Elliott couldn’t feel his hands around the steering wheel. He should probably pull over, but then he would have to confront what Peggy said before he was ready.
Yeah, like he would ever be ready.
The times he’d accused Peggy of coming back to Cincinnati—or hell, being put on this earth—to make him miserable, he’d meant it in terms of temptation. Trying his faith, his convictions, his routine. Had he meant those callous words, though? Or were they just a practiced speech from three years ago, when she’d blazed her light through the darkest period of his life? Back then, her sympathy and understanding had made him feel one of two ways. Healed. Whole. Or like she’d thrown salt in his open wounds.
Right now, his wounds were bleeding, but Peggy hadn’t been the one to put them there. Had he made her believe otherwise? She’d stumbled on a broken beast in the woods and tried to bandage him up, but he’d bitten her instead. Continued to bite her. The way he’d felt about Peggy had been a thorn in his paw. His own wife had never been on the receiving end of those feelings, and as a result, she’d died alone.
Peggy had merely come to him at the wrong time. He’d looked at her and seen his own shame. Had it reflected back off him and trapped her, too?
Whore.
His insides were on fire at the memory of her face, how her positive energy faded into the expression of someone who’d walked into a brick wall.
It was the same way she’d looked after he’d spanked her in his office.
He pulled into the hotel parking lot, watching the headlights crawl along the black asphalt, and experienced the sinking horror that he’d been living in darkness himself, failing to switch on even the smallest lamp to see what was around him. Three years. She’d been gone three years. And it felt like she’d left yesterday. But she hadn’t—and while he’d numbed himself to the reality of her stark absence, Peggy had been living without painkillers. She’d been living in awareness this whole time.
His blood ran cold when he tried to imagine what that felt like. How he would have been living if he’d allowed himself to fully register the fact that he’d sent her away. Sent her away to California.
“Thanks for the ride.”
Peggy pushed open the door and started to climb out of the truck, but Elliott—needing to have himself in motion—rounded the truck’s rear end before she could vanish into one of five hundred rooms, the number to which he probably wouldn’t be able to find out. “Hold up.”
She riffled through her purse and removed a pack of gum, popping a little white tab into her mouth with a sigh. “I’m not one of your players.”
“Peggy, if I’m aware of one thing, it’s that.” She’d obviously had a pep talk with herself in the truck while he’d been brewing in his own shit. He could see it in the determined set of her shoulders, the forced flippancy in her eyes. But for the first time in seemingly forever, Elliott was desperate to reach someone on a level that had nothing to do with football. To reach into Peggy’s mind and rearrange something that had been put in the wrong place, thanks to him. “If you were one of my players, I would know what to do here. I’d be capable.” He took her shoulders and watched her chin lift, felt her inhale deep in his bones. “That name you were called tonight is so far beneath you, Peggy, you shouldn’t even be aware it exists. I need you to nod and tell me you understand that.”
Humming in her throat, she looked away. “That word is beneath anyone.” She exhaled. “I know she didn’t mean it, okay? Maybe she’ll mean it for the next decade, but someday when she’s an adult, she’ll understand. I…hope she does.”
“I’m going to make sure she does.”
For a few beats, Peggy just watched him. He would have felt awkward standing between two parked cars in silence with anyone else. No doubt he would have made an excuse to get back in his truck and leave. But the quiet felt like due course with Peggy. A lead up to something else he didn’t want to miss. “There’s a park around back of the hotel.” A puff of cold breath hung in the air near her mouth. “You want to go for a walk?”
Normally, he would say no, even if he wanted to remain with her long as possible. But he wanted to say yes to the walk. Had a sick feeling that he should have said yes a lot more often to this woman. Too late, though, wasn’t he? He’d turned on a small lamp in his dark room way too late—and he was afraid to turn on any more. To see what he might reveal. His hesitation brought the glazed quality back to her eyes, though, and an answering stab in his chest pushed a single word out. “Yeah.”
Elliott moved to put himself between Peggy and any cars that might drive through the parking lot as they walked, wondering if she was laughing on the inside over him being old school. If so, she didn’t betray it on her face. There was only surprise arranging her features, probably over his agreement to go for a walk. Elliott could barely believe it himself, truthfully. Any time spent with Peggy was an opportunity to slip into a bad habit.
Bad habit. That’s how he’d always seen her. Spoken to her. Touched her.
Thank God she’d finally realized he was bad for her. Thank God.
As they entered the deserted park, Elliott realized his lungs were burning from lack of oxygen and he tried to be discreet about filling them. “So.” He rolled his neck, trying to match Peggy’s casual pace on the path, even though his usual fast stride tried to send him ahead. “You’re traveling with only your brother?”
