Crazy Thing Called Love

Can’t Buy Me Love

Can’t Hurry Love

Maddy was going
to beg. She’d start with an apology. Heartfelt, of course. Desperate mostly.

But after the fight last night she was scared that they were past apologies. She and Billy were already way past reason. Compromise was long gone.

Which left her with begging.

I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said those things. I don’t want to leave. I don’t want a divorce. We can do this. I know we can. I …

She put her head against the door, feeling through the wood the bass line of the music being played in his hotel room.

I’ll go back on the road with you
.

Resentment sizzled through her, burning holes in her purpose. Other professional hockey players didn’t need their wives to babysit them. To keep them out of hot tubs with strippers. Away from bar fights and the mercenary puck bunnies.

But that seemed to be exactly what Billy needed. Two years ago he was a second-round draft pick, the bright young homegrown star of the Pittsburgh Pit Bulls. Eight months ago he was finally called up from the minors and he’d promptly lost his mind with the excitement.

But her husband was a twenty-two-year-old enforcer with a temper, a slap shot that could dent metal, a whole
bunch of cash, and no clue how to handle the world he’d been thrust into.

He was easy pickings for puck bunnies.

I’m not his mother
, she thought bitterly. But she was his wife and maybe … sometimes being a wife meant being a mother, too.

Dad had died three months ago, and Mom was selling the house to move down to Florida with Aunt Lisa, so there was nothing keeping her in Pittsburgh full time anymore. She could travel with Billy.

Some wives did that. It wouldn’t be weird. Or exhausting. Or boring.

What about college?
She asked herself because she was the only one who still remembered that she used to have her own plans and dreams before Billy’s career and then Dad’s sickness had taken over everything. She was twenty years old, had been married for two years, and sometimes it felt like her life was over.

What about journalism school?

Stop
, she told herself. She lifted her head from the door.

You married him, honey
, her mom had told her.
Now you gotta try living with him
.

She loved Billy Wilkins. Down to her bones, she loved him, which was the only reason she was outside his hotel room in Detroit. Ready to beg, if that’s what it took.

Enough
, she told herself, and knocked on the hotel room door.

“Just leave it outside,” Billy’s voice called out. The Pit Bulls had lost tonight, she’d heard it on the radio in the cab she took from the airport.

He was going to be prickly.

She closed her eyes and prayed for strength. “Billy,” she called back. “It’s me.”

Almost immediately, the door was yanked open and
Billy stood in front of her. His thick brown hair was damp from the shower and curling at the ends. He was shirtless, the muscles of his chest and shoulders bathed in low lamplight from the room behind him.

And it was all there, everything he felt was on his face. His surprise. His love. His joy—in her—it illuminated him, the hallway, her entire world. He’d been looking at her like this since they were kids, and she felt an answering spark inside her.

They could do this. They could make it work. It was worth fighting for.
They
were worth fighting for.

The relief was profound and her heart threw itself wide open.

But he closed right down, no doubt remembering every awful thing she had said to him the night before. A chill rolled off of him, and he lifted the beer bottle he was holding to his lips.

Where the scar pulled his mouth into a terrible sneer.

The sight of him—his scar, his body, his virile strength barely restrained—rippled through her, as it always had. As it always would.

Maybe she would have been able to walk away if she didn’t want him so badly.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Can I come in?”

He pulled the door a little closer to his body.

That would be a no.

“You’re going to make me do this in the hallway?” She tried to make it a joke, but he just stared at her. Immutable.

Right. On with the begging.

“I’m sorry for those things I said. I was mad. Hurt.”

“Yeah? Well, it’s my turn now. And screw your apology, Maddy.” He stepped backward as if to shut the door, but she reached out her hand, nearly touching him. They both froze.

“Don’t, Billy. Please. Let’s talk. I’ll come back on the road—”

He blinked. His eyes flared and the sneer spread briefly into a smile. “You will?”

A bittersweet happiness flooded her. It wasn’t perfect, but what was?

“Yeah,” she said. “I miss you.”

“Oh my God, baby. I miss you so much, I—” He reached for her.

“Billy?” a voice called from the hotel room behind them.

A female voice.

A woman in a hot pink dress slunk toward the doorway, glowing malevolently in the shadows.

“What are you doing out here?” the woman asked, her voice strangled by the breasts pushed up to her throat.

Bittersweet happiness curdled to a bitter rage. And right at that moment Maddy hated Billy more than she’d ever loved him. It was a terrible rending, from which there was no going back.

Hating him like that changed her on a molecular level.

And the pain … the pain was shocking. She couldn’t see or breathe. She couldn’t think. Her whole landscape was pain.

“Maddy,” Billy said, blocking her view of the bitch in the pink dress. “It’s a party.”

“Yeah? For two?” The words spilled from numb lips.

“No,” the stupid stupid woman said. “My friend is here, too. Are you delivering the champagne?”