twelve
rutledge
It hadn’t taken me long to get back to the Matter’s Inn and grab my bag and pay the bill, before I was on the road heading home.
I drove.
Drove through the darkness, a similar darkness clouding my head. I had no right to be with a woman like Peyton Morgan. She wasn’t the type of girl who you fucked and set aside, and that was all I knew. Or all I’d wanted.
Up until now.
I had done my best to force the demons back into the hollow depths of my mind for the past few days. Only focusing on her and the great fucking time we’d been having. So many fucking thoughts had run through my mind every moment I spent with her and every second I was away from her. It was the way she looked at me on the dance floor, though, every fantasy in her head showing across her beautiful features.
Fuck.
I could see right through her, and Jesus if I didn’t want to lay her down, feel her bare breasts pressed against my chest as I took her mouth. To feel her silky skin beneath my fingertips. To bury my face between her legs, tasting the sweetness that was her.
But I couldn’t. I knew I couldn’t. The haunts inside me wouldn’t allow it.
I pounded a fist on the steering wheel like it would expel the demons from my body and I’d be able to turn around and go back to her; it did nothing but cause a brief throb of pain to shoot through my hand. My emotions were all over the place: sadness, regret, agony, all of them coming at me at once, twisting my gut into a knot.
The disgusting and downright vile demons that lurked inside me taunted. You don’t deserve anything. Who would want you? Who would want a damaged man? No one!
It took every ounce of strength not to veer the truck off the road and into the heavily wooded area. To end the demons shouting in my head, but just thinking of her, Peyton Morgan, they seemed to vanish as quickly as they entered.
The rest of the ride I drove in silence. I reached the warehouse around four in the morning. Climbing the steps to the loft apartment, I yawned, hoping that sleep would soon pull me under. It wasn’t long after my head hit the pillow that it did, but only after I took three shots of Jack.
***
I’d just passed over the threshold of the office door when I heard, “Thought you were gonna be gone longer?” Smitty adjusted himself in his chair and finished, “Meet the buyer?”
“I did,” I grumbled, making my way toward the coffee pot.
Sleep might have taken me quickly last night but it hadn’t lasted long. Spending the last few hours before the sun rose with visions of her, how easy it was to be with her, how she had an appetite to rival my own, the thought causing a brief smile. The profound aspect was when I realized I’d spent three days with a woman and not once, once, did I want to walk away.
Beautiful.
Gorgeous.
Stunning.
Every second my eyes spent on her curvaceous hips, I was fighting a hard-on. Those eyes, her pale green eyes, so alluring, drawing me in, taking hold of something inside me that I couldn’t put a finger on. As we sat across the table from one another, it felt fucking natural. There was no awkward silence, no talking over each other. Just easy. The only easy I was used to was girls spreading their legs for me. To actually spend time with them other than fucking, that shit didn’t happen, but with Peyton, it was so fucking easy. When she put her hands on me, they had an effect on my body—one I wasn’t too familiar with, but one I liked it.
It was also something I knew I couldn’t have.
I looked to Smitty sitting in the same spot I last saw him in and grumbled, “Decided to come home.”
“If I ask ya why, you gonna tell me why?”
“Nope.”
“Didn’t think so.” He coughed out a laugh and finished, “Then I won’t ask.”
Pouring a cup, I mumbled, “Appreciate it.”
I went to the large window that looked out into the warehouse and stated, “I gotta go back though.”
“To do all that closing shit?” Smitty asked before I heard him stab a few keys on the keyboard.
“That and...” I paused knowing what I said next he’d see right through. “I’m overseeing the reno on the house.”
He rose quickly by the squeaking of his chair. Turning, he stood with his arms folded, leaning against his desk. “Boy, what’re you doing to yourself?”
“It’s a historical site, Smit, I gotta.”
“Bullshit!” he bellowed, his voice bouncing off the chipped cement walls. “I can’t even count how many fucking years I’ve known you, boy, but I know one thing for sure, you stay away from that house for a reason. Not my place to ask why, but there’s a fucking reason.”
I walked past him, ignoring his glare. “It’s in the ad and you fucking know that house is a historical site,” I told him firmly as I sat in my chair.
He snickered. “I sat my fat old ass in that chair over there.” He gestured to his desk. “Listened to you tell that woman what to put in the ad. And I may be old, but I still got my hearing, and you never told her to put that shit in the ad, and, when I read it, it didn’t say any shit like that. And yeah, it’s an historical home, but it don’t mean you gotta be the…” He stopped mid-sentence, his eyes hard on me, his head tilted, he whispered more to himself than to me, “It’s a woman.”
My eyes moved from his, and I looked to the black liquid swirling in my mug.
I felt his eyes on me, my gaze didn’t move when he confirmed, “It is.” He took a deep heavy breath. “You do what you feel you need to.” I looked at him then. “I got all this shit.” He waved a hand toward the window looking out into the huge warehouse. “You go do that soul searching bullshit, and if it’s watching your Gram’s house be restored, then do it.”
The lump in my throat began to choke me and all the things I ever wanted to say to Smitty got stuck behind it. Smitty being Smitty, he knew a hell of a lot more than he let on. With his next words, I knew that for fucking sure.
“She got a great ass on her?” He smiled.
I looked back down at the now cooling liquid in my mug, chuckled, and muttered, “The best.”