Sidelined (29 page)

Motherfucker.
My jaw tightens so badly that I’m afraid my teeth will snap with the pressure.

“Yeah,” he says with a smug smile on his face. “Thought not.”

“You only kissed her?” I rest my elbows on my knees and look at him. “You declared a fight, Mitch. At least give it some fucking effort, man.”

“Jack,” Macey warns.

“Just sayin’ it as it is, baby.” I keep my eyes trained on him. “Because he’s so naïve that he thinks you were alone when you called him on Thursday. Surprised he hasn’t realized that you were in my bed the second you hung up.”

“Oh, fuck,” Will mutters, backing up.

“That true?” Mitch looks at Macey.

“I… Er…yeah.”

He takes his eyes from her to me. “I’ll pick you up at three tomorrow. Pack a bag. You won’t be coming home tomorrow night.”

“You did not just tell me what to do!” Macey cries. “Oh, hell no, Mitchell! Stick your orders up your ass. I will see who I want when I want and I will sleep with who I want when I want! I am not a fucking football for you to take whenever you want it!”

She slams the door so harshly that it rattles on its hinges before she presses her back against it.

I stare at her. She’s looking at the floor with her fingers buried in her dark, loosely curled hair. She bends her knees and slides down the door an inch, and I get up. I go to her and clasp her waist to keep her upright as Mitch knocks at the door.

“Get lost!” she yells.

There’s a murmur of voices. Then silence descends. The only break in it is the sound of Will’s door shutting across the hall and Macey’s heavy, controlled breathing.

“Fuck! I can’t even get an orgasm in peace around here.” She pushes me away from her and walks to the sofa. The setting sun illuminates her body as she stands in front of the sofa and dives her hands into her hair once more. “I give up. I absolutely fucking give up.”

Regret snakes through me. “You want me to go?”

She lets her arms fall. “No. I don’t.”

I walk to her and wrap my arms around her from behind. She sighs and guides her hands along my arms, letting them rest on mine, and I dip my head to kiss the side of her neck.

“You know,” I say softly, “all you have to do is say the word and this can all be over. Baby, you want it done, just tell me to go and I will.”

“No, you won’t.”

“You’re right. I won’t,” I admit. Worth a try, right? “Tell me what you need.”

“From you?”

“From me.”

She drops her head and looks at the floor. “Everything,” she whispers.

I raise a brow. “Everything?”

“Everything,” she repeats, spinning in my arms. “I know Mitch. I know all of his bad habits and how to piss him off. There isn’t a thing about him I don’t know. But you… You’re a stranger compared to that. I want to know you, Jack.” Macey gently removes my arms from her and steps back. “It’s like I’m a scale holding two weights. You are one, and Mitch is the other. You should be even, but every now and then, one of you outweighs the other. I’m standing over two big-ass pits, and either one of them could burn me if I fall. Then there’s this tiny wall separating the two. I could wobble my way to safety, but I don’t know what’s there. I don’t want to know. I want to believe that I can find my happiness with both of you. And I know what you’re going to say—you’re the easy choice. You haven’t hurt me before. But the problem is, in my mind, that just means you could. That means you don’t know what you have because you haven’t lost it yet. But he does. And he knows me. And he feels like home when he isn’t being all douchebaggy.”

He feels like home.

Fuck.

Those words. They hit me and seep through my skin, into my body, until I’m numb from the piercing effect of them.

She looks at me, her devastatingly dark eyes pinned to me, and I turn away. I grab my shirt from the table and move to the door.

“But you?
You
?” she continues quietly. “You feel nothing like home, Jack.”

“Good to know.” My fingers curl around the door handle.

“You feel like freedom and everything that’s so bad it’s good. To me, you feel like the wind through my hair on an open road and the fearless laugh in the face of pain.”

I freeze.

“And that’s why I’m screwed,” she whispers. “Because maybe I won’t be able to walk to safety. Maybe I’ll always be stuck between you. Maybe I’ll always be hanging in a limbo my mind has created because I don’t know how to pick between home and freedom. Maybe I’ll always have what-ifs circling in my mind.”

I swallow. Hard. She’s ripped out her soul to bear to me, and it fucking hurts more than I imagined it would.

“My mind tells me that Mitch is the surprisingly safe choice because everything about him is familiar, yet my body is begging for me to take a chance on you because you make me feel so much more than I knew was even possible. And my heart is the poor little shit stuck between them as I’m tugged every way possible, because my heart can’t exist without either my mind or my body. Without my mind, my heart can’t beat, but without my body, my heart has no purpose. And I don’t want my heart to have no purpose. But I don’t want it to stop beating, either.”

She walks across to me slowly and slips between me and the door. “That said, if you go now, after what I just told you, I understand. I have feelings for both of you that I don’t understand. His trump card is our history. Your trump card is our connection. I’m totally fucked because nothing makes sense to me.” She sniffs, and I realize she’s crying.

“Baby.” I drop my shirt so I can cup her cheeks. My hands frame her face and tilt her head back to me. I swipe my thumbs under her eyes. “You think we’re worth cryin’ over? We’re not. We’re just a couple of guys who want the same amazing girl. I wish I could say I’m sorry for fighting for you, but I’ll never lie to you, M. I’m not sorry. Not for a fuckin’ second. You make me fucking crazy, and guess what? We officially crossed the line to more-ish. But don’t you dare fucking run from me, baby. I told you before I’ll chase you down and catch you every time.

“I won’t force you into choosing between us, but there’s only so many times that motherfucker can stand in front of me and tell me he’s kissed you before my fist will make it very fuckin’ hard for him to do it again.”

