Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen

“ I give you the freedom to drive me anywhere, alone, at night, and you take me to an abandoned driving range by the state fairgrounds. Wow, Wyatt Stone. You really know how to woo a lady.”

He laughs hard, letting his head fall back against his seat, which leaves his eyes off of the chicken and rice I’ve been smelling the entire drive out here. I snag the bag and turn my back to him in an attempt to keep it to myself.

“Hey! No way you’re getting all of that,” he says, his seat belt clicking as he unbuckles and lurches over the console to put his arms around me. I fumble with the wrapper on the fork, tugging it off with my teeth while he fights to take the box container of food from my other hand.

“Hey, buddy. Get your own!” I twist back and forth in an attempt to shirk him off, but his arms only get tighter around me. And then I stop fighting because his palms are wrapped around my biceps, and he’s squeezing me against his chest, and his mouth is at my neck. Our laughter stops. My chin moves to my shoulder, where all I can see are his parted lips, tongue caught in his front teeth. He breathes out as a soft smile forms, the air against my neck sending goose bumps down my spine.

His hands glide down my arms, and I release the container and fork when he takes them from me. He sets them on the dashboard with his left hand, which quickly returns to me, his palm gentle against my face.

My gaze settles on his mouth, on the healing spot on his upper lip, the stitch there but the skin no longer pink or bruised.

“Does it hurt?” I reach up and lightly run my finger across it.

He shakes his head, his eyes flitting to meet mine for a moment before his attention immediately returns to my mouth.

“You took that punch for me, didn’t you?”

His head tilts an inch or two away from me as he glances up.

“I really took it for Whiskey, but sure, you too.”

I shake with a soft laugh and twist in my seat and his arms so I’m facing him more head-on.

“We need to work on your game, Wyatt. First, the abandoned driving range, then you give away heroics meant for me to a two-hundred-pound lineman.”

“Two fifty-seven,” he says with a shrug.

His smile comes in sharp and fast, and I look up at the ceiling of the cab with exasperation. His hand moves along my jaw, though, coaxing my attention back to his face.

“You know it was for you.”

A new kind of quiet settles in, his eyes roaming my face as his thumbs caress my jawline. I move my hand up his chest, his muscles hard underneath the soft cotton of his T-shirt. I snake my palm around his neck and shift my weight, coaxing him to sit back in his seat as I climb over the center console to straddle his lap. His chest rises and falls faster, my body moving with every breath he takes as my palms flatten against his chest and I let my weight sink down on him.

I can feel how hard he is under his shorts, and a low grumble escapes his mouth as I position myself so the neediest parts of us meet. I lean into him and kiss his upper lip gently, careful not to hurt him. His hands slide to my hips and he pulls me up into him, then urges me to rock back again, his want unmistakable. I nip at his bottom lip, and his teeth graze against mine as his hips shift to push his hardon against me.

I give in and kiss him deeper, still careful to keep my attention on his plump bottom lip, my tongue meeting his. I’ve never had a kiss feel so instantly perfect. It’s as though our mouths are meant to be together, to connect like this. He coaxes my head to the side so he can kiss his way along my jawline and to my neck, and I grind my hips on him to relieve the impossible need growing between my legs.

“You’re so fucking beautiful, Peyton,” he murmurs in my ear.

I give him more of my neck to taste, and his tongue draws a seductive line up to my earlobe, which he nips with his teeth. My hands drop to the bottom of his shirt, and I gather it up his abdomen, my knuckles grazing against every ripple of his abs and over the hard contours of his chest as he lets me pull his shirt up over his head.

“How are you built like this?” I half tease, dropping my mouth to his shoulder to take a soft bite of his salty skin.

His hands shift from my hips to my back, roaming up either side of my spine and over the elastic band of my sports bra. They deftly slip underneath, rolling the stretchy fabric up my back a few inches before his thumbs hook into the taut fabric under each breast. I sit up and meet his heated stare, nodding before slipping my shirt over my head. His gaze drops from mine to my chest, his thumbs sliding across my nipples underneath my sports bra before his hands work to push the fabric up to expose me to him completely.

He sits up quickly, his mouth covering one of my nipples while I wrap my arms around his head, holding him to me. I never want him to stop. His tongue flicks my tender skin as his hands drop to my waist and encourage me to rock against him more. I roll my hips, feeling my own wetness in my panties and I’m sure my cheer shorts. His hands move to the backs of my thighs, his fingers clawing under my shorts until his hands are basically cupping my ass cheeks as I roll my body against him harder.

I can feel the edge coming closer, my core tightening as every rock of my hips brings a new promise of pleasure, and I let his name slip from my lips.

“Wyatt,” I plead again.

He tugs on my nipple with his teeth, then sucks it into his mouth, soothing the tip with his tongue as he works me against him in his lap. I begin to pant, and I press one palm on the ceiling as my other hand holds on to his shoulder for leverage. The wave comes soon after, and Wyatt isn’t far behind as his mouth opens and his eyes roll back.

I collapse against him, my glistening skin sticking to his. He rakes his fingertips lightly up the small of my back to the curve of my shoulder blades. The gentle tickle sends shivers across my skin, and Wyatt reaches to the passenger seat, grabbing his T-shirt and slipping it over my head. While I wasn’t done feeling his bare chest against mine, I also wasn’t going to refuse him taking care of me. Of getting inside his clothes and smelling him, keeping this shirt and taking it home. Wearing it to bed at night. Dreaming of him and this, and when we can do this again. When we can do more.

