Page 7 of Hold Me Closer

Teo

" F uck, baby," I moan, throwing my head back as Nadia rocks her hips, taking me deep. Her perfect tits bob in my face as she bounces on my cock, her hot little pussy squeezing me in a vise. "Just like that. Don't stop."

She feels so damn good. Jesus.

She opens her mouth, her lips forming my name. But instead, ice-cold water spews out, spilling all over me.

"What the fuck?" I jerk upright, shock surging through my system as I reach for her.

Only…she isn't on top of me.

My publicist, Emelia Jónsson, is standing over my bed, an empty water pitcher in her hands and a scowl on her face.

"Look who is finally awake," she snaps, flinging her blonde hair over her shoulder.

"Emelia?" I yank the covers up over myself, trying to hide my rapidly shrinking cock. "What the fuck are you doing here?"

"Making sure you're still alive." She slams the pitcher down on my bedside table hard enough to rattle my brain inside my skull.

"You weren't answering your phone, your email, or your front door.

I used the hide-a-key to come in and check on you since you were supposed to be meeting me for breakfast two hours ago. "

"Fuck." I scrub my hands down my face, trying to get my shit together. "That was today?"

"Yes, Teo. That was today." Her brows wrinkle with distaste, her green eyes narrowed. "Not that I expect you to remember since you smell like you fell into a distillery last night."

"I'm not hungover." I'm lying like a motherfucker.

She snorts, crossing her arms and hitting me with this look that screams don't bullshit me .

It's honestly a little terrifying. Then again, rumor has it that she takes after her mom.

Kelsey Jónsson is a legend. She's been terrorizing the hockey team back home for two decades.

I lucked out when Emelia agreed to represent me.

And I lucked out again when she didn't boot my ass to the curb when I got traded to the Sabres.

For some reason, she decided to stick with me.

"So you weren't drunk when you got into a bar fight last night?" she asks.

Fuck my life. How does she possibly already know about that?

"It wasn't a bar. It was a nightclub."

"Hold that thought." She snatches the pitcher off the table and marches toward the bathroom, her heels clicking against the tile floor. A few seconds later, I hear the water running.

I may be hungover, but I'm not an idiot. I jump out of bed before she decides to try drowning me again for pissing her off. She's got a temper. At least, I give her a temper. Something like that.

I quickly jerk on a pair of sweats, covering my naked ass, before she materializes in the doorway, her pitcher of water full to the brim.

She glances at me, her expression cool. "Pity," she mutters. "I was looking forward to drowning you in your own bed today. No one would even blame me for it, Teo. Not after they see the pictures that hit my email this morning."

"So…we're not getting breakfast?"

"You were making out with Nadia Mikhail in a freaking parking lot last night!" she practically shouts at me, sloshing water over the brim of the pitcher. "After you beat up three people in a bar."

"Nightclub. And in my defense, they deserved it."

"You always say that."

"Yeah, well, anyone who sexually harasses and threatens women deserves a beating. Who am I to deny them what they deserve?"

She actually growls at me like a pissed-off grizzly.

Jesus Christ. I need to learn to shut my mouth.

"I'll be quiet now," I mutter, snagging a t-shirt off the back of the chair in the corner. "Continue berating me."

"We aren't getting breakfast," she mutters, marching back into the bathroom. "You'll be lucky if you're able to leave your house anytime soon. You have an entire army of paparazzi camped out there."

Fucking hell.

I stomp to the window and flick the curtains back to check for myself. She wasn't lying. There are cars lined up three deep outside the gates. Goddammit. This is the last thing I wanted.

"How bad are the pictures?" I shout to her.

"You and pop star Nadia Mikhail are making out in a parking lot," she says, popping her head out of the bathroom to glare at me. "How bad do you think they are?"

Nadia is going to kill me.

I sink down onto the edge of the bed with my head in my hands. It pounds like a motherfucker. Getting wasted when I got home probably wasn't a good idea. But fuck. Didn't know what else to do to get her out of my head. It was either drink or drive myself crazy thinking.

