Revving her estrogen engine. That’s what Elliott was doing by stripping down to nothing but a pair of jeans on the roadside. He even had the audacity to mess up his hair in the process. The wayward strands, peppered with gray, drew an unwanted memory to the surface. Elliott, stubbled, naked, and morning-eyed, his mouth going for broke between her legs, making her late for class in the most delicious way possible.
Great. Fabulous. Now her clit was throbbing.
As if his physique wasn’t enough to get her lady juices flowing. Damn him, he’d always kept himself in peak condition—a fact her fellow cheerleaders had never failed to remark on after a few wine coolers—but he must have increased his gym time by double since she’d left. Because…muscles. Muscles everywhere. They almost looked drawn on, they were so defined. Those angular ridges of his abdomen vanished like a tease into his low—but snug—jeans, a mixture of dark and light hairs curling along the center of his pelvic V, the way her tongue was suddenly aching to do. And there. Now she’d done it. She was looking at his crotch.
That package, hugged in denim, was wrapped up like a present for a birthday girl who’d been extra good all year.
“Why.” Oh man. She sounded like a pack-a-day drag queen. No help for it, either. “Why is your shirt off?”
He tossed the garment in question onto the Suburban’s roof. “I only have one shirt with me and I figured it for the best if I didn’t get it covered in dirt and oil.”
“Well, sure. If you want to be practical about it.”
One of his eyebrows lifted, completing the picture of ripped, ready, arrogant guy. At least he didn’t have mysterious going for him. That’s right. She’d solved this whodunit. No mystery whatsoever. Maybe the sex between them was tear-your-hair-out phenomenal, but everything else had gone cold. “I’m always practical, aren’t I, Peggy?” he muttered, finding a towel in the backseat and laying it down on the ground, just beside the flat tire. “That’s how you remember me, right?”
“Sounds pretty accurate,” Peggy hedged, thrown by the questions. Deciding to make herself useful, instead of gawking at his ridiculous body like a goober, she tried to slide past Elliott so she could root through the back storage area first and figure out what she was looking for later. But Elliott moved into her space without warning, taking hold of her elbows and turning their bodies to walk them backward. Her back met the Suburban about the time anger scaled the insides of her throat like ivy. “Stop,” she pushed past clenched teeth. “I don’t want you touching me—”
“God above, you’re fucking gorgeous, Peggy.” Her stomach hit the dusty ground. “I know people tell you all the time—which I really don’t like to consider too much—but I don’t think I’ve ever said it. Not once. And that’s a crime, because you’ve got the kind of beauty that ties me up in eight different knots.” His fingers slipped a lock of hair behind her ear. “It’s the way you straighten your spine every time you’re presented with a problem. How your eyes go wet and soft over things like people losing their farms. Your stubbornness, your willpower, your sense of humor. It’s all of you.”
“What is this?” she managed to whisper, feeling like someone who’d just woken up in the middle of a foreign land. “What are you doing?”
“Telling you what I see.” He planted a hand to the right of her head, his energy rippling like static over her senses. “Saying the things I should have said the first time you came to me in that locker room.”
She barely contained a wheeze. This couldn’t be happening. Not now. It was the world’s cruelest joke that this Elliott should decide to make an appearance after she’d finally, finally, stopped hoping for him. “I don’t want to listen now. I’m not listening.”
His nod was grave, but determined. “I’ll repeat myself until it sinks in.”
Peggy could almost see her hand clinging to the edge of a cliff. “If this is about sex, just say so, Elliott.” Cheapen what he said, make light of it. Make it not matter. “You want to get your fill of me before I leave?” She shrugged off the niggling feeling that her words were wrong, out of place between them. “We’re both adults.”
A flash of misery passed through his eyes and that rare show of emotion made him so there. So live and in person. Grounded and raw. She could smell his sun-warmed skin, the soap wafting off him. He was the one with his shirt off, but she’d never felt more naked in her life. “I’m sorry,” he murmured against her forehead. “You hearing me? I’m sorry. This thing between us…it went off course on the first day. The first damn day. And now we’re out at sea.”
