Page 36 of For Three Seconds

I was an asshole.This was not news to anyone, but damn if Scarlett’s disappointed look didn’t fuck with me. I had a weird feeling of déjà vu right now. Here she was, sweaty, in an outfit I wanted to peel off of her, and in my front yard.

Except this time she didn’t come up to kiss me. There was a rage inside me that I was trying to cage in.

I’d never had to deal with her and other men. She was just…

Off-limits.

Unreachable.

My girlfriend’s best friend.

So walking out the door and seeing her in Quincy’s arms made my stomach sink and burn. The stark reminder that I had no claim to anything she did stared me in the face as she was in another’s man arms.

I reached behind and grabbed my T-shirt that was tucked into the waistband of my shorts. This time, when I took a step toward her, she didn’t move back. I brought the shirt to the top of her head and slid it down.

“Put this on,” I told her. “It’ll stop the guys from staring.”

It was a lie because she had beauty that was hard to come by nowadays. But at least it gave me peace of mind and stopped me from wanting to beat up my teammates. Once the shirt was on her, my mind took me to another time—her naked beneath my shirt.

“Come on. I’ll take you home.”

“I’m fine. I can walk,” she huffed and started to walk past me.

I didn’t think and held out my hand, wrapping it around her waist, and pressed her against my side. I seemed to stop breathing, and so did she. Our nervous system remembers things that cause us pain, and Scarlett had caused me the most pain. Just one simple touch, and a part of my body was telling me to reject her and pull her away before that pain came back. But my heart, my strongest muscle, yet the weakest when it came to emotion, that beating pulse was telling me to kiss her.

In the end, I didn’t do either. I didn’t kiss her, but I couldn’t seem to make myself let her go. I dragged her in front of me, holding on to her hips, careful to not press her up against me or she would feel my growing erection.

With my fingers digging into her hips, I brought my head down to her ear.

“You’re going the wrong way,” I whispered. “You can’t come here looking like my next meal, so before you cause a fight, you’ll get in my car and let me take you the fuck away from here.”

I took a moment to smell her hair, and she still smelled amazing. Once I got myself together, I let her go, knowing she would follow me.

My car was parked in front of the curb closer to where Scarlett was walking. I opened the door for her and waited for her to get in.

“Get in, Scarlett.”

She glared at me before she slid into my car. My parents got me a white Camaro as a graduation present. The only condition was to get good grades and graduate college before enlisting in the draft, and they would pay for it. When I got my first check, I planned to pay them back a good chunk of it. They’d sacrificed a lot to get me to this point, so I planned on doing right by them.

“What happened to Bertha?” Scarlett asked, breaking the tension.

“She was a piece of shit,” I said, referring to the old Cavalier I had.

From the corner of my eye, I noticed her small grin.

“You loved that car.”

Yeah, I did.

“Gigi used to say you loved that car more than her.” She finished the sentence in a much lower tone.

There it was—the reason neither of us could ever seem to get it together.

After a minute of being quiet, Scarlett sat up and turned to me, eyes wide. “I never told you where I lived.”

Shit. She hadn’t.

“I’ve been to Nick’s a couple of times, and he never said anything about you living there.” The lie came effortlessly. I took a wrong turn on purpose. “I assumed you lived on campus.”

---