It's Our Time (Carolina Rebels Book 4) Read online

  “I just finished a long shift and—”

  “Don’t care. Still want you. Even if it’s just this.” I squeeze my arms around her and let my head fall back onto the pillow. What I’d really like to do is kiss her, but Sydney keeps bringing up how easily we fall into bed, so maybe she needs to see that there’s more to us than that? I don’t know what she needs; she should tell me so I can do it because I need more than what we’ve been doing lately. I’m tired of being mad at her. I’m tired of not having her. I’m tired of not talking to her as much as I normally do. I want to ask her if she’s moving in with me, but I don’t. It takes every ounce of self-control to stay quiet.

  “You’re not mad at me anymore?”

  “I’m ready to move past it,” I answer.

  She rests her head on my shoulder. “So, what now?”

  “Now, you need to tell me if you’re finally going to let me be your boyfriend.”

  “What’s boyfriend Ian like?”

  It takes a moment for it to sink in that she thinks I’ll be different as her boyfriend. Which, of course, some things will obviously be different. There will be dates and more of a relationship than before. Other than that, I don’t know what she means. So, I say, “If we do this and there’s something different you need, say it. I’ll change. I want you too much, babe, and this is my best and probably last opportunity to have you. I’ll do whatever you want as long as you promise not to give up on me.”

  Up until now, my hands have been on her hips. They’ve been good hands and haven’t moved, but it’s killing me to have her this close and not feel her. I’d like to slip my hands underneath her shirt, but to show that I do have some self-control, I simply let my fingers walk up and down her back. Sydney isn’t saying anything, so I decide to keep talking.

  “Before you decide, you should know what you’re getting into with my job. During the season, things are crazy. I travel, but I can be gone for up to two weeks, sometimes. It doesn’t happen often, but it can happen. Like, it happens at the beginning of the season here. My summer starts anywhere from April to June, depending on how we’re doing and what happens with the playoffs. Summer is mostly free. I say mostly because I’ll take some time off, but I still train. And then, there’s always the potential to be traded and have to move. If you’re my girlfriend, once you’re done with school, I’d expect you and Savannah to come with me.”

  She laughs a little. “Are you trying to talk me out of it?”

  “Just letting you know what it’s like. It won’t be too bad with Savannah since you’re already used to not having me around.” I feel like I’ve waited long enough. I’ve done a good job being patient, right? “What’s it going to be, Sydney?”

  “You’re supposed to be giving me time to think. Besides, it’s really late, and we should be sleeping. Let’s go to bed.”

  “Do you already know what you’re going to do?”

  She lifts her head and nods. “What do you think?”

  “I honestly have no clue.” My answer makes her frown. “Have you been able to read my mind lately?” I ask and she shakes her head. “Then what makes you think I can read yours?”

  “Because I feel like I’ve always been pretty transparent, even if I don’t want to be.”

  “You aren’t.”

  “Promise you won’t hurt me like before?” she whispers, her eyes welling with tears just thinking about it.

  That slays me. This girl has been everything to me for so long, and it seems impossible that she doesn’t see that and doesn’t know that I’d never make the same stupid mistake twice. I’ve been trying to win her back ever since I came back into her life. The last thing I want to do is hurt her.

  “Promise,” I whisper. “Never again.”

  She studies me for a moment before she nods, whispering, “Then, I’m all yours.” Relief floods through me with her words.

  “Daddy!” Savannah shouts before I can kiss her. “Daddy!”

  “Fuck.” Sydney tries to get up, but I roll us so she stays put on the couch. “I don’t believe she called for you. Stay.” I get up and jog to Savannah’s new room. The lamp is turned off, must have been Sydney’s doing, so I turn it back on and sit on the edge of the bed. “What’s up, little Miss?”

  “The light was off. I was scared.” Her little, child-like, girly voice is way too cute, especially with how she pronounces words.

  “Sorry. Your mom turned it off when she came to check on you.”

  “Mommy’s here?”

