She stutters to a stop, rocking slightly on the balls of her feet. “Oh God. I’ll never be able to… to…” Her harsh gasps shred the air, her chest rising and falling with each ragged inhale. She rubs her fists against her eyes, for a moment appearing like a young girl instead of a twenty-four-year-old woman. “I’ll never be able to scrub those images from my head. How could he…”
She doesn’t finish, but she doesn’t need to.
I’ve asked myself the same question thousands of times since Jessie confessed to me a couple of weeks ago about his drunken one-night stand with a football groupie. He’d been broken—the closest I’d ever seen my best friend come to crying. And he’d been terrified about India finding out. Terrified he’d lose her. I felt for him—I did. Given my own history of growing up with a gambler father who saw women as poker chips to be won, cashed in, then doled out to his bitch-ass buddies, cheating was a deal breaker for me. No excuses.
But Jessie’s transgression seemed even more of a betrayal.
Because it was India. He had this woman’s loyalty. Her body. Her heart. And he’d tossed it all aside to get his dick wet in some random’s pussy.
Yes, I loved him, and I promised not to tell India so he could do it first. But a part of me… a part of me hated the man I’d been best friends with since Jacob Parsons broke Jessie’s glasses in the fourth grade, and I broke that bully bastard’s front tooth with my fist.
I resented Jessie for throwing away what I would’ve gift-wrapped and hand-delivered my soul to the devil to have.
“He loves you, India,” I murmur. Because as his best friend, I have to fight for him… fight for them. And I know it’s the truth. “He fucked up, but he would die for you.”
“Don’t you dare defend him,” she whispers low and fierce, whipping around to face me. “He would die for me, but he can’t quite manage to keep his dick in his pants and out of other women?” She sliced a hand through the air. “I don’t need that kind of love. Fuck. His. Love.”
Wasn’t shit I could say to that. I agree with her, and while I might be the worst friend since Brutus, I’m not a hypocrite. I wouldn’t convince her to give him another chance when I would never offer a woman a second opportunity to stab me in the back.
Watched that shit happen with my parents on repeat like it was goddamn Groundhog’s Day when I was a kid. Had it happen to me when I was foolish enough to trust my heart with someone, only to have them twist and pound it like Play-Doh.
Maybe that’s why I need India to be with Jessie. As long as she’s his woman, she’s unattainable, untouchable. I can fantasize about her while my dick throbs and jerks in my fist, secretly crave that cocktease of a body, and hunger for the beautiful smile capable of lighting up a city skyline. But I can’t have her because she’s my best friend’s girl. Which means I can’t fall for her.
In other words, she’s safe.
Goddammit, I need her to be safe.
Her sigh ripples in the air. Closing her eyes, she pinches the bridge of her nose. When she lowers her hand and lifts her lashes, her grief, her pain gut punches me. Jesus Christ.
“India,” I rasp.
“I’m not naïve,” she says, all the agony in her chocolate eyes thickening her voice. “I know about the lifestyle of athletes. Especially when they’re on the road more than they’re home. And with me teaching, it’s not like I can just drop everything and travel with him. But I got all that. I was prepared for the women throwing themselves at him on social media and even right in front of me. All of it goes with the territory of being a professional football player. But somehow,” her voice cracks and her frame quakes in a full-body tremor, “somehow, I thought we were above that. Stupidly, I thought our biggest hurdle would be keeping our lines of communication open. Not other women. Never other women. Why would he give away what should’ve been just for me? Should’ve been just for us? How could he touch another woman like he touched me? Did it mean so little? Did I mean…”
She doesn’t finish the sentence. And I don’t know if it’s because she can’t bear to complete the thought… or if it’s my arms crushing her to me. My hands thrusting into her hair, tangling, and pressing her face to my chest.
My rules of no-contact shatter under the weight of her pain and that sacrilegious trace of insecurity in her voice. There’s no way I can stand there and not hold her. Fuck, I want to absorb her pain into my body, have it mark my skin like tattoos and wear them proudly. More than anything, though, I only want to take that pain away from her.
As if the press of my body to hers unlocks a rusty gate, her grief erupts in a ragged torrent of sobs. They tear into her petite frame, and the shudders echo through me like the discordant notes of an out-of-tune guitar. Loud. Harsh. Raw. Jesus, how can her bones not snap under the strength of them? How is she still in one piece? Irrational fear stabs me in the chest, and I tighten my arms around her. I curl around her, burying my face in her curls, widening my legs to draw her even closer. I surround her, determined to hold her together. To not let her break.
I don’t keep track of how long I hold her. Minutes feel like hours, and they both pass like seconds. At some point, we sink to the floor, and I cradle her on my lap. Senseless murmurs spill from my lips. I got you. It’s going to be okay. You’re breaking my heart, baby girl. Senseless because I can’t have her—I can never have her. And I doubt anything will be the same after this, much less okay.
After a while, her sobs soften, the emotional storm easing. But she doesn’t move away from me, and God help me, I don’t loosen my arms from around her. I’m a greedy bastard, and after depriving myself of this pleasure for so long, I’m clinging to it as long as she allows it. Allows me.
With every moment that passes, all of my senses kick into a higher mode. As if, until now, I’ve been living in black and white, but the press of her body to mine catapults me into my own Land of Oz, and I’m seeing in brilliant Technicolor for the first time.
Each small hitch in her breath tugs on my heart. My eyes note the spiked length of her wet lashes and the faint tremble of her mouth. God, I want to sweep my thumb over that pouty, too-damn-sexy-for-my-sanity bottom lip. Test its give and firmness. Then assess it again with my tongue. Her scent, a heady combination of the jasmine oil she’s obsessed with and fresh rain after a spring storm, infiltrates my nose, floods my mouth and I swear, I can taste it. My gut spasms, hungry for that taste.
She’s the fucking hottest IMAX experience sitting right here on my thighs.
India tips her head back against my shoulder, and her copper gaze brands me.
“Thank you,” she whispers, and I almost wince in sympathy at the rawness of her voice.
“You’re welcome.”
Without my conscious permission, my fingers find her throat, gently massage the front where her vocal cords run. She swallows and the up-and-down motion bobs against my fingertips. Something so innocuous, so mundane, and yet it strikes a match to the desire-infused fuel in my veins, and I light up like fire set to dry kindle.
My heart pounds against my sternum like an anvil, ringing in my ears. My thighs tighten under her ass, and my cock. Fuck, my cock is so hard, I ache. With her petite, deliciously thick body perched on my lap, need and pain are so intertwined, separating them would be like trying to shift sand into color groups. Next to impossible.