Chapter 130
-ROMAN-
The track smelled like dirt and money.
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Ethan had picked the afternoon card. We stood at the rail with beers and betting slips while horses circled below. I should have been watching the board. I was watching nothing.
Olivia’s scent still sat in my car. Ethan’s you’re a great friend kept repeating, a constant reminder that I was being a bad friend.
Still, I could not resist finding out about her.
“What happened when Olivia got home?”
Ethan sighed and drank. “Dad was waiting in the office. She was threatened.”
I stiffened.
“Threatened how?”
“He told her if she pulls another scandal like that, he’ll marry her off. Same way he did Blair.”
The anger took over my face before I could hide it.
Another man marrying Olivia.
Fuck.
The thought made me want to put my fist through the program in my hand.
That was not a joke from her father. Not a distant maybe. William Monroe didn’t make threats like that unless he meant it.
Some lucky stranger would get the right to touch her in rooms I was not allowed to enter.
I knew I should not care. She was Ethan’s sister.
I cared anyway.
“Your father needs to chill on the arranged marriages.”
It came out before I could stop it. Too sharp. I couldn’t hide the irritation in my voice either.
Ethan laughed. “He seems to be getting lessons from your parents recently.”
I shrugged, because if I opened my mouth again I was going to say something I could not take back.
Nobody was as bad as my parents. That did not make William Monroe’s version easier to swallow.
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The Hockey Captain’s Unwanted Wife
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Blair had been handed to Grayson without a second thought. It had worked. Surprisingly. They got their happy ending. But that wouldn’t be the case for every single person that entered a forced marriage.
The idea of Olivia being handed to some rich name because of a scandal made me feel sick. I was even tempted to have a talk with her father.
In some ways, the video was my fault.
She had gone to that club because I walked Eden through her kitchen knowing about her feelings for me. William was threatening to marry her off because I had made her angry enough to act out.
Damn it.
I tried to watch the race when the people around us suddenly got louder.
We had put money on Night Orchid, a dark bay filly with a white sock and a stride that showed her speed and strength.
When she came past the first turn she was third, then second. She was the kind of horse that made people lean in. No wasted motion.
I barely saw her today.
All I could think about was Olivia in my car last night.
I had pulled her into my lap. My hands on her thighs. I had been so close to sliding my hand under that dress and touching her pussy.
I inwardly groaned.
I would kill for that chance.
And it was not like she would not give it to me.
That was precisely the problem.
She would let me. She would let me touch her without hesitating. And she should fucking hesitate. Why would she ever let me touch her?
If Ethan had been sixty seconds later, I did not trust myself to have kept my hand off her. I would have pushed the dress up. I would have dragged her panties down. I would have taken her in a parked car behind a club while her brother looked for her in the lot.
And now her father wanted to give that body, that mouth, that stubborn furious heart to a man who would be chosen off a list.
Night Orchid hit the front.
The crowd noise rose. Ethan shouted something about the split. I watched the filly open up down the stretch, dirt flying, and thought about Olivia standing in a church next to a random man.
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I felt sick at the thought about walking into that wedding as the great friend. Best man’s side. Forced smiles.
My jaw ached.
“He serious about marrying her to some random dude?” I asked.
Ethan glanced over. The grin faded when he saw my face. “Dad is always serious when the family name is in a
scandal.”
I drank beer that tasted bitter and watched Night Orchid win by a length I did not deserve to collect on. People around us cheered. Tickets waved.
Ethan clapped my shoulder. “You good? She just won. Why do you look like you want to fight someone?”
“I’m fine.”
I was not fine.
I was standing next to my best friend at a racetrack, angry that his father might marry his sister to someone else, painfully hard from a memory I should not have, and still playing the great friend.
Fine was a joke.
Fine was pulling her onto my lap and then lying to the man who trusted me with her safety.
William Monroe did not get to auction her off because she had been hurting. He did not get to turn her into another case of her sister.
He did not get to pick a husband while I stood at a rail pretending the only thing I had on the line was a filly with a white sock.
Ethan started talking about the next race. Odds. A long shot he liked. I nodded at the right times. I did not hear half of it. I kept seeing Olivia in a wedding dress marrying some stranger while I could do nothing else but watch.
She would not go quietly. I knew that. She would fight. She would say no. She was not like Blair. She was stubborn.
I hated how much of me hoped William Monroe never found a man he liked for his daughter, because I already knew I would not survive watching her walk down an aisle to a man that was not me.
Ethan handed me another beer.
I took it.
I watched the next horses load and told myself I had to focus this time.
I was here because if I went home I would drive to her house.
And if I drove to her house I would not be a great friend when I got there.
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The Hockey Captain’s Unwanted Wife
Dex Morgan
Dex works to elevate each story with clean writing, emotional balance, and thoughtful flow for readers.