  “Yeah, want her to say goodnight before you go back to bed?” Savannah nods her head, so I call out, “Babe!”

  “Who’s babe?” Savannah asks.

  “Uh, that’s what I call your mom sometimes.”

  “Why?”

  “I just do.” I don’t think now is the time to get into the fact that her life is about to change because I’m with her mom.

  “Hey, buttercup,” Sydney says as she comes into the room.

  “She wants you to say goodnight.”

  Sydney tells her to lie back down and she tucks her in, kisses her forehead, and says goodnight. We leave the lamp on and walk out. I pull Sydney into my room. Her bag is already on my bed, so she must’ve dropped it off in here when she came to check on Savannah.

  “Change and get ready for bed,” I order, handing it to her. I’d like to have sex with her. My body is thrumming with a need to have her because it’s been entirely too long and we need to celebrate us finally getting together, but this needs to go slow.

  Slow means no sex until the second date at least. I know we have history and all, but I also know that I need Sydney to trust me. That means not having sex with her every chance I get. We need a new normal, not the old one.

  I take my own advice to get ready for bed, following her into my one and only bathroom. She’s already changed and is now brushing her teeth. Soon, for the first time, we’re crawling into bed to simply sleep. Sydney looks at me and I know her mind is still racing. She won’t fall asleep that way. Cupping her cheek, her eyes close as I lean forward and finally get my kiss.

  She smiles and I’m reminded of the first time I kissed her. We were on an airplane. She hates takeoffs and I compared them to first kisses. We had ours and she had her first ever. She smiled and laughed a little. Until I do the same thing I’m doing now, slipping my tongue into her mouth. A low moan leaves her mouth to enter mine. She presses against my body. That feels good. Too good to have her breasts heaving with her breathing and brushing against my chest. Too good to have her leg thrown over mine.

  I pull away, kiss her forehead, and whisper, “Sleep, gorgeous.”

  Somehow, she burrows even closer. I wrap my arms around her and within minutes, we’re asleep.

  The week passes with Sydney and Savannah having a sleepover every night except Tuesday, because Savannah wasn’t leaving her Lo-Lo. We start moving their things over with the help of Zane. They’re all moved in by today, Thursday. But Savannah is staying with Logan for a bit tonight because Sydney and I are going on a date.

  “A bar, Ian?” Sydney asks.

  “Don’t judge yet,” I reply as I open the door for her. Aaron Peters told me about this place and if it wasn’t for what he said about it, I wouldn’t have brought her to a bar.

  “Woah,” I hear her murmur when we walk inside. It’s low-lit, but not so much that those playing games can’t see what they’re doing, and it’s set up in an intimate manner. A live jazz band is playing, but they aren’t too loud. The room is full of dark woods with the brightness coming from the lights.

  I find us a table and a waitress immediately appears with a menu. Our table has a Never Have I Ever card game and Cards Against Humanity on it.

  “How’d you find this place?”

  “Teammate recommended it.”

  She nods and we look over the menu and the beers, as the bar brews their own. Once we’ve placed our order, I notice Sydney’s legs doing their nervous jig thanks to the tabletop being glass. On
e of the first things I noticed about Sydney was that when she was upset or nervous, her legs constantly shifted positions to match how antsy she was.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  Her eyes flick toward me. “This is odd.”

  “What is?”

  “Being on a date with you.”

  I laugh. We’ve been friends for six and a half years, have been fucking on and off for five of them, and us being on a date is weird? “We’ve hung out before.”

  “Not on an official date. It’s like the two parts of our relationship are colliding.”

  I reach under the table and squeeze her knee. “It’s just me, babe. It’s just us hanging out.”

  The waitress drops off our beers and Sydney picks it up, but doesn’t take a sip. “I’ve never drank alcohol.”

  “Not even when you turned twenty-one?”

  “Nope. Savannah had a stomach bug, so I didn’t go out. Things kept coming up, so we never went out to celebrate. When I’ve been on dates, I really don’t want that to be my first time drinking and that’s really the only opportunity I’ve had to drink alcohol because we don’t keep any at the house. Why is that making you smile?”

