Chapter 21
LUCY
I’d never been to his house before.
I’d thought about it, pictured it, imagined what it would feel like to be invited there, even as I told myself it would never happen.
And finally, here I was.
I didn’t even need to pinch myself to make sure it was real. My sore pussy was proof enough.
After Blake had wrecked me in his office, he’d bundled me up in his wet suit jacket. Making sure no one was around, he took me by the hand and led me to his car, picking me up and putting me in the front seat. He buckled me in, kissing me on the forehead.
“Gotta keep the most important thing safe,” he murmured, creating a pang in my chest from the unexpected sweetness as he got in on the driver’s side and started the car.
No one ever, in my entire life, had considered me the most important thing.
I ruminated on it and what it could mean as he steered with one hand and grasped my hand with the other.
He held it for the entire drive, and I let him, settling into his car the way I hoped I might be able to settle into his life.
Even though part of me knew better.
After all, we’d had sex again—several times—and he still hadn’t kissed me.
Coach lived out in a beautiful cabin with big windows and tongue and groove ceilings in the woods of Gehenom, the town Tabb and Reina were located in. Even though his home was in the woods, he did have a neighbor—an old woman who happened to be outside on her porch when he lifted me out of the car.
“Who’s with you, Blake?”
He stiffened. So did I, expecting him to drop me, distance himself, and make up an excuse. After all, what we were doing was entirely taboo, could get us both in trouble.
Instead he said, “Hi Maureen. This is Lucy. She’s mine. I’d introduce you, but it’s cold and she’s tired, so I’m taking her inside the house.”
She harumphed. “About time you brought someone home.”
She’s mine.
“Mine” had become my favorite word in the English language.
He didn’t stop again as he opened the door and locked it behind him, still carrying me up the stairs, through a large, dark bedroom, and into a bathroom.
I faded in and out as he put me in the hot shower, washed my body slowly and carefully, my body curved against his, taking special care to lather my hair and then rinse it out without getting shampoo in my eyes.
“No one’s ever taken care of me like this before,” I said sleepily.
There was a rough tone to his voice, one that I would’ve noticed more if I weren’t completely wiped.
“No one, huh?”
But he let it go, working conditioner through my hair and rinsing that out, too, and then I was being lifted and carried out of the shower, dried off in a big, soft towel, and carried once again into a bedroom and placed in a big bed.
“Please don’t leave me this time,” I yawned. “Or I’ll hate you.”
“Lucy, you’re in my house. I’m not leaving. I’m sleeping.”
Getting into bed with me, he pulled me into his big, beautiful, safe, and strong arms. My back was to his front, nestling against him, I sighed.
“I could get used to this.”
I never heard his response, because I was out like a light.
When I woke up, I was still in his arms. And he was snoring.
I lifted my head to watch him, amused by how loud the snoring was.
His eyes were closed, his face soft in the shadows of the dark night, his grip on me somehow tight, even as he slept.
I considered basking in the feel of my body pressed to his, but I wasn’t missing this opportunity to snoop.
In so many ways, Coach was a closed book.
I knew so little about his past, his family, what he wanted out of life beyond taking our team to the Frozen Four.
Obviously I’d rather learn more from Blake himself, but for now, I’d take what I could get.
The memory of him avoiding my lips when I tried to kiss him hit me like a slap. I banished it. I’d get to the bottom of why he wouldn’t kiss me, and once I learned it would start hurting. Not that it hurt now. I didn’t care—
Stop lying to yourself, Lucy.
Okay. It fucking hurt. But what was I going to do, wake him up and demand answers? I mean, I wanted to, but I could piss him off and he could shut down on me…or worse, he could tell me something I didn’t want to hear.
Ugh. Enough.
I carefully wriggled out of his hold. He groaned and flipped over onto his stomach, still snoring.
My earlier inclination to keep snuggling with him had disappeared with my shitty thoughts.
It was chilly in his bedroom, the air conditioning on way too high.
I suddenly felt cold, too cold. I needed clothes, needed to cover my bare body.
