Page 6 of After All

“Peyton, do it now.”

He reached for her—or rather, her back pocket, where she always tucked her phone. She carried a purse, but it was a big bag with only one center pocket, and she was always digging around to find things. He’d lectured her about that before, claiming that while she was rummaging in her bag, someone could come up and grab her. She knew he was being overprotective and she hadn’t changed bags, but shehadtaken to putting her phone in her pocket.

Scott’s fingers slid into her back pocket and pulled her phone out, while she tried to pretend to be annoyed…instead of on the verge of sighing. She loved his hands on her and loved when he got close enough she could smell him. “Hey,” she protested. Kind of.

He swiped his thumb over the screen and pulled up her contacts. “Nice password,” he muttered. “Maybe you should do something other than your birthday?”

“How’s some strange guy in a dark alley in Baltimore gonna know my birthday?” she asked. And loving that Scott did know her birthday. And then trying not to love that quite so much. So what? He knew her birthday. He probably just remembered from those few months when he’d busted up parties before she’d turned twenty-one.

Scott scowled at her. “Maybe from the driver’s license in the purse he stole from you first or that he pulls off of your shoulder while he has you at gunpoint?”

Well…shit.

“You already have an ICE in here,” he said a moment later.

“Yeah, I know.” She crossed her arms.

“Hope?” he asked, but then he must have opened it, because he lifted his head. “Me?”

Yeah, so he was already her ICE. Big deal. She sighed. “Hope’s got TJ, and is going to have the baby. She doesn’t need anyone else putting her down as her contact person.”

Scott cleared his throat, but Peyton couldn’t look at him directly. Fuck, she really would have preferred to have him find that out when she was unconscious in a ditch somewhere or something.

But yes, Scott was her emergency contact in her phone. And on her employment paperwork at the bakery. Not that she thought anything bad was going to happen there, but there had been a blank line that needed a name and phone number.

He’d given her his personal cell number the first time he’d been called to intervene in a “Peyton issue” as David Stuart, the high school principal, had referred to the situation. She’d been twenty and drunk off her ass and had punched Jeff Little in the face in the high school parking lot after a football game because he’d called her friend Jen a slut. Scott had been the one to pull her off of Jeff. When he’d dropped her off at home, he’d told her to call him anytime she needed something.

So, as she’d done with everything interesting at that age, she’d tested it out. Or rather, she’d tested Scott. Over and over. Of course she had. No one had ever said to call anytime, and actually meant it, in her life. Her friends said they’d be there for her, but their parents sometimes had something to say about that. She’d had teachers say she could depend on them, but her English teacher with a husband and four kids wasn’t going to get out of bed at three a.m. and come untangle whatever Peyton had gotten into.

She knew that. She knew that everyone else had families and things to do that had nothing to do with Peyton, and that she shouldn’t interrupt or mess up. Hell, her own parents had things they didn’t want her to interrupt or mess up.

But Scott—he didn’t have a wife and kids, he lived to work, hell, he gotpaidto come bail her out. She’d figured she was making his job in quiet little Sapphire Falls interesting. She was doinghima favor. And yeah, okay, it had felt nice to have someone show up again and again and again.

Sure, some of the time he was pissed at her, and sure, a few times he’d taken her down to the jail and made her sit in a cell until she’d calmed down. But he was always there. No matter what she’d done, what time it was, where she was, or who she was with.

And now, a few years, some insight, and a bit of maturity later, and she was torn between the soft, warm, fuzzy feelings that still gave her…and regretting all of it. Because this pattern was exactly the reason why they couldn’t be more than what they were right now—two people who wanted to tear each other’s clothes off, who got off on challenging each other, who could make the other fume or laugh with only a few carefully chosen words. And who could never be more than that. The pattern was set. The habit was established. The imbalance was deeply ingrained. Scott gave. And Peyton took.

And even as she recognized, and hated, that she was a taker, she couldn’t quite break herself of it entirely with Scott. Because if she did, they wouldn’t have anything at all. And she wasn’t quite mature and insightful enough to let him go completely.

At least not yet.

So she kept writing his name and number down and just prayed no one would ever need to use them so he wouldn’t find out.

Well, now he knew.

Suddenly he stepped forward and grabbed her by the wrist, jerking her forward.

She knew what he was doing. He was testing her self-defense moves. That he’d taught her. He did this stupid thing periodically. She grabbed his thumb and pulled back on it, stepping close. “Don’t make me knee you in the balls or head butt you,” she said.

“But that’s what you would do,” he said firmly.

“Yes.” Damn right she’d knee a guy in the balls if he grabbed her like that. Except Scott.

“Don’t forget it,” he said.

“I won’t.” They were practically nose to nose.

“And don’t forget to let me know when you get there. And when you’re home.”

---