SPIKED (A Sports Romance) (29 page)

H
ours later
, the dawn light crept into his bedroom. Unable to find my shirt, I pulled on one of Landon’s button-downs while he was in the shower. Although I was tempted to stay
forever
, maybe wait for an encore of last night, I needed to creep back home before my brother and dad caught on to the fact that I hadn’t returned. I was pushing it as it was, and they already hated that I’d chosen Landon’s internship over the one in Dallas.

Growing up, I’d loved how protective Matt had been when it came to me. I’d loved that when kids picked on me in the second grade, Matt was there to stand up for me. In high school, after I went to homecoming with a football player, and he’d bragged to all of his friends about sleeping with me—which wasn’t even true—Matt had been there. When the guy had showed up to school a few days later with a black eye, I didn’t have to ask him where he’d gotten it. I knew.

Just as I knew why Matt warned me away from Landon. My brother was just doing what he’d always done—looking out for his sister.

And I couldn’t blame him. Even I knew that Landon was bad news.

But something had shifted since yesterday. Landon wasn’t treating me like I was his flavor of the week. First he’d taken me on a real date, and then last night, when we’d slept together, it had felt different. More meaningful.

It would take Matt time to see that maybe, just maybe, he had pegged it wrong. Time to come around to the idea of Landon and I.

Together.

I headed downstairs, searching for my phone. Hoping that it hadn’t blown up with calls and texts after we’d fallen asleep.

I was halfway to the kitchen when the doorbell rang. I hesitated, glancing at the clock over the mantle. Who the hell would ring the doorbell before 7AM?

Dread hit me like a freight train.

It had to be Matt. He knew I was here, and he probably thought he could just retrieve me like some twelve-year-old kid sister. I headed down the hall, crossing over the intricate inlay in the hardwood surrounding the foyer, and yanked open Landon’s enormous front door.

Except it wasn’t Matt.

The woman standing on the front porch was stunning, with dark wavy hair that tumbled down her shoulders, curling gently at the ends. With olive skin and stunning green eyes, she looked like she came from the catwalks of Milan. Yet… I knew, too, that she came from money. Her Burberry jacket, simple silk skirt, and understated black heels screamed an elegance that didn’t need to be flashy.

Her eyebrow raised as she glanced over me, in my denim mini and Landon’s crimson button-down, too big to be mine. I couldn’t quite read her expression, but it was something between amusement and contempt.

“I’m looking or Landon Hill,” she said, as if I was his secretary. Her voice was laced with disdain, like I was a bug beneath her shoe.

“And you are?” I asked.

She smirked, reaching out a hand. But it was her left hand, and instead of moving to shake mine, she turned her hand palm down, showing off the huge diamond sparkling on her finger.

“I’m Landon’s wife.”

I
couldn’t stop staring
at the giant rock on her finger, like some kind of homing beacon. It wasn’t until she pulled her hand away, crossing her arms and leveling an intense stare at me that I realized I hadn’t moved since she’d announced herself as Landon’s wife.

Her words ran on a loop in my head, so at odds with everything I’d felt about Landon last night. Everything I’d
thought
about Landon, and how he’d been acting so affectionate.

So
not
married.

“Uh… just a second.” And then I slammed the door in her face. I didn’t care if it was unbelievably rude, I couldn’t seem to react with anything but panic. For good measure, I twisted the deadbolt. In response, she hit the doorbell, and the melodic chimes filled the lower level of the house.

The problem momentarily solved—or at least out of sight—I took the stairs two by two, my emotions battling for space.

Betrayal and fury won out. I burst into his room just as he was stepping out of the bathroom, his hair dripping wet, a towel around his bare shoulders and a pair of boxers slung low on his hips. The breath whooshed out of my lungs as I skidded to a stop.

He froze, halfway between the bathroom and his dresser, taking in my murderous expression.

“I knew I couldn’t trust you,” I said.

He picked up the towel, scrubbing across his dripping hair. His moves were too casual, too relaxed. Everything was falling apart and he just
stood there.
“I don’t know what you’re referring to,” he said.

I started unbuttoning the shirt I’m wearing—his--yanking it over my head and grabbing my own from where it sat, rumpled on the floor half-under his bed. Jesus, I’d let him yank my shirt off and he was someone else’s husband. “I’m talking about the fact that you’re fucking
married.
” I spun on him, glaring.

He worked his jaw, and I hated him for it. I hated that he was trying to calculate the best way to answer. “How did you know?” he said.

“So it’s true?” I cried out, pulling my shirt down.

My shoes. I didn’t know where I’d put my shoes. “Jesus” I said, my voice breaking. “I should’ve listened to my instincts and stayed the hell away from you.”

“Taryn,” he said, his voice calm. Level. Just as demanding as ever. “Talk to me. How did you find out?”

“Ha!” I said, laughing in an ugly way. “Maybe the fact that your
wife
is standing on your front stoop with a giant rock on her finger?”

