He folded his hands together, looking at me through his lashes. “You were at that game …”
“I was.” There was no reason to sugarcoat this. I wasn’t going to say anything he didn’t already know. “You played like shit that night … no offense. You seemed distracted, like your head wasn’t in it at all.”
His fingers were wiggling, his forearms bouncing between his open legs. His movements halted. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
Words that should have sounded dreamy.
But not when they came through a set of grinding teeth.
“Another reason I didn’t reach out was that it was going to be very hard to look you in the eyes, knowing there was a good chance my father was going to own your team. Since I can’t keep my hands off you, with or without alcohol”—I let out a small laugh—“with the impending sale, I was too fearful that it would happen that night and I didn’t get in touch.” I was suddenly reminded of the other part of this. “Besides, it’s you who should have been contacting me. Once you realized your text hadn’t gone through, my phone should have been blowing up.”
His head shook. “I already told you, I fucked up.”
I wiped my sweaty hand over my skirt. “I’m just making a point.” I took another sip. “Regardless of how we spin this, Beck, or who tries to blame who, if being together was the ultimate goal, then we’re both in the wrong.”
A conversation we’d never had.
Dating and a relationship—words we’d never used.
But I felt it.
His eyes told me he did too.
“Next on the agenda is Musik.”
I found it interesting how he was the one who had told me to talk, but when I had brought up one of the elephants in the room—one that should affect him the most—he had absolutely nothing to say.
I filled my lungs. Slowly. “Not a decision I’m most proud of.”
“Jesus Christ.” He got up, and when I thought he was going to pour himself a drink, he turned and paced back to his chair, but he didn’t sit. He stood behind it and gripped the top with both hands. “Why did you come back here with me?”
“The truth? You do something to me, and I can’t resist you. And I know that’s awful. I know I fucked up and shouldn’t have done it. I was trying to fight the temptation, but even Ginger was encouraging me and telling me to deal with the consequences later, reminding me how long it had been since I’d slept with anyone.” My head dropped, the guilt gnawing at the base of my throat.
“That last guy … just happened to be me.”
I glanced up, quietly replying, “Yes.”
He extended his arms out wide while still holding the chair. “You’re telling me you agreed to come here because you needed to be fucked?”
No, it had gone far deeper than that.
But that wasn’t a part I was willing to admit—not now, and because of the circumstances, not ever.
My heart hadn’t been still, but it also hadn’t been beating like this. “Yes and no.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” His brows rose.
“I didn’t need to be fucked, Beck.” I paused. “I needed to be fucked byyou.”
“And you told me not to wear a condom.” The chair lifted off the floor, and he gradually set it back down. “But it didn’t end there. I was on my fucking hands and knees, licking your pussy in the shower. You sucked my dick when we finally got into bed. I fingered your ass before I came inside you again. And you didn’t think, at any of those points, you should stop things from going further?”
I shook my head. “I … couldn’t.”
“You make no sense.”
I drained the rest of my glass and poured a tiny bit more. “Listen, when shit got real, when the guilt caused my eyes to open before the sun even rose, I left. I came back to reality and faced it head-on.”
He chuckled. “You faced nothing. You avoided me like the goddamn plague. And then you walked into the locker room today and dropped a bomb on me. That was a cowardly fucking move.”