  “I get another first.”

  She smiles and then takes three sips of her beer. “Okay, I don’t like this. Let me try yours.” She grabs my glass out of my hand and after a sip, she’s switching our glasses. “See if you like mine better because I like yours.”

  Hers ends up tasting good, so I keep it and let her have mine.

  “Savannah,” she starts, but I interrupt her.

  “This is a date. Even I know that dates mean no kids. I want to talk about you and only you.”

  “But you already know everything about me.” She points this out as if I should already know this. She sort of has a point because I do know a lot about her, but not everything.

  “No, I don’t. I don’t know how this compares to your other dates. I don’t know everything you did in the two years we didn’t talk. You didn’t tell me everything when we did start talking, so I don’t know everything about you. There’s still things to learn.”

  “You know everything that’s important,” she says.

  “I want to know everything, period, babe.”

  Her legs cross at the ankle and then over the knee. “Like what?”

  The waitress drops off our food and I realize the first two questions that come to mind, I can’t ask. I said we can’t talk about Savannah, which means I can’t ask how she chose to name her. Then, because it’s like I’m still a teenager and she looks fucking hot in her snug sweater and skinny jeans, I’m thinking about sex, which makes me want to ask how many other people she’s slept with. That’s not a good first question, so I need to ask something else.

  “How is your relationship with your father nowadays?”

  Sydney relaxes. “Better than it was. We had a heart to heart when Savannah was born and things have been better since then. He comes down to see her a few times a year, so you can expect to see him next month for her birthday.”

  “That’s good. I’m really glad to hear that. Do you want more kids one day?”

  “First reaction is to say no, but I think if I was more settled in life with a stable job with good income and most importantly, if I had a man by my side, then yeah. I wouldn’t mind giving Savannah a little brother or sister and…” Sydney’s voice trails off. She looks unsure as she gulps down more beer, looking down at her food.

  “What is it, gorgeous?”

  She flicks her gaze up to mine. “You don’t know how much I wanted you there to experience that first with me, Ian. Even after what happened, I still wanted you there.” She clears her throat. “So, I was going to say that I’d want to be able to experience pregnancy with the father. Do you want more kids one day?”

  “Ask me after I get used to Savannah. Having kids never crossed my mind because I never had a reason to think about them yet. Is the food good?” It feels like we should talk about something else.

  “So good,” she nods. After a few minutes of eating in silence, Sydney asks, “Have you told your mom about Savannah yet?”

  “Ah, no. I guess I need to call her.”

  “Why don’t you have a good relationship with her?”

  I sigh and poke my fry into ketchup. “You want to talk about this now?”

  “What else are we going to talk about? Tell me, Ian.”

  “She’s greedy and money-hungry,” I start. “She essentially left my dad because her old high school boyfriend was richer than we were and she wanted a better lifestyle. It burned Dad bad because he did take care of her. She was a stay-at-home mom, didn’t work, and he gave us a good life, working his ass off to do it; it still wasn’t enough for her. We don’t see eye-to-eye still, so I keep my distance.”

  “Oh, wow. That’s terrible.”

  “Yeah, I was nine when she left, and even then, I knew why she was leaving. It’s stuck with me.” I shrug.

  “You said you didn’t tell me you loved me because of stuff between your parents. What did you mean? Is it somehow because of that?” she asks.

  “Ah, yeah.” I decide to focus on my food because for some reason, I find that I really don’t want to explain it. Can’t she connect the dots? Haven’t I given her enough?

  “Aren’t you going to explain?” Sydney raises an eyebrow and waits, taking a sip of her nearly finished beer. The waitress stops by, so I’m given some more time while Sydney orders another and I order a water and also a shot for Sydney. I need to say it in a way that won’t piss her off or give her the wrong idea. “Ian,” she presses.

