Chapter 6: He Always Knew

MELANIE

My legs went weak, and I almost fell to the ground. I quickly grabbed the edge of the couch to steady myself. 

Gavin had a fiancée? Like an actual woman, he planned to marry?

And last night... last night I had begged him to fuck me. I came so hard on his cock while he filled me up, stupidly believing, for one perfect night, that he was finally mine.

No. No. This couldn’t be real.

Dad had never once mentioned any fiancée. And Gavin sure as hell hadn’t said a word while his cock was buried deep inside me.

I couldn’t look at him. If I did, I’d have to admit how pathetic I was, throwing my virginity at a man who already belonged to someone else. He probably only slept with me because he felt sorry for the sad, broken little girl who always needed his help.

I forced the brightest, fakest smile I could manage, hoping it didn't look like a smirk, and turned to his fiancée, who was grinning like she’d just won the lottery.

“Wow,” I said, my voice sweet enough to rot teeth. “That’s… surprising. Gavin never mentioned he had a woman in his life, let alone a fiancée.” I tilted my head and widened my smile until my cheeks hurt. “You’re way too beautiful to be kept a secret.”

Cassandra’s eyes widened. Her perfect smile slipped for half a second before she pasted it back on.

Gavin cleared his throat and stepped forward, using that calm, authoritative coach voice he used on the ice. “Cass, Melanie had a really rough night. I was just glad I could help her out. That’s all.”

That’s all? Really? Did he just reduce sex with me to "that's all"?

His words hurt me harder than I wanted to admit. He was already erasing everything we’d done before the sweat on the sheets had even dried.

Cassandra turned to him with forced sweetness that made my stomach turn. “My baby loves his privacy; he always likes to keep things to himself.”

My baby. I almost laughed in her face. She sounded even more desperate than I felt.

I raised my hand and casually picked at my nails, pretending I wasn’t dying inside. “Well, good for you two. If I had a fiancé, I’d make sure the whole world knew he was mine. None of this secret-keeping bullshit.” I shrugged. “But hey, maybe some women like being kept in the dark. Different strokes, right?”

Her smile tightened into something ugly.

I was too heartbroken to keep poking at her. If I really wanted to, I could tear her down and make her shed tears in under a minute, but what was the point?

She belonged to him, and I was just the... mistake.

Cassandra turned back to the table and started unpacking the breakfast bag, croissants, bagels, pastries, and coffee. I noticed her hands were trembling slightly as she arranged everything.

“Why don’t you join us for breakfast, Melanie?” she offered, her voice polite but strained.

I almost scoffed. Like she actually wanted me here.

“No, thank you,” I replied coldly, already turning away. “I need to go home, freshen up, and get to class. Wouldn’t want to ruin your cute little morning routine.”

I headed toward the bedroom without looking at Gavin, but I heard him murmur something low to her about being right back.

Fuck him. Fuck her. Fuck all of this.

I tried to hold the tears back until I got to my car, but they were already burning my eyes. One stupid, traitorous tear escaped just as I stepped into the bedroom. Gavin followed right behind me and closed the door.

“Melanie, I can explain—”

“Don’t!” I snapped, more tears spilling down my cheeks like a waterfall.

He moved closer. I felt the heat of his body behind me and stiffened when his hand gently but firmly grabbed my arm, turning me around to face him.

The second our eyes met, that same dangerous pull filled the room.

My gaze dropped from his pained hazel eyes to his full lips, then lower, to his bare, muscular chest still marked with faint red scratches from my nails last night. The same chest I had kissed, licked, and clung to while he fucked me senseless.

Unwanted heat stirred low in my belly. I looked away fast, cheeks burning with humiliation, hating how my body still betrayed me so easily.

“I didn’t mean for last night to happen,” he started, voice rough with guilt. “It was—”

“If you fucking say a mistake, I swear to God,  I will stab my fingers straight into your eyes.” 

Gavin actually took a step back, looking a little shocked, like he believed I might actually do it.

Good. Let him be scared.

I wiped my face roughly with the back of my hand. “I need to leave. And for your information, I'm not crying because of you,” I lied through my teeth. “I’m crying because… because I don’t have anything decent to wear home.”

“I can—” 

“You know what? It doesn’t matter.” I turned away from him and started yanking open random drawers in anger, not even sure what I was looking for. I just needed to keep my hands busy, so I wouldn’t do something stupid like grab him and kiss him again.

One drawer slipped and fell on my toes.

“Damn it!” I hissed, bending down to rub my foot.

That’s when I saw it.

No… it couldn’t be.

My fingers closed around the familiar, worn leather. I pulled it out slowly, and I heard Gavin gasp behind me.

My old journal. The one I thought I’d lost years ago. The one I started at nineteen, filled with explicit, embarrassing love letters and filthy fantasies about Gavin. Page after page of me describing how badly I wanted him to be my first. How I touched myself thinking about him. How much I loved him.

The pages looked… so worn, like they had been read thousands of times.

I looked down at the opened page, underlined in black ink was a sentence I’d written at midnight two years ago: "I want to know if those big, strong hands feel as good as they look when they finally touch my naked body, grip my hips, squeeze my tits, or hold me down while he fucked me.”

I stood up slowly, totally forgetting the pain in my toes, with the journal trembling in my hands, and turned to face him.

He looked guilty as hell. He couldn’t even meet my eyes.

He had known.

All this time… he had known how I felt about him.

The realization hit me like a vase to the head.