I went into his closet to find a shirt to put on, rummaging around until I found an old Gehenom Beasts jersey with Blake’s last name and the number 18 stitched across the back.
I pulled it on over my head. Even with my height, it fit me like a dress, and I had to roll the sleeves up multiple times to make it even remotely wearable. I decided then and there I was keeping the jersey, even if I didn’t get to keep the man.
Blow job tax and all that.
That decided, I roamed silently around the bedroom.
There were no photos anywhere, no personal items. It was clean and sterile, lonely and sad.
So I contented myself by imagining jazzing it up with pops of color here and there, throw pillows, my colorful dresses mixed in with his boring black suits and white starched shirts.
The more I snooped, the more I realized just how empty Blake’s life was, how solemn, how—I wrinkled my nose—boring.
Well, that’s why he had me.
Giving up on the bedroom, because there were no fun secrets, I continued into the hallway, opening and closing doors.
They were all bedrooms, as meticulous and impersonal as his own.
One room was set up as a gym, with mats, a weight bench, and a rowing machine.
I lost a few minutes in there, picturing Blake all shirtless and sweaty, and let out a sigh.
Maybe we could put that rowing machine to good use…
Shaking myself out of that fun thought, I closed the door, and continued until I reached the last one, opening it.
Aha.
An office.
I entered, knowing it was more than a little shitty to snoop, but I didn’t care—I had to learn more about him somehow.
Making my way around the desk, my brows drew together.
Because this room was not staid, or sterile, or boring, or impersonal—not at all.
The desk was covered in framed photos and notes, some of hockey plays, some of recaps on the team. It was the framed photos that stopped me in my tracks, though. Because they were of me.
Yearbook photos starting from when my parents died to when I graduated high school, lined up neatly in silver frames. My heart pounded in my chest, because this was…this was…
I didn’t know what this was. Blake’s story time earlier while I’d been sucking his cock had made it seem like he’d cared. But here it was, actual proof. Where had he even gotten those photos? I guess they could’ve sent them to him because he was my legal guardian and all.
Guardian. Like our safeword.
I winced.
“Why stay away for so long?” I asked the empty office. “If I mattered so much, why did you leave me?”
The office didn’t answer.
I jerked open the top drawer, and paused, reaching in and pulling out a pair of familiar Barbie Pink underwear.
My underwear.
A million feelings rushed through me. Relief, because it wasn’t a stalker after all.
Worry, because actually, it was. Satisfaction, because I had enough power over him that he wanted my panties.
Disgust at both him for doing something so filthy, so creepy, and at myself for liking it.
There was something hot about him stashing my panties away as a sexy little memento.
And finally, there was anger, because there was no reason for Blake to be creeping around and stealing my panties when he could have just asked for them and I would have gladly handed them right over. I’d done that earlier tonight, hadn’t I?
I rifled through the rest of the drawer, coming up with a folder labeled LUCY.
It had my grades, every award, photos of boys I’d kissed, every boarding school I’d been kicked out of, including the time I’d been expelled for stealing the headmaster’s keys to his Lamborghini and joyriding it around campus.
There were also documents for all the times I’d been written up for causing havoc on campus at Tabb… and black and white photos of me.
Was that in my dorm room?
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
Where had he gotten these photos?
How much of a stalker was he?
Opening his laptop, I powered it up. The password prompt appeared, and I immediately typed in Lucy.
Nope.
Wait.
Troublemaker.
Immediately, the screen began to load.
“Oh, Coach, you should know better than to have such a simple password,” I snorted. I scanned the desktop until I found what I was looking for: an application called Surveillance025. I knew about it, because my friends’ fiancés all used it to spy on them and “keep them safe.”
I clicked on it and my heart turned into stone, like in a fairytale—one of the sad ones. It was both what I’d expected and dreaded, because it was video of my empty dorm room.
He’d been watching.
There were multiple screens with multiple cameras. Not one, but two, were aimed toward my bed.
My bed, where I’d gotten off the day my panties had gone missing.
I took a deep breath, trying to recalibrate, to rationalize.
Because yeah, there was a dark, sick part of me that thought his obsession was kind of hot.