“So now you’re going to steer us back? I don’t think so.” Her voice was too high-pitched and unsteady, so she breathed until it was firm. “Weren’t you listening last night? It’s not going to happen. You made me…”
“What?” The way his gaze locked on hers, she swore Elliott already knew what she was going to say. Sometime after she’d left him last night, had he figured out what it had taken her three years to realize, too? “Tell me, baby. I want to hear everything you’ve been keeping in your head, because I was too stupid to ask.”
Stop, she wanted to shout at him. Too much. “You made me into a sin,” she whispered instead, truth jostling free. Maybe it had reached its limit on being kept secret, or perhaps she wanted to see the misery in his eyes again. The kind she’d been feeling forever. “When I look at you, I see the word Alice called me last night,” she breathed in a wild gust, realizing for the first time how truly fucked up she’d allowed her self-image to become.
Since they’d arrived on the roadside, Elliott had appeared so robust to Peggy. A man on a quest. But with Peggy’s admission, the crackling momentum in him quite simply crumpled. “No. No, don’t say that.” Wind whistled between them. “Tell me that’s not true. I knew it was bad, but Jesus, not…not that.”
She just wanted to get back in the Suburban and lay down on the cracked leather seat. To finally read her mother’s words in the journal she’d left, something she’d put off far too long for fear of finding out Miriam had been disappointed in her. A wasted college degree, four broken engagements, fewer and fewer friends as time went on. Why wouldn’t a mother expect more from her daughter?
Would Miriam be proud of Peggy for finally kicking Elliott to the curb? Or would she encourage her to hear him out? Decisions were too hard to make with their bodies pressed together, but before she even attempted to slide from beneath Elliott’s deflated frame, she knew he wasn’t going to let her go.
“Peggy, please, just give me a second.”
“There’s nothing to say.” She reached up and clasped the sides of his face. “Nothing to do except change a flat tire and get back on the road.”
Strength crept back into his big body in degrees, as if he was recovering from the blow she’d landed. “No.” He surged forward, flattening her against the Suburban, causing blood to rush in her ears. “No, there’s a lot to say and do between us. There’s everything. I’ll never make an excuse for myself or the way I’ve behaved…Christ, for forcing you to leave…but here’s the truth.” His mouth burrowed into her hair, forcing a whimper from her lips. “When I got your wedding invitation—that deal with the yellow flowers, pink butterflies, and some other son-of-a-bitch’s name—the date had already passed. Two weeks earlier.”
“You’re lying,” she whispered, even though he wasn’t. They both knew it, so he didn’t bother trying to convince her. There was no point in lying after all this time, and he wasn’t the type to use something so important to his advantage. As much as she wanted to deny the needle and thread mending something in her chest with that revelation, there it was. Stitching and sewing and repairing.
“I broke my hand punching the hallway wall. I couldn’t feel the pain, though. I couldn’t feel or hear anything over the sound of every damn thing inside me dying.” He swore under his breath. “And that’s how I stayed.”
She reached down and traced her fingertips over the back of his hand, reading the bumps and bones like braille, but she couldn’t think of what to say. Couldn’t formulate a response in the face of her stupid relief. The invitation had gotten there late.
He turned his hand over, allowing her fingers to brush his palm. “There’s a metal pin that goes off every time I pass through a metal detector.”
Such a stupid time to laugh, but she’d always enjoyed jokes being made at inappropriate moments. “If you liked being frisked at the airport, you probably could have just asked, instead of going to such an extreme.”
His breath ruffled her hair on a sad laugh. “You’ve moved on from me. I acknowledge that—and I’m proud of you for seeing me for the asshole I am. But I’m fighting for my life here. So you’re going to tolerate me just a little while longer, understand? I’m not moving. Not until everything is out in the open, all of it, and you can be the one to look me in the eye…and tell me nothing here is worth saving.”