Turns out, I still managed to do that drunk.

"She's the girl you're messed up about, isn't she?

" Emelia asks, her voice softer. She may be a terror, but she has a heart.

A big one, actually. It's why I chose her to represent me.

She manages to humanize me even when I fuck up.

She privately gives me nine kinds of hell, but she's always publicly on my side.

And she makes the people who count want to root for me, too.

When I've given them as many reasons to wash their hands of me as I have…

well, that shit isn't easy. But she manages to do it.

"Yeah," I rasp, not lying to her.

"Thought so," she says quietly. "Are you two back together?"

A humorless laugh escapes my lips. "If you handed her a match, she'd use it to set me on fire without even hesitating, Emelia. So no, we aren't back together. That won't ever happen. Not after what I did."

"What did you do?"

I swallow hard, staring at the floor. "Broke a promise."

"I'm going to need more than that if I'm going to fix it, Teo."

"This can't be fixed. She hates me."

"Um, have you met me?" She eyes me like I've lost my mind. "Trust me, no one kisses a guy like that if it can't be fixed. And no one sings that many love songs about someone they hate."

I glance up at her sharply. "She doesn't sing about me."

Emelia throws her head back, laughing. "Have you ever listened to her music, Teo?

Every single song is about you. Honestly, I'm surprised no one else has put it together.

You're a dream I can't hold. You chose the game, so I chose the road ," she says, reciting lines from one of Nadia's songs.

" You're chasing victory, but you're leaving me behind .

I'm standing in the shadows, feeling so small, while you run for glory, giving it your all. "

"What song is that?" I growl, my heart clamped in a vise.

"The first lines are from Getaway . The second verse is from Blue ," she says and then nods at me.

"They're both about a boy with blue eyes who plays football.

There have been rumors over the years about a boy she went to school with, but no one would ever confirm who he was.

People back home are still impressively loyal to her. They keep her secrets."

Jesus Christ.

Has she really been singing about me all this time?

I don't think I've ever really listened to the lyrics.

I barely even managed to listen to her sing without my goddamn heart aching.

I hear her voice, and it hurts, so I turn off the radio.

I own every album and buy everything with her name on it, but I've never really listened.

Ha. I'm sure she'd agree that's always been my problem. I never fucking listen. Well, I'm listening now.

"She was supposed to graduate early, but she decided to skip the class she needed, leaving her several credits shy," I murmur.

"She did it because I turned down my chance at a football scholarship, and we'd always planned to go to college together.

When I got a last-minute walk-on spot at UT, I took it, even though it meant leaving her behind. She's never forgiven me for it."

"Oh, I see."

"No, you don't." I glance up at her, swallowing hard.

"Her whole life, she hid in my shadow. She was always smarter, always better, always more talented.

But she just kind of faded into the background most of the time, saying it's where she wanted to be.

But I knew better. She was meant for greater things than that.

I wanted her to have a chance to experience shit on her own for once, to realize that she didn't need to hide behind me.

She deserved better than that." I exhale a breath.

"I just didn't realize I was pushing her right out of my life by going about it the way I did.

When I came home for Thanksgiving break, she told me that she'd never forgive me.

I kissed her anyway. She slapped me and ran off. "

My hands shake, so I clasp them together, trying to still them.

"She shouldn't have been driving when she was that upset, and I knew it.

I went after her to make sure she made it home safely," I whisper.

"I found her car wrapped around a light pole.

It was… God, it was bad, Emelia. By the time I got her out of the car, it was on fire.

And the only thing she said before she stopped breathing was not to tell me. "

Christ, that shit killed me. The way she mumbled it over and over, like she was begging for me to be kept away from her, not even realizing she was talking to me, that I was the one desperately trying to get her out of that fucking car…

"She didn't want me at the hospital. She didn't want me anywhere near her." I sigh heavily. "She's hated me for six years because I decided for her what she needed."

