Love In Secrets (Love Distilled #3) - Scarlett Cole Page 0,63

in the eyes while she said it. But Cassie wouldn’t like feeling as though she were trapped into saying it. Instead, he ran his fingers through her hair and let the words run through him.

I love you too.

I love you too.

He’d encourage her to practice saying it to him over the next few weeks.

“Hey, there’s a festival over at the amphitheater at the end of the month,” he said, easing into another topic so she couldn’t talk herself out of words she’d now committed to the universe. “Liv, Em, and the guys are going to go. Should I get us tickets?”

“When exactly is it?”

When exactly is it?

Fuck, he had to be a masochist. Her response on the back of telling him she loved him felt like a kick in the solar plexus.

Of course she’d want to know when it was.

Because she was leaving.

No matter how much he loved her. Or how much she loved him.

13

“How’s your dad doing?” Liv asked as they stood on the balcony of Emerson and Connor’s downtown apartment eight days later. The sun was shining, the workday was done, and a simple conversation about a mutual love of fajitas led to arguments over whether they should ever include rice, which had everyone getting together to make and eat some.

“He’s doing much better. They think he should be out of the hospital in two weeks,” Cassie replied.

“That must be a relief. I can’t imagine how fed up he must be.”

“Yeah, two major surgeries and legs basically held together by contraptions that look like pin and wire exoskeletons. He was lucky it wasn’t worse.”

“He must be looking forward to going home and sleeping in his own bed.”

“I’m sure he is. I don’t think Marianne is, though. I overheard her asking the doctor if he could stay in longer because she didn’t feel properly equipped to deal with him at home.”

Olivia shook her head. “God, that woman really is something.”

“I know. But what can I do? Dad’s a grown-ass man. If he can’t see her for who she is by now, he’s never going to. Anyway, talking about her is going to raise my blood pressure. Let’s talk about how amazing you look.”

Olivia looked down at her outfit of black skinny jeans and a teal off-the-shoulder top. “The jeans are new, and surprisingly, Anders picked the top out. He came home from training with it one day. It’s from a store near the training arena and he thought it would look good on me.”

Cassie grinned. “I didn’t mean the outfit, although it is a super cute top. I meant you. Your skin looks great, and those jeans only look good because you have a great ass.”

Olivia looked over her shoulder and then laughed. “Pre-season training kicked into high gear.” She glanced into the living room, where Anders was sipping a glass of soda. “It’s like he suddenly got turbocharged. And he’s so strict on what he’s been eating and religious about working out. Legs, trunk, posterior chain. I’ve never done so many barbell glute bridges and Pendlay rows.”

“I don’t even know what those are.”

“Trust me, you don’t want to. Although, maybe you do. It’s kind of fascinating, I never realized how much hockey players relied on the force of a single leg.”

“More wine?” Emerson said, stepping onto the balcony.

Olivia offered her wine glass to Emerson and laughed. “The one thing I am not doing is joining him in abstaining. He won’t really drink for the next eight months, but I’m so not doing that.”

“You talking about Anders’s training camp?” Emerson asked, as she poured the crisp sauvignon into Cassie’s glass.

“I was saying how great Liv looks, and she said it was because she’s going along with Anders’s training program.”

Emerson threw her arm over Olivia’s shoulders. “She does. Has she told you about the videos?”

“Em,” Liv warned.

Em slid the balcony door closed. “He makes her workout videos where he demonstrates all the moves in very limited clothing . . . so she can work out with him when he’s not there.”

Cassie looked at Olivia, eyes wide. “I bow down to your brilliance. You could sell them for a fortune. I know he’s yours, but he did look good without his shirt when we had the barbecue at Jake’s. Hey, he could set up an app or something.”

Liv grinned and shook her head. “He’d hate everything about that. You know the team had their public relations person sit down with him and show him how to work his social media accounts.