Page 17 of Playing with Fire

Beckett brushing some of her damp hair away from her face distracted her from her increasingly tumultuous thoughts. “Will you stay?”

When Willa caught his hazel eyes peering down at her with such affection, such sincerity, she easily answered, “Yes.” Smiling, he wrapped his arms around her more tightly. She sank into his body, feeling more like herself than she had in a long time.

Hours later, Willa stirred from a deep sleep. Her head was plastered against Beckett’s pectoral, his steady heartbeat attempting to lull her back to dreamland, but she managed to ignore it.Barely.With blurry, sleepy eyes, she peered over at the alarm clock to see that it was nearly four o’clock in the morning.

When Willa hazarded a glance up at Beckett, the sight of his lashes touching the tops of his cheeks and his slow and steady breathing had her own breath hitching in her lungs. Even as he slumbered, he was heartbreakingly beautiful. It would be so easy to stay in his arms and go back to sleep, or even just stay up and stare at him until he woke, but the thought of committing another slow slide into something so serious so rapidly had Willa moving before she could think better of it.

Beckett’s arm tightened on her for a moment as Willa turned to leave the warmth and comfort of his bed, but it rolled away when she kept going, undeterred by the feeling of rightnessthat flowed through her anytime she was near him. Managing to find her clothes that were strewn about, she slipped them on, trying her best not to wake Beckett while also kind of hoping he caught her in the act of leaving and made her stay. Willa didn’t want to go, but leaving felt like the only way to protect herself. Her self-preservation instinct overrode her heart’s desire. With one last, longing glance at her slumbering hero, Willa crept out of his room and tiptoed out of the apartment.

Willa was about halfway down the hall to the elevator when she remembered that Beckett had driven them there. “Shit,” she whispered into the silence.

Digging into her purse, Willa pulled out her phone and spotted a missed text from Lottie. It was nothing but a series of eggplants, water droplets, and a thumbs up, but it managed to get a chuckle out of her even as she realized what a ridiculous position she had put herself in. Two choices lay before her. She could submit herself to the humiliation of having to go back and knock on the door to the apartment she’d just snuck out of while admitting to being a coward, or Willa could wake her best friend and have Lottie drive over to get her.

A horrible combination of shame and embarrassment had Willa dialing her best friend seconds later, feeling even guiltier than she already had when Lottie answered with a groggy moan. “Is everything okay?” she asked mid-yawn. “I figured you’d be either asleep or in the throes of passion right about now.”

“About that,” Willa muttered. She changed direction toward the stairwell to eat up some time. “I kind of need an extraction.”

Shuffling noises came across the line before Lottie spoke, and like the amazing ride-or-die bestie she was, she didn’t disappoint. “I’m on my way,” she promised. “Do I need to bring my baseball bat too? I’ve got a mean swing when the time callsfor it and I’m not above breaking a few kneecaps.”

“No bat,” Willa assured her. Beckett had been a perfect gentleman and given her a night of very enjoyable, very passionate sex. The only problem here was the past she couldn’t seem to escape.

With a sigh, Willa pushed open the heavy door to the stairwell, noticing how well-lit and beautifully carpeted it was, and, for the first time that night, Willa marveled at just how swanky the apartment complex seemed. Taking in the sights wasn’t exactly a priority the night prior, and as she did now, nothing around her looked even remotely familiar.

“Do you need the address? Because to be honest, I kind of have no idea where I am and couldn’t give it to you if I wanted to.” Willa had been so caught up with Beckett that she’d not paid enough attention to where they were going, another sign that she was slipping too quickly.

“I’m good.” An engine started and Willa thanked her lucky stars that Lottie was so quick. “Everyone in town knows that he lives with the mayor in the new fancy apartment building downtown. I’ll be there in ten minutes. Do you want me to stay on the line while you wait?”

Groaning at the realization that she had been in her employer’s apartment, Willa decided to take Lottie up on her offer. “Could you? Otherwise, I’m likely to start thinking about my life choices, starting with the one where I snuck out of my boss’s apartment after banging his brother.”

Willa could practically hear Lottie wincing through the phone. “Yeah, not a great look, but your personal life isn’t really any of the mayor’s business, and if he gives you a hard time you just tell me, and I’ll take care of it.” True to her word, Lottie rolled up about ten minutes later in her cherry red Ford Thunderbird. The classic car matched her friend’s overall style, though Willa was a bit thrown when she opened the passengerside door to see Lottie behind the wheel wearing sweats and a tank top, her hair up in a sloppy bun. “What? I don’t always sleep in baby doll nighties and hair curlers.”

