Chapter 13
Thirteen
He waited until she’d scrambled into her car, starting it, before he turned away to walk back toward his. Her heart was a jackhammer in her chest, sending debris and shards of herself flying throughout her body, her soul, making one helluva mess at the very center of her being.
She didn’t dare look his direction as she put her car in gear and backed out of the parking spot, though out of her peripheral she could see him as he climbed in behind the wheel of his Bronco.
Roxy kept her gaze fixed straight ahead as she drove away, only daring to look in the rearview mirror afterward.
She could see the red glow of his brake lights, and then the flash of white as he reversed out of his parking spot, too.
He turned in the opposite direction, and as she turned the corner, his taillights disappeared out of sight.
Her mind was a maelstrom; every thought whirling too fast to process before the next was nearly suffocating her.
The feel of Travis’s mouth, his lips brushing over the corner of her mouth, her cheek… heat coursed through her at the memory and she blew out a steadying breath in the darkness of the car.
“Ohmygod,” she whispered into the void. The softness of his beard as it tickled her cheek, she had wanted to reach up and grab hold of either side of his face, just to finally know what it felt like beneath her fingers, her palms. Her nails had dug craters into her palms where she’d squeezed them inside the pockets of her jacket, just to keep from reaching for him, from touching.
She had wanted to twist his head so that his mouth—that had been so dangerously close to her own—could connect with hers.
She wanted to know what his lips felt like against her own, wanted to know what he tasted like, what his tongue would do as it entered her mouth.
She was home minutes later, pulling into the driveway. The headlights shone on the front of the house briefly before she turned the car off, climbing out.
Now that she was home, her body felt weary, exhaustion weighing her down heavily.
She hadn’t been sleeping or eating well, instead throwing herself headfirst into work, workouts and classes.
The physical toll of working herself as hard as she had earlier, along with the hypoglycemia attack had left her drained.
She dragged her gym bag out of the backseat and walked on weary legs to the front door, unlocking it and stepping inside, locking it again as soon as she was inside the darkened house.
Her gun was tucked into her gym bag, easily accessible if needed, but the house was quiet, nothing out of place—that she could see anyway.
Flipping lights on as she went, she checked every room.
Once satisfied that the house was empty, she trudged into the bedroom, dropping the gym bag onto the foot of the bed with a groan.
Roxy untucked the gun from the inside pocket of the bag, hiding it beneath her pillow before stripping the athletic jacket down her arms. Peeling the obnoxiously tight leggings down her legs, she tossed them both onto the pile of clothes overflowing the laundry basket in the corner of the room.
Struggling, she wriggled free of the skintight sports bra, breathing out a sigh when the spandex material landed on top of the pile of clothes with the rest of her outfit.
Shimmying out of her panties, those too followed into the pile.
Padding into the bathroom, she turned the shower on and waited for only a few minutes before stepping in beneath the warm spray, just long enough to wash the sweat off her skin.
Toweling dry and wrapping the fluffy towel around her body, she retreated to the bedroom.
Pulling on a pair of waffle weaved lounge pants, she shoved her arms into a matching cropped sweatshirt, the buttery material soft on her skin.
As she climbed into bed, Roxy’s thoughts turned once again to Travis. Whatever this was, she was struggling to continue fighting it.
And by the sounds of things, he was, too.
He was dazzled by her?
Her?
She grabbed the tv remote from her nightstand and flipped the tv on. A rerun of How I Met Your Mother started, and she settled in beneath the covers as Ted started another tall tale.