Page 87 of Cocky Player

Beautiful and deadly.Falling in love with me would change him and not for the best.

My chin shook and tears fell.I brushed them awayhatingI couldn’t give that back to him.Not now.

He pleaded me with his eyes so silent and strong while his shoulders were tight and his back hunched forward, trying to get as close as possible to me without pushing me away.

I’d already done that myself.

“I can’t be with you, Connor.I’m sorry.I should have known this would happen.Should have prepared you but I wanted to enjoy what we had.”

“You did enjoy it.And I know you feel the same even if you’re scared to say it right now.”

God, how I loved him.As much as I loved sunsets and crisp sweet wine and laughing with Gina and going out with the player’s wives and thinking over the last few weeks that I could be somebody different.

“I will kill you in pieces,” I said, choking over the words.“Your worry for me will take over everything and you’ll be stifled by it.I know you.You’re more protective than my own parents and you’re such a good man.I can’t take that from you.I can’t give younormal,Connor, and you deserve someone whole and healthy.I don’t think…no, I know that will never be me.”

“I don’t care.”

He would.At some point.He’d care down the road, maybe years, maybe if we had kids and I lost it with them.He’d care when I ran back to my parents instead of leaning on him.Oh, he’d care then.

“I don’t want this.I want you to go.”I tried to steel my spine for his rebuttal.Erase the emotions running rampant through my veins down to my soul and straight to my heart with piercing pain.

Connor simply tilted his head.Grinned like I was a puppy.Leaned forward and bravely took my hand, bringing it to his mouth.He kissed my knuckles.Ran his thumb along my palm.My inner wrist.

I couldn’t do anything to stop the shiver from his touch.Oh so beautifully deadly.To both of us.

“I will never stop loving you.Or fighting to convince you you’re wrong on this.But tonight, I’ll give you the space you want.”

“You’ve always said you’d give me anything I asked for.”

He kissed my palm, curled my fingers into a fist like he was forcing me to hold on to it.Then he stood.“I will.Anything but this.”

And then he turned and left the room, leaving my door open on his way out and it was only moments later when my mom came in, wiping beneath her eyes and whispered, “He’s so much sweeter than I ever thought he’d be.”

“Mom.”

“I know, I know.Don’t meddle.”She grinned and turned toward my closet, pulling out a suitcase.“Now, what do you need packed?”

Twenty-Nine

Connor

It’d been a week.A week since Brenna kicked me out of her bedroom.

A week since her father pulled me into her small kitchen, arms crossed over his chest, a look on his face I’d seen once—that look of utter disappointment.He’d asked me to tell him everything and before I filtered anything, I did.I told him about meeting her at Glitz before the party at his house.I told him about the last few weeks.I laid my heart bare to the man who held my career in his hands and whose daughter held the rest of me in hers.I apologized profusely for putting her in a situation I couldn’t have predicted and didn’t protect her from and when I was done, David looked at his shoes, slippers because it was so late and he was in such a hurry to get to his daughter he hadn’t bothered thinking of what he was wearing.

Lifting his head, he simply said, “Give her some time.”

That was it.He gave me a few minutes with her when her mom came out and that was all I had with Brenna in the last week before she packed up most of her things and went back home with her parents, closing herself off to me.

It hurt more than it should have that she didn’t turn to me.That shestillhadn’t turned to me.I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

She didn’t return my calls or my texts.I stopped by her parents’ house, risked her father’s wrath because I still didn’t know where he stood with us being together.Every time, her mom answered the door, a pitiful look on her face as I rocked on my heels.

“I’m sorry, Connor.She doesn’t want to see you.”

I meant every word I said to her that night.Every word I said to her father.It might not have been the best time to tell her I loved her.In the scheme of things, it was probably the worst.

I also meant it when I told her I’d give her space, I’d give her anything…but I would not give her a life without the two of us together.She was meant for me in a way I felt deep in the marrow of my bones and there was no way I was walking away without a fight.

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