange concept for her, one she had no clue where to begin. She knew how to be responsible for someone else, both adult and child. How to shield them from the world’s ills.

It was only with Tia, who had stolen her heart as a minutes-old baby she’d held to her chest while Kat had been out of it, that she fully opened her heart. And to make a child happy—all one needed to do was to love them unconditionally.

But how did one go about making a grown man happy? A man who had everything he could ever want—millions to boot apparently—and needed nothing from her.

A sudden visual of him fucking her mouth came at her and she shook her head. Sex, as glorious as it was with Diego, wasn’t the answer she was looking for. She needed to do something, anything, to show him?—

The front door opened with the faintest creak. She stiffened, pulse quickening.

Rain misted in behind Diego before he shut it. A gust of cold air curled around her bare ankles.

He stood there, broad shoulders framed in the soft hallway light while his face lay in shadows. Jet-black hair shone with beads of rain, shirt slightly damp with drizzle, the sleeves shoved up to reveal his forearms.

Even in the relative dark, she felt his gaze land on her as if it were a laser beam, pulling her into a different gravity. “Is something wrong? With Tia?”

Kash shot to her feet, the fluffy blanket around her unraveling as quickly as she was. “No. Just couldn’t sleep.”

His jaw tightened.

“I mean, I didn’t want to go to bed without seeing you. I know I texted a lot and bugged you and—” she hesitated at his remote expression. “Just to make sure everything was okay between us. I wasn’t like waiting to ask you for…” her cheeks heated as she completely lost the plot. “For like sex or anything. I mean, not that I would say no if you?—”

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