Las Vegas Sidewinders: Karl (Book 3) (22 page)

“I just want us to be a
normal couple, just once! We’ve been on a roller coaster since we met! First
with Erin’s drama with her ex, then you going to Sweden and us breaking up, me
collapsing, and now Therese manipulating us. This is my life, my marriage, and
I’m tired of this!” She was still sobbing, her tears dripping down his chest as
she pressed her face closer to him.

“Okay,
shh
.” He kissed the top of her head. “We’ll make things
right. Tomorrow we’ll go to the bank and make sure we have joint checking and
savings accounts. Do you want to go house-hunting?”

“No.” She shook her
head, sniffling. “Erin wants me to stay with her until the baby comes, and I
want to. It’s not about where we live, it’s just how we’re living. We don’t own
anything together—not even a bed. My car is still in New York. We haven’t told
anyone other than our closest friends that we’re married. I feel like you could
just walk away, like this is temporary or something, and everything is a
priority except me.”

“What?!” He gaped at
her. “Kate, that’s bullshit and you know it.” He looked down into her eyes
again. “I love you! The whole reason we got married so quickly was so that we
would be stronger, together. I know this thing with Therese is miserable, but
I’m doing everything I can to make her leave us alone. I’m not going anywhere
and I’m getting kind of tired of having to tell you that over and over!”

Her eyes widened,
showing both surprise and hurt. “You’re already getting tired of telling me you
love me?” She kicked back the sheet and sat up, pulling away from him.

“That’s not what I
said!” he snapped, sitting up.

“Oh, I heard what you
said, loud and clear.” Yanking on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, she headed towards
the door.

“Kate, wait.” Karl
started to get up.

“No. Just leave me
alone.” She turned and slipped out of the room.

“Dammit.” Karl blew out
a frustrated breath. Their first fight. It would have been funny if she wasn’t
genuinely upset. He regretted snapping at her, but he was being pulled in a lot
of different directions right now, and he needed to sort out this mess with
Therese before hockey season started. He understood Kate’s frustration, and he
felt bad about it, but the constant fear that he was going to leave her made
him crazy. He’d put up with her insecurities up to now, but with Therese making
it clear she wasn’t going to go away, he and Kate needed to be on solid ground.

He decided to let her
think on it for a little while. In the morning he would talk her down from the
ledge and find a way to compromise.

He woke up later than
usual, surprised that if was after 10. He was disappointed to see that Kate
hadn’t come back to bed, but he would figure out how to fix this. Maybe Erin
would have an idea. Going into the bathroom, he’d just dropped his shorts when
he noticed something off. He turned, squinting as he took in the bathroom
counter. Kate’s things were gone: her curling iron, her favorite perfume, and
most of all, her bright pink toothbrush. Yanking his shorts back up, he almost
ran into the living room. Erin and Drake were sitting at the counter having
coffee; the room was eerily quiet.

“Where’s Kate?” he
demanded.

“I took her and Emilie
to the airport a while ago,” Erin said, meeting his eyes. Hers were
inscrutable, the normally bright sapphire color dark and hooded this morning.

“Are you kidding?!” He
threw up his hands. “And no one thought to wake me? I mean, we had an argument
last night, but with everything going on, no one thought I needed a chance to
talk to her?”

“When Kate gets like
this, she needs a little space,” Erin said, her eyes softening slightly.

“And why did Emilie
go?” Karl asked.

“They’re going to
Philly, to meet up with Dante. He’s home for a few days and the timing seemed
to work out well.”

“That’s just awesome.”
Karl set his jaw in frustration.

“She wouldn’t tell me
what the fight was about,” Erin said. “So that means it was either really,
really bad or it was really, really dumb. Which was it?”

Karl shrugged. “We
fought about not having a real wedding. We fought about Therese. We fought
about the fact that we don’t have a joint fucking bank account—I don’t know
what we were really fighting about! God, why are women so fucking complicated?
Guys either cuss or throw a few punches and it’s over! I can’t tell her that I
love her and I’m not leaving her any more than I already have!”

“You guys haven’t had a
chance to settle into being married,” Drake reminded him. “You know how
sensitive she is.”

“Whose side are
you
on?!” Karl turned and went back into the bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

“This isn’t good,” Erin
murmured softly.

“I’ll talk to him after
he’s had a chance to cool down,” Drake said, looking in the direction Karl had
gone. “He’s one of those guys who almost never gets mad, but when he does…”

“Kate loses her temper
a lot, but it’s usually over within a minute or two. When she stews over
something, it’s bad. I need to talk to Dante and make sure he’s watching her
and that she’s eating.”

“God, I forgot about
that.” Drake sighed. “Yeah, I’ll give him half an hour or so, and then I’ll
talk to him.”

Dante was in the limo
that picked them up at the airport and, despite being in a piss poor mood since
her fight with Karl, Kate couldn’t help but laugh at Emilie’s wide-eyed
assessment of the Latino baseball player. Her mouth opened a little when he
kissed her hand and she was somewhat speechless as Dante hugged Kate tightly,
whispering something in her ear that Emilie couldn’t hear but made Kate flush.

“So tell me what’s
happening?” Dante said once they were on the road.

“Emilie needs a place
to lay low until this thing with Therese goes away,” Kate said quietly. “She’s
thinking about the Art Institute here in Philly, but I thought it would be
better if you two got to know each other before we made any decisions.”

“My home is open to any
friend of Kate’s,” he said quietly, looking at Emilie curiously. She was
beautiful, tall and slender with almost white-blond hair and eyes so pale he
couldn’t tell what color they were.

