Page 81 of The Wingman

DARCY

The next weekend,Georgia and I are out shopping again when she leads me into a quiet store.

It’s a sea of lingerie. I clutch my shopping bags harder. I’ve already bought a pair of “fuck-me” heels, as Georgia calls them, and a couple of tops from her favorite consignment store.

My gaze goes to a velvet chair at the back of the store, near the dressing room. “I’ll be over there. Take your time.”

“Um, no. I’ve seen your underwear.” She gives me a pitying look, referring to the time she helped me with a zipper and used the phrasebudget potato sackwith regard to my panties. “This is an intervention.”

I give her a wounded look. “What’s wrong with my underwear?”

She flips through a rack of gauzy thongs. “Do you want me to answer that, or do you want to feel pretty and hot?” She finds my size and hands it to me before searching through the matching bras.

“I don’t need expensive underwear to feel hot.” My face is warm as I think about last week, when I woke up in Hayden’s bed and ground against his thick erection.

With that thing, it’s no wonder he has no problem with women. I swallow.

“You don’t,” Georgia muses as she flips through more incredibly sexy garments that I will look like a total fool in, like a kid playing dress-up. “But it helps.”

“I don’t think I’m ready to start hooking up with people.” I don’t mention how Hayden and I kissed at the cast party or how I definitely felt ready for that.

“Lingerie doesn’t have to be for other people. It’s for you.” Her mouth tilts in a sly smile. “There’s power in having a secret. Sometimes, when the Russian is making his bitchy comments or glaring at my feet, I thinkwhat I’m wearing under my clothes would melt your eyes out of your head.” She stares off into space for a long moment before she jerks out of it and smiles at me. “Try a few pieces on. If you don’t like them, you don’t have to get them.”

We browse the quiet shop for a few more minutes, and nerves flutter through my stomach at the idea of wearing these items. I don’t know why; it’s not like anyone will see them.

Maybe because I feel like it’s another way I’m leaving my old self behind.

Or maybe because every time I consider one of the lacy garments, I wonder whether Hayden would like it. I stare for a long time at a cream-colored garter belt, picturing his big hands undoing the tiny clips, and a shiver rolls down my spine.

“It must be nice having the place to yourself when the guys are away,” Georgia says.

The team’s been gone for five days, traveling for away games, and no, it hasn’t been nice having the place to myself.

I miss Hayden.

“We slept in the same bed,” I blurt out.

Her hand stills over a table before her interested eyes cut to mine and a smile forms on her mouth. “Go on.”

“Because my window was jammed open.”

She gives me a flat look. “Are you kidding me?”

“I’m serious,” I choke out, laughing. “My window wouldn’t close and it was cold and I wanted him to have a good night’s sleep for the game and—” I cut myself off as Georgia smiles wider.

“Uh-huh.” Her tone is loaded with disbelief, and she’s grinning like a cat. “You wanted him to have a good sleep? How kind of you.”

My face burns. I can make every excuse in the book, but the truth is so obvious: Iwantedto sleep in the same bed as Hayden again. The way he smelled the next morning and the feel of his hard, broad body wrapped around mine threads through my memory, and my skin prickles.

“And, um, we woke up spooning and he had a boner and I accidentally ground against it.”

I’ve been thinking about all of this nonstop and it’s all bubbling to the surface.

“Mmm.” She nods, satisfied. “That’s the stuff I want to hear more about.”

I still haven’t used the toy he got me. If I do, I’ll think about him, and I’m worried about what’ll happen next. I’ll like it too much.

I already likehimtoo much. Maybe I have for a long time. I don’t know anymore.

---