“My best friend, Sage, is here, too. She’s a wedding planner.” Peggy glanced up at the hotel. “She texted me earlier to let me know she spent the day visiting venues in town, just to get ideas. This whole trip is about my family and she has been so patient with us. I don’t deserve her.”
There was that word again. Deserve. The need to address it was like a spoked wheel turning in his throat, but something else snagged his attention and wouldn’t let go. “Wedding planner. Is that how you met her?”
“Yes,” Peggy said after a moment. “She planned my wedding. She planned all four of them. And I didn’t show up to a single one.”
Elliott stumbled to a halt, his pulse speeding up so fast, he got dizzy, vision doubling. “Four?” he wheezed. “Four, Peggy?”
“That’s right.”
When she stopped on the path and turned, her eyes tightly shut, he could see she hadn’t planned to make the confession. Maybe wished she hadn’t. But now that it was out there, she was hardening herself, ready to embrace it. A player who’d been injured, but was ready to get back in the game and ignore the potential damage that could be done. “Four great guys and I couldn’t commit to a single one.” Pain sliced across her features. “I gave them all different reasons when I broke it off. I’m scared of getting old and boring. I want to focus on my career. I don’t want kids. But you know what it was, Elliott? You know what it really was?” She braced herself, and he got the distinct impression she’d never told the next part to anyone. “They were all too nice to me. I couldn’t stand it. Every time they complimented me or bought me a gift, my fucking skin would crawl. I hated it. And I hated me for hating it.”
“Peggy,” Elliott managed. This was his doing. All of it. Lamps were flipping on all over his pitch-black room, revealing monsters and shortcomings and screwups. They were everywhere. They’d been there this whole time, waiting to be illuminated. “Ah, baby. What have I done to you?”
“That’s not the worst part,” she half whispered, half laughed. “The worst part is I let you.”
“I told you…” His words emerged choked. This was why he avoided relationships of any kind, even when he was an active part of them. There was no way to circumvent the inevitable destruction he caused. The memory of a phone ringing caught him in the neck, that devastating stretch of time where he tried to remember if he’d done his job as a husband, a father.
Being hit with the certainty that his lack of caring had killed someone for whom he’d been responsible, knowing he was more than capable of doing it again, had torn him down the middle. Rendering him incapable of being healthy for Peggy.
“I told you to stay away.”
Peggy moved into Elliott’s space, peering up at him from beneath her eyelashes. Seduction mixed with curiosity. Could she see the cracks in him? Yes, she always could. Always knew exactly where to insert the crowbar to pry him farther apart, but nothing compared to now, because she’d finally shown her own cracks. Fissures that he’d hammered into her, sure as they were standing there.
I’m cancerous. I didn’t send her away in time.
“So are you going to let me?” Peggy breathed, walking closer until Elliott was forced to back up, his knees hitting the edge of a wooden bench.
“Let you what?”
“Get you out of my system.” Her answering smirk said, Keep up. “Remind you what you’ll be missing when I leave again?”
She shoved him hard and he allowed himself to fall back onto the bench. A battle went live in his chest, complete with cannon blasts. One side fought against the critical need she stirred in his belly. But the opposition was far stronger, because it had the desire to soothe her on its side. To take the deeply etched hurt he’d seen in her eyes tonight and obliterate it, make her forget every single negative thing in her mind. And above all, he was so fucking jealous over four unknown faces, his cock was swollen with the urge to erase them from her memory bank. Forever.
The years that separated the last time he’d been inside of her were nothing, nothing, compared to how damn good they were together. You didn’t just find someone else to take the place of perfection. Hot, rough, perfection.
But as Peggy’s knees planted on either side of his thighs, the things she’d said—not just tonight, but that afternoon—replayed in his mind like a determined broken record. Like you hate me. I deserve it. They were nice to me. I hated it.
“Peggy, slow down a minute.”
She unzipped his coat and rubbed her hands down his chest, all the way down to his lap, where she ran a knuckle along the seam of his fly. “It doesn’t feel like you want me to slow down.”
God in heaven. “Want is a different animal than responsibility.”
Her eyes flashed. “I’m not your responsibility.” She cut herself off at the end of the last word. “You know what? My mind is my own, but this unsatisfied part of me is your doing. You made me need something and left me with no way to get it. Or feel it.” The touch of her hand left his erection and he almost—almost—growled at her to put it back, had to battle his instinct to keep from making the order. Instead, he watched as she slipped her skirt high on her thighs, revealing the top of her stockings, so close to her pussy—and his dick pulsed hotter. “I want the wrong kind of sex, Elliott. The kind only you gave me.”
“I was, am, the wrong part.” He was vehement. “Not you.”