“You’re very kind,”
Emilie said softly. “I’m sorry for how much trouble I’ve caused everyone.” She
glanced at Kate guiltily.

“Karl and I didn’t
fight over you,” Kate told her. “Really, it had nothing to do with you.”

“You and Karl fought?”
Dante cocked his head. “You didn’t tell me this earlier.”

“I needed to cool off,
and Emilie needed to meet you. It seemed like a good plan.”

“But you didn’t tell
Karl before you left,” Emilie said. “His feelings are going to be hurt.”

Kate opened her mouth,
but closed it again, remembering the one other time she’d left him and how his
feelings
had
been hurt. “I’m going to call him when we get to the
house,” she said after a moment. “It’s going to be fine.”

Sensing her discomfort,
Dante easily changed the subject, talking about Philadelphia and asking Emilie
how much she knew about baseball. Before she knew it, they were at his house
and Kate slipped upstairs to her old room, saying she needed to rest for a
while. She stared at her phone, both sad and furious that Karl hadn’t called
her. She wanted to be a big baby and not call him either, but she’d been the
one who left without saying a word, so she felt like she owed it to him to make
the first move.

He answered on the
first ring, his voice low and devoid of emotion. “Are you in Philly?” he asked.

“Yeah. We just got to
Dante’s house.”

“Have he and
Em
met?”

“Oh yeah. They’re
getting along like old friends. Last I saw they were going down to the game room
to meet Trey and play pool.”

“
Em
is a great pool player,” he said. “He’d better not put money on it.”

“I’ll make sure to let
him know.” She sank onto the bed, the phone at her ear. “I’m sorry, Karl.”

“For?”

“Leaving this morning.
I should have talked to you first.”

“Yeah, you should
have.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“Apology accepted. But
you still should have woken me. This is the second time you’ve snuck out on me.
I really dislike it, Kate.”

“I won’t do it again,”
she whispered, swallowing hard. “But you hurt my feelings last night.”

“And you hurt mine. Why
don’t you trust me? Doesn’t the fact that I married you mean anything? I signed
that
prenup
your father sent, but I didn’t ask you to
sign anything. Doesn’t that tell you how much I trust
you
?”

She felt tears welling
up in her eyes again. “I do. But dammit, I’m a new bride and I want to feel
special! I didn’t care about a big wedding, but I thought we would spend
quality time together, at least celebrating privately. Instead it’s been all
about Therese and
Viggo
and Emilie!”

“I can’t help that
Emilie came to the U.S. when she did,” he said. “I can’t help that Therese has
lost her fucking mind either! I’m doing the best I can, Kate!”

“This is the only time
we’re ever going to be newlyweds.”

“I know that, baby.” He
sighed. “But I can’t just walk away from this mess. I appreciate you bringing
Em
to Philly, but I still have
Viggo
here and—”

“Do you see why I’m
frustrated?
Everything
is more important than me.”

“Not
more important
than you!” he cried in frustration. “Just more urgent than you right now!
Hopefully in a few weeks this will all be behind us and we can—”

“We can get ready for
you to get back into hockey mode!” she snapped back.

“Would you quit
interrupting me?!” he yelled, getting frustrated all over again.

They were both quiet,
each ruminating over the fact that things seemed to be getting worse instead of
better but unwilling to continue yelling at each other.

“I’m going to see what
Emilie wants to do,” she said after a moment. “Then I’m going to go to New
York. I need to see a few clients and make sure none of them are feeling
neglected.”

“Okay. I appreciate you
taking care of
Em
.”

“She’s family now.”

“Since you’ll be at
your place in New York, are you going to pack up some of your things?”

“I hadn’t thought about
it.”

“Why not?”

“There’s no point in my
moving in completely if you’re going to be on the road half the season and you
don’t know if you’re staying in Las Vegas after this year.”

“If I get traded, it
doesn’t matter how much you have here, it will all get moved with my stuff.” He
paused. “Unless you’re having second thoughts.”

“About living with
you?!”

“About being married to
me.”

“I’m not the one who’s
acting like getting married isn’t a big deal.”

“Come on, Kate. You know
that’s not true.”

“I apologized for what
I did today, but I’m not apologizing for feeling neglected on what should have
been my honeymoon.”

“And I’ve already
apologized for that,” he said quietly. “I have to take care of this, Kate. We
eloped so we could stand together against Therese. Instead, you walked away.”

“I didn’t walk away
from
us
,” she protested. “I just needed some time to myself, and I did
something that needed doing for your sister.”

“You walked away from
me. Again.”

“That’s not fair. The first
time I’d known you, like, 12 hours.”

“And this time?”

She sighed. “I
apologized for this time.”

“Yet we seem to be at a
stalemate.”

“Would you have married
me if this wasn’t going on with Therese?” She closed her eyes, waiting for the
answer.

Karl took a breath and
slowly let it out, giving himself time to think; as frustrated as he was, he
knew this wasn’t a battle he would win over the phone when she was apparently
still so uncertain about their future. “When I proposed I didn’t have a date or
a time in mind—I wanted to show you how much I loved you and how serious I was
about our relationship after everything that had happened. The idea to actually
get
married evolved naturally because I love you so much.”

“I love you so much
too,” she whispered, fighting ever-present tears. “And I want so much to make
things work.”

“But?”

“But I don’t know if I
can do this.”

“Do what?”

“Be the woman you
need.”

“What the fuck does
that even mean?!” Karl was losing his patience again.

“It means that you’re
out of my league and I will always worry that you’re going to get bored with
me.”