Oh God, oh God, oh God. “I’m telling you that now,” she whispered, sounding as if she were sitting on top of a washing machine during the spin cycle. And she hated herself for feeling a crack in her resolve. One that seemed to pry wider the longer he impressed his speech upon her with earnest, unrelenting eyes.
“I didn’t know what to do with you, Peggy. I couldn’t handle the way you made me so happy, when I wanted so badly to feel like garbage. I thought being alone was my due. And you just kept coming and coming, so I fought.” He pulled back to impress a meaningful look on her, one that cleared her lungs of oxygen. “I kept on fighting while you were a country away, and I’ll regret not going after you for the rest of my pitiful life. But I’ll be damned before I let it happen again without telling you.”
Peggy’s body was paralyzed, except for her knees, which were rattling and knocking together. Run away. Run now. “Telling me what?”
“Before you walked into the locker room that day, before you directed a single fucking word at me, I’d fallen for you. I had wanted you and needed you. And I never stopped. I’ll never stop.” His eyelids catapulted down, as if he’d been holding those words in forever, just sitting in his lungs like steel harpoons, waiting to impale her.
Was it possible to die from heart failure at twenty-five? It had been beating so hard for such an extended period of time, her chest was sore with the strain. “Can we please change the tire now?”
“Almost.” Elliott’s lips slid over hers, the warmth of his breath tinged with spearmint and orange juice. And most poignant of all, hope. His hope. “Will you remember something for me?”
“I don’t know,” she murmured, the need to bolt building.
He pressed their foreheads together, steadying her, despite how hard she wished for the opposite. “I’m the whore, Peggy.” When she jerked with a gasp, he caged her in, keeping their gazes locked. “I’m the one that gave my body and nothing else. You gave everything and I wasn’t wise enough to accept the best part. Your heart.” His voice shook with emotion. “So when you look at me and hear that filthy word, remember who owns the title.”
* * *
It was a strange thing, being awake.
Elliott’s navigator informed him they were only a mile from their destination, Kyler’s family farm, but they’d pretty much already arrived. Green grazing fields stretched along either side of the road, long strands of grass blowing in the breeze. A light rain had started, turning the sky a mottled mixture of gray and white and filling the sound of the truck with the timed squeal of windshield wipers. Cows dotted the hills, a silo in the distance, alongside the outline of three wooden barns. Elliott assumed one of them was the house where his receiver’s family lived. A week ago, the idea of walking into the home of a player without the buffer of recruitment to validate his presence would have made him uncomfortable. Hard-assed Elliott Brooks wasn’t exactly known for making social calls and for good reason. He hadn’t wanted to talk or think about anything but football. That was all. As long as he’d stayed consumed by that bubble, not looking right or left, he wouldn’t have to think about Peggy.
Unfortunately, in the process, he’d lost what little affection he’d managed to earn from his daughter or any kind of friendship he might have formed with his players. Now, he didn’t believe in being chummy with his men. Having the line blurred between mentor and mentee would never work. But the clear hindsight he’d been living in for a mere twenty-four hours had him wondering if fear was a desirable alternative.
“How did it go with Peggy?”
The way Alice posed the question, Elliott could tell it had taken her until only seconds remained in their journey to work up enough nerve to ask. More fear from people whose respect mattered most. “I don’t know,” he responded in a flat voice.
He’d left a huge chunk of himself back there on the road, and nothing would fill the vacated hole but changing Peggy’s mind. Especially not the phone call he’d made to his assistant coach to discuss running practice without him, which had caused an annoying amount of stuttering on the other end of the line. Yeah, football had moved down on his list of priorities, well below Peggy, Alice…and helping Kyler’s family. He’d never really acknowledged before how much he liked the receiver, and maybe it was crazy, but in addition to lending a hand to someone who desperately needed one, Elliott couldn’t help but wonder if this one mutual victory could help shift the course for him and Peggy. Maybe working together would remind her of the good times between them. The times they’d offered one another comfort and happiness, instead of sadness and confusion. It was a lot to hope for, but Elliott would damn well take what he could get.