"Do you regret it?" Emelia cocks her head to the side, genuinely curious.

Do I? I've asked myself the same damn question a million times.

The truth is…I don't fucking know. I regret losing her.

I regret every minute of the last six years.

I regret what I said back then about not wanting her in my life because it wasn't fucking true.

I'll never forgive myself because she was on the road that night because of me.

But do I regret pushing her out of the shadows?

Hell, even her song says she stood in my shadow, feeling small.

How can I regret giving her a chance to find out for herself exactly what she was capable of?

She was meant for greatness. And now, she's found it.

The whole goddamn world knows her name. I wish like hell that I'd been along for the ride.

That was always my dream—to be there to support hers.

To be her rock while she touched the stars.

"Parts of it," I admit. "I regret like hell that she hates me.

I'll never forgive myself for what happened.

But I don't regret that she ended up where she is.

She belongs on that stage. I don't think she ever would have taken that chance had our lives played out the way she envisioned.

She would have gone to college, settled into a career like teaching music, and never gone after what she wanted.

She would have continued to put me and my future first—the same way she always did. She deserved more than that."

"You still love her, don't you?"

"Never fucking stopped," I rasp, my throat raw. "Not for a single goddamn second."

Emelia nods thoughtfully. "She's your new girlfriend," she says after a minute.

"You two are going to pretend to be in a relationship to save your image.

And trust me, Teo, it desperately needs saving right now.

Because as soon as I leave here, I have to go explain to your bosses what happened last night—and they're already looking for a reason to get rid of you. "

"She's never going to go for that."

"I'll convince her myself if that's what it takes," Emelia says. "But she's your new girlfriend, Teo."

"It's not her job to save my image, Emelia. I fucked that up all on my own. If I crash and burn because of it, that's on me."

She rolls her eyes at me. "This isn't really about your image. It's about giving the two of you a chance to reconnect. You need that more than your image needs Jesus."

"I'm not going to risk fucking up her image to save mine."

"Obviously not." She hits me with a look sharper than a dagger.

"That's precisely why you need her. You may not care about your image, but you do care about hers.

You wouldn't dare do anything stupid enough to mess up her image or get her into trouble.

I know you well enough to know that. You two can reconnect while I work on digging you out of this hole.

And you'll be safely out of trouble while I do it.

Two birds, one sorta-fake relationship."

"That is not how that saying goes."

"It is now."

"I'm not going to lie to her."

"Then don't. Tell her that you intend to make her fall in love with you again.

" She waves a dismissive hand at me as if telling me she doesn't give a shit what I do so long as I do it.

"Just don't fudge it up, Teo. Otherwise, I'm going to kill you.

" She bats her lashes at me. "And I have the key to your house now.

I can torture you while you're asleep anytime I want. "

"Give me my key back, Emelia."

"Nope." She pats her pocket, smirking. "If you didn't want me to steal it, you should have hidden it better. And you shouldn't have made me worry you were dead."

"Jesus H. Christ." I stand up, yanking the wet sheets off my bed. "It's too goddamn early for this. I'm going back to sleep."

"Oh, like hell you are," she growls. "You're going to go to practice, and then you're going to find Nadia and beg her on your knees to help you. And if she says no because you didn't beg well enough, so help me God, Teo, I will drag you back there by your ear to do it again."

I eye her sideways. "Has anyone ever told you that you're terrifying?"

"Yep." She beams at me. "All the time, buddy. All the freaking time."

I nod, not really surprised. It's honestly impressive how she fits so much attitude into such a little package. Then again, Nadia is the same way.

Fucking hell. Nadia.

If she isn't already mad as hell at me, she's going to be furious when she finds out about those photos. Emelia may think she'll be easy to convince, but my publicist doesn't know her like I do. Once Nadia makes her mind up, nothing changes it.

I've got six years of radio silence to prove it.