“Jack,” she scolds halfheartedly, knocking my chest with her fingers.

I smile. “Baby, I don’t love you and you don’t love me, but love ain’t everythin’. Trust? Desire? Respect? Laughter? Now that’s everything. Love is the cherry on the top of all of those things.”

“I like cherries.”

“Me, too, babe. Especially when they’re five foot somethin’, brunette, and come with a great rack.”

“Jack!” she shrieks, laughing. Macey presses her face into my chest, and my shoulders shake with my own laughter. “I cannot believe you just said that.”

“Laughter,” I murmur, still smiling. “Told you it’s everything.”

She shakes her head against me, pauses, and then looks up at me. The smile dies from her lips. “What if I’m not your cherry?”

“Try me.” I run my thumb over her bottom lip and hover my mouth above hers. “You taste like one?” I cover her mouth with mine. “Yep. And you’re sure as hell a five foot somethin’, brunette, and I know for a fucking fact you have a damned great rack, so no worries, baby. You could definitely be my cherry.”

“Nah. I’m not sweet enough.” A grin slowly breaks out on her face. “There’s a little too much sass in me to be a cherry. I’m more of the sprinkles variety.”

“Chocolate or normal?”

“Normal,” she responds with a sigh. “They’re pretty.”

“And you most definitely are.”

“Pretty? Aw, cute. Do you need your nap now, Mr. Kindergartener?”

I raise my eyebrows. “Are you sprinkles or elastic? Because you bounce back quickly.”

“That’s one of the perks of being a bitch. We have our moments with that emotional crap, and then we snap right on back to unfeeling.”

“If you weren’t crying five minutes ago, I’d be totally fucking hitting on you right now.”

She brings her eyes up to mine, dark and seductive. “I’m not crying now.”

“You offering, baby?” I whisper low, my blood pounding at that sexy look in her eyes.

“I’m not wearing your jersey for any other reason,” she breathes. “And my body is shutting my brain up. So come on, Jack Carr. Remind me why you’re cherry quality.”

I crash my lips down onto hers, sweep her into the bedroom, and fuck her in the way that does exactly what she asked of me.

She’s sprawled across her bed, totally naked, her hair matted in places but mostly mussed from spending half the night with my fingers entwined in the dark locks. With the position she’s in, on her front with her leg bent upward, I can see her pussy fully, and it makes my cock twitch.

Instead of kissing my way across her body, I walk into her bathroom and turn the shower on. The hot water beats down on me as my mind spins.

The fuck am I doing, really?

I’m here in the apartment of a girl who can’t even promise me that she wants me. She can’t promise me anything past bacon and coffee—and even that depends on whether or not she bought it.

I could walk out in this city tonight, hit a bar, and pick a girl who’d be more than happy to be my girlfriend. She’d be happy to pick my socks up off the floor, go to dinner with me, stir the rumor mill, and go to the fancy-ass fucking events I have to attend. She wouldn’t complain. She’d be the perfect girlfriend and my life would be simple.

But some random chick from the street wouldn’t be Macey.

And that’s the motherfucking problem.

The shower door creaks open and a very naked, very sleepy Macey sneaks in. She presses her finger against my mouth and kisses my jaw before dropping her lips to my neck. Slowly, she presses her lips down my neck to my shoulder. Her kisses dotted along my collarbone send blood rushing to my cock, and it hardens between us.

She flattens her hands against my sides and kisses over my chest to my stomach. Half kneeling, she runs her tongue across the indents of my stomach so thoroughly that she’s licking up every drop of water that descends that low.

My cock throbs harder—painfully so.

Macey lowers herself onto her knees and wraps her hand around my cock. Jesus fucking Christ. She slowly moves her hand, her mouth inches away from the tip, and I press my hand against the shower wall like it’ll stop me from jerking my hips forward and shoving my cock into her mouth.

Thankfully, she runs her hand to the end of my cock and replaces it with her mouth. Slowly, her eyes closed, the water beating down on her, she slides my erection into her mouth. Her tongue flicks around me the whole time, and her hand gently twists at the base of my cock.

She smiles when I groan. Of course she does. She fucking loves this—the power. She fucking adores knowing that she can bring me to my knees when she’s on hers. There’s nothing she likes more than my cock in her mouth and me totally at her mercy.

I drop my head forward when her tongue furiously circles the head of my cock and she slams me into her throat. She gags, but she sucks twice as hard when she pulls back. She takes a moment to breathe but tickles the tip of her tongue across the end of my cock, teasing me in the worst kind of way.

I slide my fingers into her hair at the exact moment she closes her mouth around me again. And she sucks me. Shit—she fucks me with her mouth good. The little noises, the grasping of my thighs, the ridiculously pleasurable heat around my cock—she fucks me with her mouth so fucking good.

Heat floods my bloodstream, each pound of my heart carrying adrenaline and pleasure as the pressure builds in my stomach and my balls tighten. Then I come hard into her mouth, and she stills as I empty onto her tongue.

I finish, and she gags, standing up. She mutters something under her breath, but I have no idea what because I drag her up and push her against the wall.

“My turn,” I say against her lips, dropping to my knees and lifting her thighs.

She screams sharply as I set her legs over her shoulders, but her scream soon dulls to a desperate moan as my mouth covers her pussy and my tongue plays with her clit.

She drops her hands into my hair as I lick and suck her wet pussy, every inch of it a cave to be discovered, a delicacy to be tasted. I love every second of her wetness in my mouth, and she comes much quicker than I did. She moans my name and bucks her hips as I press my tongue flat against her opening.