I spun around to leave, walking to the door as fast as my shaky legs would carry me. But then his hand was on my arm, forcing me to stop. “Taryn, please, just listen to me. I can explain this.”

Please.
The pleasantry sounded foreign on his tongue, and we were
so
past pleasantries. I turned on him, shoving him back. Away from me. I needed space. Room to breathe. “You can explain a
wife
you forgot to tell me about before you took me to your bed?”

As if she knew we were talking about her, the doorbell rang again. I pushed him, but he didn’t move, didn’t flinch. I needed to leave, needed enough space to calm down.

“Stop,” he said, each hand gripping my shoulders, forcing me to stare at him dead-on. “Listen to me.”

I crossed my arms, staring him down, just like he wanted. But it was a challenge, not acceptance. “You have thirty seconds, and then I am so gone.”

“I wasn’t in a good place when I left town. I didn’t want to go at all.”

The doorbell rang again, and then again and again, and Landon flinched.

“Then why did you?” I said, trying to ignore the gorgeous woman trying to get into this house—or was it her house? Trying not to start comparing myself to her. “And cut the crap this time, okay?” I continued. “Even if you felt you had to make something of yourself, you could’ve told me. You could’ve said goodbye. Even Matt didn’t know where you went.”

“Matt is
why
I left,” Landon said, a vein throbbing in his right temple now. “After you and I…. after we were together, I woke up around dawn. I knew he’d be upset about us, and I wanted to spare you his reaction. We were still figuring things out. It was between us, not him.”

I snorted. “Oh please, you’re saying that if it wasn’t for my brother, you wanted to stay over for breakfast? You weren’t the type. You’re
still
not the type.”

His wife was banging on the front door now, the sounds rattling through the house.

He rolled his eyes. “You know it was never that simple. I snuck out because I didn’t want to start a scene. I didn’t want to leave you like that, but I was going to text you later, make plans with you.”

“And?”

Landon sighed. “When I walked out the front door or your house, I found Matt sitting on the hood of my car. Waiting. He must’ve woken up at some point after I came over and saw my car. I guess I should’ve been thankful he didn’t walk in on us while I was in your bed. I’m still not sure why he didn’t, except that he probably didn’t want to actually
see
me with you.”

I stared at him, holding onto my fury. I knew Matt was protective of me. Always had been. “And then what?” I said, my stomach clenching.

“We exchanged words. He took a few swings. I knew I deserved it, so I let him land one before I stopped it.”

“How very chivalrous,” I said, snorting.

“Your brother can throw a damn good punch. I had a black eye for a week.”

I didn’t respond, just stared. Waited for the words that would somehow make the girl downstairs not matter.

“He’d warned me away from you for years, Taryn. And for
years,
I kept my promise to him. Christ, I made him that promise when we were sixteen, and you were thirteen. I didn’t look at you that way then. But damn it, we all grew up. And I’m not a saint. Things changed with us, that last year. Surely you’d noticed, just like I had, long before we acted on it.”

I ground my teeth and stared at him. Of course I’d
noticed.
Maybe he didn’t think of me that way when I was thirteen, but by then, I’d already starting pining for him. As long as I could remember, I’d been half in love with Landon. That last year, when he started stealing glances my way, nudging me with his shoulder when I laughed at one of his jokes… I’d been afraid to think it meant something. I’d analyzed every touch, every glance.

And I’d hated watching him with the other girls.

Landon rushed on with his story, trying to ignore the increasingly loud knocking and doorbell ringing from downstairs. “Matt told me I wasn’t good enough for you. That I had nothing to offer you. He said I was a loser and that he’d never let me fuck your life up the way I fucked up everything else I touched.”

I could see that even now, there was strong emotion in Landon’s voice and his eyes as he remembered what my brother had said to him years before. “And then?”

“And then I got home. To that shitty, fallen-down rambler, with a stack of bills on the kitchen table, and to my parents fighting just like they always did. And I realized he was right. I had nothing to offer you. You deserved fancy dinners and diamond rings, not a fuck-up like me.”

A piece of my anger chipped away. “I never wanted money, Landon. I wanted you.”

He scoffed, too much hurt and self-loathing written across his face. The Landon I’d gotten used to over the last week—the one that owned the world-didn’t exist in this moment. For the first time, I realized that there was so much more to him going on behind his confident, proud façade. “Your brother loves you, and he knew what you refused to see.”

“So you just left me?” I asked.

“The only thing I could give you was enough space to clear your head and get over me.”

“That’s bullshit, Landon. You know it is.”

“I knew if I left, you’d find a life that would make you happy. Maybe even find a man much better than me, who would lift you up, instead of becoming the anchor I knew I’d be.”

Tears glimmered in my eyes, but I refused to let them free. “You had no right to do that to me. The choice should’ve been mine, not yours.”

He gripped the ends of the towel in each hand, pulling it taut against the back of his neck. “You’d be a chemist right now If your mother hadn’t passed. And if I’d had stayed here, I’d be working at the mill or some other bullshit job, and you’d be wondering what you ever saw in me.” He wasn’t looking at me anymore, his expression shuttered. I hated that he believed all of this. Hated that he thought so little of himself.