“You haven’t apologized to her yet,” Elliott said to Alice as he pulled off the road and began what looked to be a long, bumpy trip up the dirt driveway.
“Yeah, well, you’ve kind of been hogging her,” Alice burst out. “Taking off your shirt and changing tires. I didn’t want to steal your weird thunder.”
Somehow, even though Elliott was still reeling over Peggy’s revelation back on the roadside, he managed a smile over Alice’s mini rant. “Do you think she’s not going to forgive you?”
A few beats of silence passed. “I don’t know. I was kind of waiting to see if she forgave you first.” She glanced over at him. “Is she…going to?”
Elliott watched the Suburban bump along behind him in the rearview, reminding himself the new tire was on as tightly as possible. “I’m going to do everything in my power to make that happen.”
“And then what?” Alice asked quietly. “Say she does let you off the hook. Are you going to have the new mommy talk with me?”
His knee-jerk reaction was to change the subject, but the question hadn’t been posed as a joke. And he didn’t want to sweep aside Alice’s worries anymore. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, okay? Right now I’m just lucky she’s talking to me.” He steered the truck around the semicircle driveway and threw it into Park, both of them considering the three-story farmhouse through the passenger window. Before Alice could climb out, Elliott reached over and caught her arm, sensing there was more to be said, just not sure what. When Alice raised an eyebrow at his staying hand, Elliott removed it and settled back into his seat. “Your advice back there…letting Peggy see that I didn’t have it together. It got me into her head, so I know what I’m up against.” He rolled his shoulders, thanking God there were no witnesses to this conversation. “What else you got?”
Alice let out a tremulous laugh. “Are you asking me for chick advice?”
“No.” He tugged the keys from the ignition, letting them rest on his thigh. “All right, maybe I am.”
“Wow.” Alice looked down fast, playing with the rubber hairband circling her wrist. “What if I give you bad advice on purpose, because I don’t want someone new around?”
The situation snapped into focus, then. Sacrifice was something he’d only ever weighed and executed in terms of religion and football. Sacrificing pleasure and vanity and living a humble life for his church. Sacrificing hours and time at home and sometimes his health for football. Having Peggy back in his life was the ultimate goal here, but that didn’t happen if Alice wasn’t on board. Cold snapped in his veins, responsibility weighing down on his chest. He hadn’t been the kind of parent Alice deserved, and while it would take a long time to learn what exactly went into raising a teenage girl successfully, he had to start now. Tomorrow could be too late. And he’d already been too late for too many people in his life.
“You won’t do that, Alice.” In the rearview, he watched Peggy alight from the Suburban and inhaled deeply. “But if you tell me you’re not ready for someone else in our lives—far off a shot as that is—we’ll solve this situation with Kyler…and go home. Just us.”
Making that promise burned like a son of a bitch, and he could hear every particle in the air swirling as he waited for Alice to respond. “You would really do that?”
He could feel the incredulity in her expression without even looking, but he turned and nodded once, letting her know he’d meant it. “Yeah.”
“Huh,” she said finally, sounding as if something were caught in her throat. She stared out the passenger window so long, he thought she’d gone off in her own world until she surprised him. “Well…you know. Yesterday when you left the school, everyone wanted to know, like, stuff about you. Things that aren’t in your online bio.” She crossed her arms and nestled down into the seat. “Maybe you should tell her something no one else knows. It could make her feel special. Maybe. I don’t know.”
Elliott frowned, replaying locker room conversations from over the years. “I thought women liked to talk about themselves.”
“They do.” Alice rolled her eyes. “But you have to give something up, too. And it can’t be about football. No football.”
“Fair enough.” He fought a smile. “Thank you, Alice.”
She shrugged and started to collect her headphones, pushing open the passenger side door…just as another vehicle rumbled into the yard, followed closely by a police car. Before the man in the wrinkled suit and determined expression even climbed out of the late-model Buick, Elliott knew who’d arrived.
The bank.