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Her heart pounded as he approached in nothing but his pants, his chest bare, his neck particularly pretty with a hickey Sandy had left as a reminder of last night.
“Let me help you with that, hmm?” He reached out and slid the duffel bag off her shoulder and then dropped it on the floor, knelt, and unzipped it.
She felt as if the world crumpled when Beckham saw everything that was inside the duffel. The duffel that she had been stealthily—or not so stealthily—stealing from his apartment.
This really took the cake of it all!
“Why give them back if you’re taking them again?” he asked her, studying her in confusion, his eyes full of…it wasn’t disappointment. It was something else that she couldn’t discern. Hating the idea of him hating her again, Sandy sat on the floor as Beckham reached into the bag and pulled out his things, one by one.
Beckham just didn’t know what the hell he was most disappointed about.
About Sandy—glorious, vexing, complicated Sandy Brown—taking his goddamned things again, or about her leaving his place like some felon in the night without even a farewell after the day—and fucking night—they’d spent together.
“I don’t know why I take them!” she finally cried, agitated. “I’ve been to doctors, okay? Nobody knows why I do it, I only get anxious and I do and I seem to do it…only with you.”
The revelation that he was the only he stole from threw him off for a moment. He rose to full height, digesting this slowly. “Do my shirts give you comfort?”
She started crying.
“Sandy.”
Sitting there on his floor, she hiccupped and sobbed into her hands.
“Son of a bitch,” he murmured, then turned to her and gentled his voice as he knelt beside her. “Sandy…if you ask me for them, I’ll give them to you. Have you ever tried that? Asking for something you want?”
“I’m not going to beg anyone for anything, much less you.” She pulled free of his hold, proud and stubborn, and Beckham cursed under his breath and pulled her close.
“You beg me in bed, Sandy. You beg me in bed and I’m begging you now. Ask me. Ask me, and I swear to God I won’t say no to you.”
She lowered her face, sobbing.
Then she spoke down at the floor.
“Can I p-please take your shirts with me back to F-florida?”
He thought he just shattered.
He’d thought he would free her, insisting that she ask for them. Instead she sounded broken, and the question had just shattered him. The victory he’d expected to feel never came. Instead he felt desolate and she hadn’t even left.
Hearing her star
t to sob again, he realized she waited for his reply.
“Yes, baby,” he said, softly, running his hand down her bent head, and he watched helplessly as she gathered his shirts. A decade old and worn and some, even torn. And he felt like she’d just washed and scrubbed the life out of his heart as she shoved them back in the duffel and carried them to the door.
He stared at his keys on the console by the door, suddenly hoping she’d make a grab for them. She paused and stared at them, then clenched her free hand into a fist and reached for the door. Beckham stood next to her and clicked for it to open, not even following her out. As soon as the door sealed shut behind her, he covered his face in one hand and stayed there, breathing through his nose, suddenly hating the emptiness she left behind, and suddenly hating himself even more.
Sandy paused outside his door while her chest hurt and her eyes burned, and there, standing just feet away from him, but with a door between them, she did the hardest thing she had ever done in her life. She waited for the elevator, and the moment the doors rolled open, she rang Beckham’s doorbell, and instantly forced herself to part with the duffel bag. She set it at the foot of his door, and ran into the elevator, the doors rolling shut once she was inside.
Inside, with her hands empty.
Empty of him and everything that reminded her of him.
Her therapist had said that she stole from Beckham Winters because she was trying to get his attention. That a part of her ached for his acceptance and that stealing was a way to ensure Beckham gave her attention—except it was never the good kind.
Not the kind she really wanted.
Even knowing this, she couldn’t stop.
