Page 43 of Filthy Player

“God, it was so damn scary, Beaux.”

“Had to be.”

I didn’t ask her more. I was perfectly content to bear her stress and her worry while she fought back tears and took deep shuddering breaths that made her entire body tremble.

When she’d calmed, she pushed against my stomach. I let her go reluctantly.

“I didn’t call to talk to you so I could cry on your shoulder,” she said, reaching for her tea.

I took it from her hand and set it on the railing behind us. “Then why did you?”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

PAIGE

It was do or die time and all I wanted to do was crawl back into Beaux’s lap and ignore the reality I was facing.

With his crystal blue eyes on me, hair done and swept nicely to the side, and dressed in his suit, he was devastatingly sexy.

He must have come to me straight from the airport, and that thought shot a piercing pain to my chest.

Beaux was a great guy, and I was going to shove him away from me even though it was the last thing I wanted. I had to in order to preserve my own heart.

“You going to say anything,” Beaux asked, a beautiful smirk twisting his full lips. “Or are you going to keep staring at me?”

I wanted to keep staring, to memorize the hard line of his jaw, the perfect point of his top lip, the thick lashes that rimmed his eyes.

Instead, I sucked in a breath and let it all out. “I called to apologize. I was rude to you, again, and I don’t like that when you’ve been nothing but nice to me.”

“Nice?” Two perfect brows rose on his forehead. His tone went icy with the word and I tried to pull away.

He didn’t let me go. Instead, he shoved his arm to my lower back and pulled me so I was once again in his lap.

The forceful jerk of the swing made me cling to him.

“Well, yeah,” I said when I’d gathered my wits. It was difficult. He was too consuming. Too beautiful. Too effortlessly, genuinely kind. “And I enjoy the time we spent together, but nothing more with us can happen.”

It was the speech I’d research ad nauseam all afternoon.

“No?” His head tilted to the side. One corner of his lips hitched up. “You don’t think?”

I shook my head. Leave it to Beaux to find me ending things with him funny. “Well, yes, I do think. You’re busy right now, and I appreciate the nights I’ve had with you, Beaux, honestly, but I don’t have the time right now. Not with my dad needing extra help, the bills from the hospital are going to start pouring in and I’m going to have to pick up extra shifts. I have too many responsibilities to consider a relationship with you.”

By the time I was done talking, he was full on grinning. His hand was at the side of my neck, thumb brushing beneath my jaw.

I fought a tremble at his gentle, intimate touch, and failed.

“Beaux—” my tone lacked the warning I intended.

“All I just heard was that you appreciate me, enjoyed our time together, and I’m a nice guy.”

I frowned. “And?”

“And nowhere in that list did you list the reason that you don’t like me or don’t want to be with me.”

I couldn’t say those things. Not directly to him. I wasn’t a liar by nature, but he wasn’t understanding me, either.

“I don’t have the time.”

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