She carried on as if he hadn’t spoken. “The difference between then and now is this Peggy finally figured out the score. Just show me one last time, so I can walk away knowing without a doubt I’m better off.” She unzipped his jeans and slid her hand into the opening, massaging his aching shaft through his briefs. “Do that for me, Elliott?”
I’m not prepared for this. Proving beyond a shadow that he was a negative influence on her mind, her body…God, her heart. Letting her go. None of it. He hadn’t woken up this morning with the willpower for something like that—and it was possible the willpower he’d employed to send her away in the first place had only been an illusion to begin with, because having her on his lap, her voice in his ear, was like seeing again after a three-year bout with blindness.
“Peggy…”
She must have heard the hesitation in his voice because her eyelids flickered, a huhhn sound leaving her lips, then she grabbed his hand, pressing the palm up against her panties. Damp material greeted him. Elliott and his balls constricted hard enough to grit his teeth. “Finger me, Coach Brooks,” she murmured. “Wet me up. Make me shiny. Isn’t that how you like me?”
“Yes.”
Elliott was fast losing any notion of self-control, but he dragged it back with determination. There was no stopping the bullet train that was their sexual chemistry, or the pounding, driving need inside him to take her, especially after seeing her so disillusioned, but he could make the encounter good for her. Make it healthy. If he did any more damage, especially after witnessing the aftereffects, he would never forgive himself.
He pressed the heel of his hand to her clit, chafing the silk up and down. “Maybe I did one or two things right in my life, huh?” Knuckling aside the edge of her underwear, he pushed his index finger into her heat, issuing a low curse between her breasts. “Seems impossible, but I must have, if I’m about to have your slippery pussy ride me again. God knows that’s the sweetest reward life has to offer.”
“No.” Her breath hitched. “No, you stop that. I don’t need to be told I’m pretty or I have a nice body.” She nipped at his mouth and he nipped back, both of them bearing their teeth. “You rip off my panties, fill me full. Hold me down while you take and take a-and repeat the Our Father.”
How many times had he done that?
The question reverberating in his mind, Elliott slid his fingers free of the tight spot between her thighs, a lodgment the size of a fist jammed in his throat. He’d made her the embodiment of sin. He’d foisted that on her when she’d only wanted to comfort him in a dark time, offering her body and heart as a way to forget. Because she’d felt something for him. A feeling he’d returned, but hadn’t known how to handle. So he’d twisted it, turned it into something shameful. Goddamn him.
“Peggy, no. That wasn’t right of me—” Elliott cut himself off as a necklace winked back at him from the V of Peggy’s coat. Was that a diamond hanging from the chain? Urgency bit him in the sternum, making it impossible to go another minute without getting a look, and before he knew his own intentions, Elliott had pried apart her coat, snatching up the necklace. “What the hell is this?”
Color stained her cheeks, but she lifted her chin defiantly. “The heads I’ve hunted.”
“These are engagement rings,” he gritted out. “You wear them around your neck?”
“Yes.” She tried to jerk away, but Elliott held fast to the piece of jewelry. “I’ll be buried in them, if I want.”
The blinders he’d been wearing since Peggy left were long gone, and he might as well have been standing right there in the moment she drove away, watching her leave from his garage, the smell of her still on his skin. If he hadn’t shut himself off as her cab kicked up dust, he would have gone after her. Dragged her back and admitted everything. How badly he needed her. All of it. And those long-buried admissions clashed with his jealousy now, so righteous he could barely think straight around the desire to take. To claim.
“You want my fuck, baby?” he gritted out. “You take them off now.”
She glided into his space, bringing their mouths a hair apart. “Go to hell.”
“I’ve been there. I own property in it.” Holding her gaze, Elliott twisted the necklace—and snapped the chain, feeling the night wind howl in response. But the sound was nothing compared to Peggy’s reaction. Oh no. He would remember it until the day he took his last breath.
The way a sob seemed to surge up inside of her, fleeing her mouth in a terrible rush. She was a suspect in a courtroom hearing a not-guilty verdict. She quite simply broke, falling against his chest in a way he never expected from positive, bubbly Peggy. “Please, Elliott. Don’t do this to me. I haven’t…” Her voice bathed his ear in heat. “I haven’t been able to. Not since you. And it hurts, it hurts, I hurt everywhere.”
“You haven’t what?” He tried to duck down and meet her gaze, but she evaded him by pressing her face into his neck. “You haven’t had an orgasm, Peggy? Since…”
She shook her head.
A ringing began in his ears, too many reactions to count clashing in his chest. Responsibility, shame, pride. Pride that he hated, because she’d been in pain, but couldn’t deny nonetheless. He fixated on responsibility, grabbing on like a rescue raft being tossed into the ocean.
Give her what she needs.