Slipping into the car, Willa shrugged off her comment. “No judgement from this side of the car.” After shutting the door, she peeked up at the building, wondering if Beckett had already discovered that she was gone. Guilt bloomed in her chest when she thought about him waking up to find her side of the bed cold and empty. Turning back to Lottie, Willa offered up a grateful smile as she started them back toward the house. “Thanks for coming to get me.”

Lottie nodded as she turned away from the downtown area. “You’re welcome.” Silence settled over them for a moment before Lottie broke it again. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Willa’s head hit the headrest with a soft thud. She probably should talk about it, but right now she felt too horrible about her escape to really articulate anything other than her feeling like a bit of an asshole. “Not really. Maybe in the morning.”

Lottie nodded and they finished the drive in silence. When Willa was back in her own bed, lying awake as she watched the sun start to peek through the curtains, she realized that she’d made a colossal mistake. Though whether the mistake was leaving Beckett, or allowing herself to start to fall for him in the first place had yet to become clear.

Chapter Eleven

~Beckett~

When Beckett woke up this morning, he had both hoped and expected to find Willa still in his arms where she had fallen asleep the night before, looking so peaceful and relaxed that he couldn’t help but feel a little swell of pride at having helped her reach that level of contentment. Before he drifted off himself, Beckett was already making plans for a repeat performance if Willa was up for it. In the morning, they would wake up together and go another round before he would make her breakfast, asking her to go out with him again as she enjoyed his signature veggie omelet and home fries.

Instead, Beckett awoke with his arms empty. His chest ached as he scanned the room and found no trace of the woman that had blown his mind in more ways than one. Sex with Willa had been incredible, the best of his life really. Beckett had never been with someone so take charge and it was a real turn-on, but beyond her ability to make him come his brains out, her opening up to him at dinner, talking about her childhood and her parents’ disappointment in her career, made him feel like they’d been forming a real connection. If her running off this morning was any indication, though, maybe that feeling had been as one-sided as he’d feared it might be.

Waking up alone had Beckett feeling low. It only got worse when he hadn’t found a note or a text from her letting him know why she left or even that she got home safely. He could have messaged her, but the idea that his time with Willa was nothing more than a quick romp in the sack for her crushed Beckett’s pride. His self-esteem wasn’t the only thing that had taken a hit because his heart wasn’t doing too great at the moment either.

Beckett had fallen for Willa the moment he saw herdancing in her car, and his feelings grew deeper and more intense with each interaction. Knowing it most likely wasn’t the same for her was like a punch to the gut and a bucket of cold water to the face at the same time. Had he misread everything? The attraction between them was palpable, the air between them thick with sexual tension and longing, but Beckett thought he saw more than that behind her heated gazes. Maybe he wanted a relationship so badly that he saw what he wanted to see, but he wasn’t convinced that was true. There must be more to the story. Beckett just needed to figure out a way to get it.

“What’re you thinking so hard about, Beck?” His father’s voice carried over to Beckett from the dining room where his old man was setting up plates and silverware for their family’s weekly lunch.

Since he was off today, Beckett could actually attend. He had driven to his parents’ house shortly after waking. Truthfully, he would much rather be spending the day as he had originally planned, with Willa in his arms as they continued getting to know one another in every sense of the word, but that wasn’t happening. Resigned, Beckett pushed himself off the beaten leather of the family room couch with a grunt and walked over to join his dad.

The dining room looked almost exactly as it had since Beckett was a kid, though it felt much smaller now that he was a grown man. The dark brown, wood walls matched the table and chairs that were big enough to fit his whole family and then some. The same Persian rug that he and Aiden used to race their Matchbox cars over sat underneath, looking a little worse for wear and the large wooden China cabinet displayed all of his mom’s best dinnerware. The plates and cups that stared back at Beckett were a lot fancier than the ones he grew up with, with nary a chipped corner of missing teacup handle in sight. His mom learned quickly that, with five boys running around,nothing lasted very long and most things ended up broken, so she had given up on having nice things until they were out of the house.

Taking a stack of plates from his dad’s arms, Beckett studiously avoided the older man’s hazel eyes that looked a bit like his own as he walked around the table and laid them out. “Nothing really. Just second-guessing some things,” he finally admitted. It wasn’t like him to doubt himself or his feelings, but Willa had Beckett so twisted up that he was feeling all sorts of things he never had before.

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