  “Not that I necessarily want you to never work a day in your life, but if we were going to be together, I wanted to be in a position where if that’s what you wanted, then you could do it. I wanted it to be where if we didn’t live in the same state, traveling to see each other wouldn’t mean searching the couch for change to help put the money together to come see you.”

  “You didn’t want money to ever be an issue,” she interrupts.

  “Exactly.”

  Her face softens. “Ian,” she whispers so quietly the only way I know she said it is because I’m looking at her.

  “Whatever you’re feeling, stuff it in a box and kick it to the curb. Everything is sunshine and rainbows and unicorns shitting glitter.”

  She snorts, clearly not expecting me to say that. “I don’t think that’s a sentence that should be coming out of your mouth.”

  “It should if it makes you laugh.” And gets her mind off of what we just discussed. To make sure we don’t go back there, I stand, move my chair next to her, and sit back down, an arm on the back of her chair, my hand lightly gripping her neck to brush my thumb along the skin there.

  She’s grinning now. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” I chuckle.

  The waitress returns with our drinks and takes our empty plates. Sydney ignores her. She reaches up and rubs my beard like it’s a lamp and she’s waiting for a genie to appear. Her forehead rests against mine. “I love your beard. I love the way it feels.” Her blush is clear. I grin because she isn’t talking about how it feels against her hand.

  “Dirty girl,” I murmur, which makes her cheeks turn even redder. “Take your shot.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” she lies as she pulls away from me to pick up the shot glass. “This seems like an awful lot to swallow in one go.”

  I bust out laughing and nudge the glass to her mouth. “You’ll be fine.”

  She knocks it back, making the cutest grossed out face, when we hear, “Yo, you’re Ian Rhett. I’m a big fan, man.” I notice Sydney’s face blanch before I turn to look at the guy. “Sydney?” he adds with surprise.

  “Uh, hi, Tom.”

  I glance between the two of them. They know each other?

  “You’re here with him?” he dumbly questions.

  “How do you know him?” I ask her.

  “Ah, he was my date to the hockey game.”<
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  My head snaps to Tom with a glare. My skin crawls just being near him, even though the date had to go horribly since Sydney’s attention was on me the entire time.

  He holds his hands up. “I was hoping for a photo.”

  “No,” I quickly answer.

  “Ian!” Sydney protests. “Don’t be ridiculous. Let me see your phone, Tom. Ian, stand next to him.” When I don’t move, she shoves me out of the chair. I stand next to him with no expression while she takes the photo. The moment Tom has his phone back, he mumbles a thanks and walks back to his table. “You’re rude.”

  “You went on a fucking date with him.”

  “He took me to a hockey game, Ian. And he was late picking me up,” she says as if that explains everything. “You should also know that when he was talking to me, he talked about how much he loved you and when I obviously had no interest in listening, he spent the rest of the date talking to some other girl…about you! You were being a jerk to a fan. Aren’t there rules against that? You probably broke his heart.”

  “He’s a grown-ass man, babe. If that broke his heart, he has issues.”

  Sydney shakes her head at me and turns in her seat to face the band. Oh, so now I get the silent treatment in person? I’ve always wondered how that would be. If she would be able to stick to her guns as well as she did over the phone if I were here in person to work my magic and plead for her to talk to me again.

  She starts fanning herself and moving her hair off of her neck. The alcohol is hitting her. She might be a lightweight. She picks up her beer and gulps down three swallows. That’s not going to help her, but I’m not going to say a thing. Instead, I grab her hips and pull so she’s closer to me. Still, she ignores me.

  “I’m sorry, gorgeous.” Totally not sorry. She must know this because she ignores me. Okay, let’s try the tactic I’ve always wanted to use, but never could. One arm goes around her waist while the other reaches around to slowly glide down the outside of her thigh, up along the top, down to her knee, and then along the inside of her thigh. The moment my lips touch her neck, she leans into me. Ah, this is what was missing. She’s so going to talk to me. Her hand shoots down to grab mine when I get too close to her center.