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"But nothing."
She laughed, her chest shaking slightly, reminding me that I was nearly smothering her with the weight of my body. Lifting, I gently pulled out of her and then carried her in my arms to the shower.
Her body was weak, so we bathed quickly, and I helped her get dressed. I opened my mouth several times to tell her she should stay all night, but then her phone would ring again, and I decided against it.
Hunter must have called her a hundred times and called me another hundred. I had expected him to show up and bang my door down, but he never did.
But as if he knew, the calls stopped for both of us the second we got into the parking garage and back in Shelly. Tatum thought he had just given up, but every fiber of my being knew it wasn't a coincidence. Somehow, he was keeping tabs, and it made me wary of dropping her off.
"Let me walk you up," I insisted, already parking Shelly and looking around the parking lot of her apartment complex. She didn't live far, just over the bridge in Miami. Her apartment complex was older, but it seemed well-kept.
"You don't have to," she smiled.
"Just want to get you home safely, Coconut." And make sure Hunter isn't there to fuck with her.
We held hands as we walked up the stairwell to the second floor and down the open walkway to her door. She unlocked the door and turned on the light, allowing me a view of the main rooms. There was a small kitchen off the side of the living room, and a small hallway leading to what I assumed was the only bedroom.
"Do you want to come in?" She asked.
The answer was no, but I started nodding, not wanting to say goodnight yet.
Before I stepped foot into the apartment, a text sounded on my phone, and I pulled it out to read it without thinking of who it could be.
Don't go inside, motherfucker.
ChapterSixteen
Tatum
It felt like Tripp was being protective, and I invited him in because I felt the need to be protected. The calls from Hunter all night started to scare me, and it wasn't lost on me that he could have been angrily waiting for me.
He was no longer my boyfriend, nor had he ever been violent, but after the way Tripp treated me and took care of my body, talking to Hunter was the last thing I wanted to do. A conversation with him scared me because I didn't know what to say.
"You need to sleep," Tripp stopped abruptly in the doorway after I invited him in.
"I think I know what I need, Daddy," I teased him in a way I always did, thinking it would make him laugh. But his face was blank as he stared down at his phone. "What's wrong?"
"Um," he shook his head, then slid the phone into his pocket. "I have an early meeting at the stadium tomorrow."
"Just you?" I started to panic that the lady in the waiting area was right. That conversation felt like a lifetime ago, but it all came back to me with full force. "Are they mad at you?"
"Fuck," he sighed, then wrapped me into a hug. "It's kinda cute that you are worried about me."
"You just showed me your superpower, Tripp. You can't leave me now."
It was another joke, but I could tell it made him uncomfortable for me to mention needing him. He had said from the start that sex was all he had to offer because he never did anything with permanence. Even his apartment was bare, showing he really did expect to leave Miami at any given moment. I just hoped that moment wasn't tomorrow.
"I'll call ya sometime," he squeezed me, then stepped back outside my door. He walked down the breezeway without looking back, and I watched as he took the stairs quickly. His head was on a swivel, looking around the parking lot as if the boogie man were waiting.
When he jumped into his Bronco, he looked up at me, giving me a small wave before peeling out. Then I locked myself inside and walked around to make sure I was alone, just on the off chance Hunter decided to wait for me somewhere—like my bed.
Whatever, he wouldn't be caught dead in my bed.
Once I realized he wasn't there, I felt terrible for even considering it a possibility. Hunter was a lot of things, but he wasn't a psycho. He knew we weren't together, and he knew why. There had to be a reason he had called me so much, and I felt like now that I was home, I should call him back and make sure everything was okay.
Picking my phone up to dial, I scrolled to his name and started to hit send when a knock on my door sounded loudly.
"Tay?" Hunter's voice came through the wood. "Tay, are you okay?"