I wasn’t going to pretend it wasn’t. But the other part of me hated this.
Hated that he’d skulked around to watch me without my goddamn permission when he could’ve just talked to me, like the grown man he pretended to be.
He’d made me feel like I was alone in my obsession, when he was clearly in as deep as I was.
No wonder he’d been able to find me at the hotel. How long had he been watching me? I felt terrified and claustrophobic, but mostly angry at the lies and the secrets.
What else was Blake Samson hiding from me?
I wanted to storm into the bedroom, to scream at him, to throw things, beat him with my fists, but something he’d said to me earlier rang in my head, the “lock her up in a tower” bit.
Is that what he’d do to me if he found out I’d caught him?
Or worse, would he feel guilty and awful and retreat again, leaving me out in the cold?
I needed to think.
I needed to not be here.
I headed downstairs and located my purse in the front hallway, grabbing my phone to text Leslie.
Can you come get me? Like now?
Lucy, it’s the middle of the night. Leslie’s asleep.
Shit. That must be Mason.
Please, it’s important.
Fine, I’m on my way. Where are you?
Coach’s house.
Ellipses appeared and disappeared. Mason clearly had no idea how to respond to the revelation that his fiancée’s best friend was at his coach’s house in the middle of the night, obviously up to no good.
Finally, he responded.
I’ll send someone.
Shit.
Someone else was bad. Someone else could talk. This still needed to be a secret.
No, Mason, it has to be you.
More ellipses, before he replied.
Don’t worry. I’ll send Emory. He’ll keep your secret.
I relaxed, slightly. I knew enough of Emory’s secrets for him to keep mine, too. I hoped.
Before I left, I scribbled a note to Blake. A continuation of the story when he’d had me backed in a corner and trapped around his cock. My weak, exhausted pussy clenched at the thought, making me even angrier.
Mine, he’d called me.
We’d finally gotten somewhere. I finally had someone I belonged to, or at least I thought I did. By being a fucking unthinking idiot, he was taking that away from me, too.
I put my pink panties on top of the note, just in case I wasn’t clear enough. And with that, I headed outside to wait for Emory and get the hell out of here before I stormed back inside, up the stairs, and unleashed my fury and rage and hurt on the man sleeping there.
Minutes later, Emory pulled up in his McLaren. He glanced over at me when I got in the car.
“If I ask what happened, will you hit me?”
I turned my head to glare at him.
“No, but I’ll tell that lit professor of yours what you’ve been up to.”
He sighed. “No, you won’t. Your bark is worse than your bite, Lucy.”
He was right. Maybe if it were the other way around, I’d protect myself better from being hurt by Blake.
“If I ask if you’re okay, will you threaten me again?”
I shut my eyes, unwilling to let him see the truth.
“I’m fine.”
For a moment, he was quiet as we drove, the woods around town turning into streetlights, sidewalks, and bars. A few drunk students stumbled around, laughing, but otherwise off-campus was quiet.
“My bite is worse than my bark,” he told me. “And even though my professor may not know it, I refuse to give up on her. I won’t let my own personal demons get in the way of our endgame.”
I shook my head, still refusing to open my eyes, or he’d see how glassy and wet they were. I refused to show anyone else my pain.
“That’s nice for you, but you don’t know what it’s like to be rejected your whole life. I’ve had enough of it. I won’t take more. I can’t force Coach to do what he doesn’t want to do, so protecting myself is the next best thing.”
“You might be surprised,” Emory murmured, but didn’t elaborate more.
He was quiet as we drove the rest of the way to my dorm, but he did put on Sabrina Carpenter for me, making me soften a little. Especially when he said, “If you want, you can crash with Matt and me. Might take you out of the line of fire, and I know I wouldn’t want to be alone right now.”
I softened even more, grateful to have people in my life who cared, even if the one person I wished cared enough didn’t.
The most important thing, Blake had called me.
Now it felt like a lie.
“Thanks for being a good friend and not spilling my secrets,” I told Emory.
“Thanks for being a good friend and not spilling mine,” he replied.