“You’re not successful because you
left
, Landon. It’s who you are. Who you were always meant to be. Everything you’ve built could’ve happened here. I could’ve helped you be that person
here.
”

He responded with only silence, turning toward his dresser and pulling out a pair or slacks. He leaned over, pulling them over his legs when I finally spoke again.

“And that still doesn’t explain how you have a
wife
you chose not to tell me about.”

“Look, after I left town, I was in rough shape,” he said, turning back to face me and leaning against his dresser. “The only thing I’d ever really wanted was you, and I was two thousand miles away. I partied hard and buried my emotions in too many things I shouldn’t have messed with. I nearly lost the Nova in a game of cards, for god sakes. But then one day I woke up, and realized I was proving your brother right. Realized I was well on my way to becoming my father. And so I changed. I decided to be everything he wasn’t, everything your brother thought I could never be. I was relentless.”

“Get to the part where you
married the woman downstairs,
” I said, growing impatient.

“Things were starting to come together. Opportunities started to come my way, and I worked my ass off to prove myself. And god, I was so tempted to call you. To apologize and beg for another chance. But by then it had been a couple of years. I patched things up with Matt, and he told me about how you were at the top of your class, expecting to land a prestigious internship. And I knew that no matter what I did, I wouldn’t feel good enough for you. So I focused on my work, and then Alexa came along.”

Alexa. God, even her name sounded elegant.

“She has this uncanny way of making people feel either larger than life or like a bug beneath her shoe,” he said. “And at first, I was picturing a life where we built an empire together. I thought I was falling for her, but I realize now I wanted what she represented more than I ever wanted her. I used her to bury the regrets I had with you.”

A bitter laugh escaped my lips. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“She manipulated me,” Landon said. “None of it was real. She saw the company I was creating and dollar signs flashed in her eyes. She can be really fucking convincing when she wants to be. Her parents are lawyers and she was supposed to follow in their footsteps, but she didn’t want to. I was her ticket out. Her free ride.”

My heart twisted, but I tried to ignore the surge of sympathy. Because he’d had so many chances to tell me this. So many times he could’ve come clean. She might have manipulated him into marriage, but he’d manipulated me into his bed. He took me on a date, he offered me an internship. He had me imagining a world where we became something real.

And the whole fucking time he was married. He belonged to her. Even as he fucked me in his bed, he was never mine. “But your married, Landon,” I said, trying to impress upon him just how serious this point was to me.

“I asked her for an annulment a few weeks after our marriage, as soon as my head cleared. She refused. And when I told her I’d be filing for divorce, she swore she’d take my company. You have no idea what she’s capable of. I’ve never met a more ruthless woman.”

I wanted to scream at him. Pound my fists against his chest. Beg for some kind of explanation that didn’t end up with me feeling used and betrayed.

“Ruthless?” I said, my voice rising. “You want to talk about ruthless? How about the fact that last night you took me to your bed without telling me you were
married
? You let me think we were going to become something, but you’re not even free to be with me!”

“I should’ve told you.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“I waited years to be with you. Jesus, do you know how hard it was for me to stop that night, three years ago?”

His words sent a flood of emotion and heat through me. Made me think of that night in my bed, my brother sound asleep and my father out of town, as Landon and I plunged toward the unknown.

I’d been a virgin. But I wasn’t a fool. As he’d pulled my shirt off and I’d pulled the blankets up over us, in a cocoon, I’d known what I was doing. He hadn’t yet pulled off my black silk panties, and he still wore his snug boxer-briefs, but as I lay underneath him, his arms braced on each side of my shoulders, his breathing growing labored, I’d been ready.

Years of wanting him, of pining from the back seat of his car, of watching him date girl after girl, and I’d been ready to give myself to him.

He’d leaned down and kissed me, his tongue tracing across my lip, and it had set me on fire. And yet, as I’d spread my legs and brought my knees up to his hips, begging him to press against me in that place where the heat had pooled into pulsing need, he’d hesitated.

He’d kissed me harder, and yet I could feel the distance between our bodies grow, tiny millimeters at first, until the night air breezed between our bodies, where before it had been skin-on-skin.

Again he’d kissed me, before shifting slightly, moving so that I could no longer feel the hard length of him in that place I was desperate for him to touch. And then he tucked his head slightly, kissing against the soft curve of my neck. He’d murmured something, but it had been too low to hear. And when I said, “what?” he didn’t answer.

Instead, he’d moved, until his hip lay against the mattress, and he could pull me up against him. He slung a leg over mine, nestled my hip up against him. I was left to stare at the shadows of the ceiling with his leg arm resting across my body, his face tucked up near my neck.

Moments earlier, I’d been sure I was going to lose my virginity to him. And instead I was laying on my back in my bed, watching as the moonlight chased the shadows in my room, listening as his breathing turned long and even and he feel asleep.