W yatt slips into a pair of sweatpants he pulled from his gym bag. I sneak a peek at him as he changes outside the truck, though all I can really see is the curve of his ass as his back is to me and the moon is barely a sliver.

I haven’t said it out loud, but my inner voice keeps asking me what I’m doing. Did I really trade one quarterback for another? And this one should be, by all terms and conditions, off limits. Yet no kiss has ever felt so right. No person has ever made me feel so seen. In all the months I spent with Bryce as his “lucky girl,” as he called me, never once did he make me feel the way Wyatt did just now.

Beautiful.

The chicken is cold, so Wyatt and I share what’s left of the kettle corn and the pumpkin cupcakes I brought. He flips down his tailgate then lifts me by the waist so I have a place to sit, and we look out at the dry, rolling hills that are going to be turned into some housing project in the next year.

“What’s the story with the driving range?” I take a nibble of my cupcake as I glance his way. Our eyes meet for a second and he pivots as he laughs, eventually making his way to the space next to me. He pulls himself up to sit and takes the second cupcake.

“It’s going to make me sound like an angry rage-head or something,” he says, his fingers struggling to peel away the paper cup from the cake.

“Here,” I offer, resting mine on my thigh. I pull his paper back easily with my fingernails.

“Universal tools,” I say with a shrug.

He smirks and touches the tip of my index fingernail.

“And weapons.”

I wince and he leans into me, dropping a soft kiss on the tip of my nose.

“Don’t tell anyone, but I kinda liked the scratching,” he whispers. He takes his cupcake back, and I cover my heated cheeks with my hands.

“Come on, don’t get shy on me now,” he laughs out.

I bite my bottom lip and uncover my face, but quickly dive into eating my cupcake to take the attention away from the fact I got worked up enough to scratch him like a werewolf.

“Okay, now you have to tell me how you’re a rage-head because I feel like a horned-up vixen.”

He coughs out an instant laugh, sending crumbs from his mouth.

“Wow, I wasn’t going to call you that, but since you said it?—”

I lean into his side and he quickly puts an arm around me, so I decide to stay.

“It’s not much of a story, but I found this place on accident the day we signed for the new house.” He takes another bite, then sets his cupcake to his side, glancing to me then out into the very still, extremely warm night.

He runs the back of his hand over his eyes, squinting with thought.

“You remember what I told you about my dad?”

He drops his gaze to me, and I nod.

“We were close. Like the way you and your dad are. At least, I think you’re close.”

I nod and utter, “We are.” I’m hit with a sudden appreciation of the fact.

“He was a firefighter, and he got cancer. Everyone knows the risks of the job, and it’s hard not to believe that his cancer—the type he had—was related to all the shit he inhaled over the years.”

I thread my hand with his and squeeze, and he brings my wrist to his mouth, pressing a soft kiss against my veins. He holds his mouth there for a few long seconds as his eyes close, then moves to hold the back of my hand against his cheek as he looks at me.

“I’m so sorry.” I know he’s heard those three words a lot, but it’s all I can think to say. His soft smile lets me know it’s enough.

“Thanks,” he says, loosening his grip on my hand but keeping our fingers linked, moving his touch from one finger to the next.

“Losing him was—” His shoulder lifts slightly.

“Impossible,” I finish for him, remembering the first time I was old enough to realize my dad was really hurt on the field.

“Yeah, definitely that. And then we were moving because it was expensive to stay where we were, and I don’t think my mom wanted to wake up in the same house every day and remember.”

“I get it,” I say.

“Me, too,” he adds with a long exhale. “That was home, though. My dad taught me to throw in the park across the street from our house. He coached my teams there. We held team BBQs in our backyard because he was the man with the grill . And, I don’t know, we drove down here, and my mom handed over a cashier’s check for a deposit on our new place and I . . . just . . . lost it. I drove out here while my mom walked through design choices and picked a lot, and I found this empty, sad plot of land that looked the way I felt inside. And I just screamed.”

My gaze drifts to the nothingness, and I try to remember how this place looks in the daylight. We haven’t been to the fairgrounds near the driving range in years. It’s not an easy place for my family to come without people recognizing my mom. My dad wouldn’t be able to make it through the gates without being swarmed. But I remember this driving range. I remember how the grass went from green to brown in the summer. I can visualize the torn-up netting that no longer keeps a ball from flying through without turning to dust on impact. The shreds of turf where golfers once made divots now grown over with weeds.

“It’s a good place to scream,” I say.

I slip down from the tailgate and take a few steps toward the broken concrete where the parking lot dissolves into dirt. Cupping my hands around my mouth, I yell so loudly that my throat burns. I think about summers wasted waiting on some boy to come back home and decide to pick up where we left off. I think about how much my dad thinks they’re alike when they’re nothing alike at all. I picture the smug look on Bryce’s face when I overheard him today bragging about knocking Wyatt out. I hate that I didn’t march into the middle of his clique and set the record straight. Tell them all he didn’t knock anyone out, and that the guy he hit is twice the quarterback he is.

My voice curdles as the air runs out from my lungs, and I’m dizzy by the time I spin around to face Wyatt.

“Wow, that was some good?—”

“Rage?” I finish.

He leans back on his palms and lets his legs swing off the tailgate as his head falls to the side.

“Yeah. That was some well-earned rage. How do you feel?”

I draw in a deep breath, my lungs filling a little more than normal. I smirk.

“I feel amazing.”