Page 27 of Her Player

As if the woman couldn’t get any fucking sexier. She stared up at me through those black-rimmed glasses of hers, slightly lopsided on her face, as if she didn’t quite care how they sat along the bridge of her nose. I couldn’t help it. I balanced the tray in one hand and reached out, gripping her glasses and repositioning them so they sat a bit straighter on her face. I’d seen her with those pathetic little magnifying reading glasses before. But never in a pair like this.

Never in the kind of glasses that haunted every single geeky girl dream I’d ever had as a horny ass teenager.

I felt my cock leap against the zipper of my jeans.

She probably didn’t have a clue how beautiful she looked.

“Yes?” Victoria answered, pulling me out of my trance. I shook my head a bit as she continued. “I’ve worn glasses of some sort ever since I was a teenager.”

I marched into her room, brushing past her until I set the tray of food down into a chair next to the bed.

I felt her eyes watching me like a goddamn hawk as I turned back toward the door. “Forgot something downstairs. Be right back.”

If she said something to me, I didn’t hear it. I rushed out of that fucking bedroom so quickly that the carpet would have caught on fire had my feet been fucking matches. I rounded the corner of the hallway, tucking myself into a dark corner before I shoved my hand down my pants.

I rearranged my growing erection before I slipped into one of the many bathrooms to wash my hands.

I took my time making my way back to the bedroom. But the sounds of giggling and kissing made my ears twitch. I knew those sounds. They were the sounds that frequently came from Coach’s office. Or the locker room. Or the showers of the locker room.

Thank fuck, we’re on this end of the house, I thought to myself as I made a beeline back down the hallway.

“Oh, Colton,” Bry groaned somewhere in the distance.

I heard her yelp softly before Coach’s voice echoed into the kitchen. “Careful, this house echoes.”

Bry giggled as I silently slipped out of the kitchen and into the hallway. “Might wanna pin me to a wall closer to the bedroom, then.”

I grimaced at their words as I picked up the pace.

Bry giggling sounded out once more before I heard something that sounded like a growl. Ew. Fucking hell, that’s gross. I wrinkled my nose as I trudged down the hallway, leaving their sounds in my fucking dust. By the time I got to Victoria’s room, there was a soft, warm glow of light pouring from beneath the gap of the door toward the carpet.

However, when I nudged the door open with my hip, the first sound I heard broke my heart.

I heard a sniffle before I saw Victoria furiously wiping her face.

“Hey, hey, hey,” I said as I quickly closed the bedroom door behind me. I made my way to her with a quickened pace. “Hey, it’s okay. Look at me.”

She just shook her head and tried turning away from me, but I gripped her shoulders. I spun her in my direction. And when I gripped her chin, tilting her sorrowful steel gaze up to mine, I allowed the pad of my thumb to swipe along her cheek.

Drying her tears as they helplessly fell.

“How did this happen?” she whispered.

I immediately pulled her into my arms. “Hey. Hey. I’m right here.”

“I hate this. I hate this so fucking much. I want to strangle him, Rhett,” she choked out.

I threaded my fingers through her loose hair and let it spill down her back. “Just let it out.”

Had I not already seen her once before in this state, I would’ve been shocked when she collapsed into me. But flashes of that night we watched Golden Girls rushed through my mind. The destitute look on her face. How she randomly cried at points during the show that weren’t worth the tears. How she eventually laid her head on my shoulder as if her entire body gave out due to the war raging within her.

I tightened my grasp when I felt her collapse into me, her body refusing to hold her up any longer.

“It’s okay, I gotcha,” I said softly as I scooped her off her feet.

I walked over to the edge of the bed and perched against it, holding her in my lap as if she were nothing but a child in need of soothing.

“This just isn’t my place, you know?” she managed in between her hiccups. “I-I-I-I—it’s just… not my bed. Not my… my shower. Not… not my…”