Page 45 of Thin Ice

“Meaning?” I ask, trying to wrap my brain around how she’s being so calm about this. I think if the positions were reversed, I wouldn’t be the same. No, I know I wouldn’t.

“It makes sense why your reaction to seeing him was so strong,” she responds. “Even without knowing everything that went down, I know enough about you. When you love someone or something, you love it with everything you have.”

She’s right about that. I’m obsessive. When I latch on to what I love, that’s all I care about. When Quinn and I first met, she joked that she saw me more than she saw her own reflection. I doubt she feels that way now, because my obsession has been my job.

The Stormbreakers. My brand deals. Winning. I’ve continued to love her fiercely and obsessively through it all, but I did a shit job of showing her.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

She raises a brow at me. “For?”

“For not showing you how much I love you as of late. For not showing you how much I fucking love being your husband. I’m sorry, Sunshine.”

“It’s—”

“It’s not okay,” I interject. “It’s not. And I’m sorry I wasn’t honest about Beck when we met in college. I never thought I’d see him again. He’s my past, and I meant what I said before: You are my future. You were then, and you are now.”

“Beck’s here now, though.”

I bite the inside of my cheek so hard I taste the tang of copper. “It doesn’t matter.”

“But it does.” She looks down at our hands, still locked together.

The feeling in my stomach shifts from nausea to fear, the kind of bone-aching fear you feel when something beautiful is about to end.

“What are you saying?”

Quinn stares into my eyes. “That he’s here, and he’s not leaving.”

“Which is why I said we should go—”

“No.” Her answer brooks no argument. “I don’t want to leave.”

“Then I don’t understand.”

“I like Beck.” She exhales the sentence like it’s a secret that’s been burdening her. “He’s nice, and he obviously knows what he’s doing. We need him, Noah.”

“Someone else at another retreat would be fine, too.”

“I don’t want fine—I want the best. I want what happened earlier to happen again.”

I think of Beck touching Quinn, the three of us breathing together, his hand on my shoulder for the first time in so long, warming me from the inside out. Did she feel that warmth, too?

I shift much like I did earlier, doing everything I can to change the course of my thoughts. Because my wife can’t mean she was turned on by the only man I’ve ever loved, and I can’t want that, either—not only because I can’t want Beck, but because there’s no way he wants me, not in a million years.

Quinn takes our hands, still together and sweaty from how long we’ve been holding on, and presses my palm above her breast, right over her heart. It thumps underneath my touch, her skin hot from the late desert evening.

“I don’t care if it’s stupid of me, but I’m going to stand firm on this. Beck gets you, and he gets me, too. He got us to breathe together, Noah. Got you to stay. He even stopped you from having a panic attack earlier.”

“He didn’t—”

“He did.”

I exhale. “And you’re not jealous?”

Quinn’s heart beats faster. “Do I need a reason to be?”

“No, of course not. Like I said, he’s my past.”