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I’d eventually been completely cleared following the investigation into Talbot’s accidental shooting, but for a while, some very uncomplimentary things had been said about me.
People still mentioned my name around New York. Maybe she’d heard of me in the security circles she ran in. God knows she dealt with plenty of bodyguards, and sec people talked.
I gripped my phone tighter. “If you wanted to know about the shooting, all you had to do was ask.”
A line formed between her brows. “Shooting? What shooting?”
“What the hell are you talking about then?”
“Your books.” She walked forward until she was close enough to press her hand on my chest. I’d gone stone still. “You’re Danny Markham.”
After suspecting she knew what had led me to walk away from the force, my career as a writer was anticlimactic. “So?”
She blinked. “So…we’re more alike than different.”
The bark of laughter tore out of my chest hard enough to hurt. “You have no idea who I am. I’ve fucked up in ways you can’t imagine. I’m definitely not some lily-white pop princess. So don’t tell me how alike we are, when you don’t have the faintest clue who I am other than being the guy who knows how to work you just right.” I couldn’t help touching her cheek, unsurprised when she flinched away. I’d done that too. “That was just blind luck. Sometimes breaking the rules pays off.”
Like the rule that I should’ve never gone near someone like her. As much as she’d seemed to enjoy what we’d done last night, I hadn’t explained much to her, though she was clearly a newbie to the scene.
I’d pushed her into the deep end because I couldn’t control myself.
Again.
Everything always came down to my damn control, and how little I had of it. My reckless behavior always hurt the people who mattered most. People like Talbot, and Peyton, whom I already cared about way too much.
Anything beyond concern and affection had no place in a one-night-stand, even my bastardized version of it. This was just lust, and that would fade.
I wouldmakeit fade.
“What rules? I’m not some neophyte. I wanted what happened just as much as you did. Probably more because I’ll never experience it again. But you…you’ll just find someone else to spank.”
I might’ve laughed at that, if the sparkle of tears on her thick lashes hadn’t stopped me dead. Even my breath stalled in my chest. I refused to watch her cry. Or worse, to be the cause of a single one of those tears.
I was responsible for her, to ensure she was comfortable and happy and—
And she’s not yours. Get that through your thick skull.
“Peyton,” I began, gripping her arm when she shoved me away.
“You didn’t break any rules I didn’t dare you to.Iaskedyouif you dared to bring me home.” With one shake of her head, her tears dried. “Remember that, Jed.”
She walked away from me, out the door of my bedroom and down the hall.
As tempted as I was to chase after her, to ask her to let me explain some of the muddied thoughts I’d never really voiced to another person—about the shooting and how it changed me, and my writing, and so much else—I knew that was just selfish. I was just prolonging the inevitable. It still stunned me I’d hurt her, even momentarily, but I’d already seen how responsive she was. She was genuine and emotional.Real.
That was why her music spoke to so many people. But it didn’t begin to scratch the surface of why she spoke tome.
I was still standing in the same spot when the front door slammed.
ELEVEN
PEYTON
That whole thingabout going home again being awesome? Complete and utter crap.
I stood outside the door to my mother’s sitting room in our family home in Long Island, shredding my pale pink patent leather purse with my nails. Even knowing I was going to tell my mother to go to hell—metaphorically speaking—I’d still dressed the part of the little lady arriving for tea.
Pink purse, pink pumps, strand of pearls around my neck.
