Player (A Secret Baby Sports Romance)(141)

“I know you aren’t.” She steps hesitantly into the room; “Hudson, I don’t care what that asshole was talking about, and you don’t have tell me anything. I just want to know that you’re OK.”

Jesus, how did I find this girl?

“I’m- I’m fine.” But then I look into her eyes and it breaks me, breaks the bullshit; “Well, no, I’m not actually.” I close my eyes as she moves into the room, and when I feel her weight on the couch next to me and feel her wrap her arms around me, I just sink into her. “Reagan, there’s a lot about me-” I pull back to look her in the eyes, and she’s looking at me so innocently, and with such an intensity that I can’t even tell her. How can I ruin that smile and the light in those eyes with the literal hell I’ve seen; with what I’ve done.

I kiss her instead, and I’m just like that, I’m losing myself in her. I’m lost in that kiss and i’ts better than any escape I’ve ever found in any bottle I’ve ever seen the bottom of. She’s pulling us both back onto the couch and I’m collapsing into her, tearing at her stiff formal clothes. I’m pulling off the vestiges that make her the prim, poised public Reagan to get to the sexy, animalistic primal Reagan that I know that lives deeper; the Reagan that comes out when we’re both naked and my mouth is on her pussy. She gasps as I slide my lips over her sex and push my tongue inside her, and she’s rocking against my face as her hands grip my hair and my name falls from her lips. Her hands are on my hips, pulling me onto the couch alongside her, and I groan into her wetness as she takes me in her mouth. Her lips are like heaven, her tongue dancing across me, and there’s something so sensual, so visceral about this that I almost don’t want to break away.

But I have to have her; I need her in that moment. She’s my new vice, my everything.

She pulls me into her as she lays back in the plush sofa, her legs wrapping around my waist to keep me inside as she rocks against me almost as hard as I push into her. We’re panting, kissing, grasping at each other like we’ll fly away if we don’t as we move together like one wave in an ocean, like a tempest. We’re both lost in the everything until the world shatters around us, as we both come screaming to the neon skyline.

Her head is lying against my chest afterword, her fingers tracing an inked line across my skin.

“Before, that time at my Dad’s-”

“Ray-”

“No, no, it’s not like that. You already explained all that, and I’m not mad that you didn’t take advantage of the situation, Hudson; believe me. I just want to know-”

“Why I walked away, you mean?” The words are ones I’d never have imagined telling her before, though for some reason they come easy now.

“Because I knew you were hurting; I was too.” I take a deep breath; “Reagan there’s so much he never told you, about everything.”

I can hear her sniff against my chest; “I know,” She says quietly.

“I had so much shit, so much pain inside. You- you don’t know, and you can’t know the things I’ve seen, Reagan,” I whisper out; “The things I’ve done-”

Her lips kissing my chest stop me; “You don’t have to tell me.”

Right, but being near me might be bad enough for you I want to scream. I’ve come a long way from the broken man I was when her father found me, but I’m still toxic, and I know that. I still have the demons clawing at my back, the lust for vices I’ll have to deny myself for the rest of my life, and the recklessness of a man who’s already seen death. How can there be a place for a girl like her in all of that shit? She’s so good, and just so damn perfect and unbroken and undimmed by the darkness of the world that I can’t bare the thought of even telling her that darkness exists. She’s the light, and I can’t let my darkness swallow that up.

“I want to, you know,” I say, running my hands through her hair and closing my eyes as she softly kisses my chest again; “I just- I just can’t; not yet.”

“I’m here, you know, when you can.”

I smile into her hair, wondering for the millionth time how all this is possible; “I know.”





24





Reagan




P A S T



I know as soon as I step off the stage that I’ve fucked up, even before my new campaign manager stomps over to me with that mean look on his face.

“Oooo-kay, so, that was-’ He shakes his head, sighing heavily at me like I’m some sort of disobedient child; “That was not good, Reagan.”