CHAPTER 48 Millie Monroe
Promises Can Be Broken
I head out the same way I came in, and I call for an Uber. It pulls up a moment later, and I head back to my hotel, tears blurring my vision the entire way, giving the lights of Las Vegas Boulevard a bokeh feel to them.
What a hell of a way to spend my first time in Vegas.
I’d rather be getting drunk on the Strip and celebrating, but I guess that wasn’t in the cards for this trip. Maybe next time.
Right, as if I’ll come back here again someday. Why would I ever even think about coming back to a place that holds only a terrible memory for me?
When I get up to my room, I collapse on the bed and finally unleash the hold I have over the river. Tears stream down my cheeks as I snort my way to a sob. It’s ugly. It’s full of pain. Full of everything I lost when I came here with something to gain.
It’s pure and utter devastation. I know I fucked up, and maybe being on the field after his game was the wrong move. Maybe I should have waited. But it was Cooper’s idea. How the hell did it fail?
Maybe I should call him and ask him that.
I would never. But it’s a thought.
I’m still crying, but I force myself up and over to the window to look out at the view. Lights flash and twinkle in every direction, and there’s a whole sea of people down there having the time of their lives after the baseball game, or out for a bachelor party, or just visiting on vacation.
And here I am up here, alone and desperate.
I grab my phone and look up flights. No sense in staying here in town longer than I need to if I can get home sooner, right?
But all of the flights are tomorrow, and they’re all way out of my price range compared to the one I already booked for Sunday.
I throw my phone on the bed and resume my staring out the window.
My phone dings with a text, and I rush over just in case Cooper gave Archer my number.
It’s not Archer. It’s Jackie.
Jackie: Hope you’re happily humping and it all worked out. LMK!
I start to type a reply about how nothing happened when I hear a knock at my door.
Ugh, seriously? Someone has the pure audacity to knock on the wrong freaking door when I’m in the middle of this mess?
I ignore it, hoping they’ll go away.
They don’t. Instead, the knocking gets a little louder.
I must look like a mess.
Maybe it’s just housekeeping.
I wipe under my eyes with a tissue and blow my nose, and then I move over to open the door with an annoyed expression on my face.
That expression is frozen in place as my eyes meet those of the man standing in the doorway.
“Archer,” I whisper.
“Millie,” he says, his voice low.
We stare at each other for a few beats. “Can, uh…can we talk?” he finally asks.
“Yes, of course,” I say, opening the door wider. “Come in.”
“I thought maybe you’d tell me to beat it. That I was too late,” he says quietly.
“It’s never too late.”
He walks through it and straight to the windows, where his eyes fall down onto the view.
“Good game tonight,” I say softly, moving in behind him but not too close.
“Thanks.” He turns to look at me. “Are you okay?”
I shake my head. “I haven’t been okay for weeks, Archer.”
He presses his lips together and averts his gaze to the floor with a slight nod of his head.
“I’m sorry for what I did. If I could take it back, I would. If it means anything, I deleted it off my profile the second I left the resort,” I say. I’m rambling, trying to fill the quiet, awkward space with words.
“Why did you do it?” he finally asks.
I’m surprised by his question. “We’ve been over this,” I say quietly.
“Then go over it again for me.”
“The resort manager was pressuring me to put out something that had the potential to go viral. He never directly ordered it, but he hinted at including VIP guests in my content. In not so many words, he told me if I didn’t, he’d make sure I never got a paid partnership anywhere.
That was my ultimate goal, Archer. He played on my entire reason for accepting the trip to begin with.
I had no hope that you wanted to carry whatever we had past the month of April, and he was threatening to make sure I’d never reach my dreams. What choice did I have? ”
“There’s always a choice, and you chose betrayal.”
“And I immediately regretted it. You never gave me the chance to tell you that. After you left, Diedrick offered me a paid partnership with the Berkshire brand of luxury resorts. The entire brand, for a lot of money and perks and bonuses. And I declined it and returned home to my bartending job.”
“Why?” he asks.
“Because it felt tainted with the shame of what I did.” I shake my head and walk over toward the windows as I let my heart do the talking for me.
“I couldn’t accept it when every moment I was there would be a reminder of how what I did hurt you.
I’d see the anger on your face in every mirror.
The betrayal in every reflection. When I found out you left, I was broken, Archer.
Not just heartbroken, but entirely broken.
Like a piece of me left without a goodbye, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever feel whole again. ”
“You hurt me,” he says—as if I don’t know that. “My one request carried a heavy weight with it. I was suspended. I didn’t want people to know where I was. I needed to lay low, and you blew that wide open for me.”
I turn around to face him. “I know I did. And I’m sorry.” I hear the begging in my own tone. Don’t leave me. Don’t let this be the end of us forever.
“I want to stay mad.”
My chest heaves. “But?” I ask with way too much hope.
He stares at me for a beat before he answers that question, and when he does, his voice is low and raspy. “But even though you hurt me, I think you might be the only person in the world who also has the power to heal me.”
My stomach flips and my heart clenches as I stand stock-still, waiting for him to make the first move.
“I need you to promise me something,” he says.
I wait for his request, and he draws in a breath.
“I need you to promise me you’ll always choose me first.”
I shake my head. “Promises can be broken. Instead, I want to make a choice. It’s you.
It will always be you.” I blink back tears.
“I gave up my dream because once I reached it, I realized it wasn’t what I wanted at all.
What I want is you. To be able to make that choice every day to choose you.
To commit to you. To commit to a future with you, whatever that looks like. ”
“I don’t know what that will look like.” He presses his lips together. “It won’t be easy, especially right now with a two-city road trip coming up and me just getting back on the field. And I need to be honest with you. It’s going to take some time for me to fully trust you.”
“Nothing worthwhile is ever easy,” I say. “I’m willing to do what it takes to earn your trust back, and if this is something we both want, we’ll make it work. So I guess that begs the question…is this something you want?”
His pause as he averts his gaze to the window and then back to mine is heavy and loaded, and it feels like it fills the span of a hundred years instead of merely a few seconds.
But when his answer comes, it’s everything I need to hear.
“More than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.”
As he says the words, he closes the gap between us. He takes me into his arms and pulls me against him, and I bury my face in his chest, breathing him in as he buries his face in my neck and clings to me.
Tears spring to my eyes again, this time for a completely different reason.
Eventually we sync up again, and we both move back at the same time only so he can lean down. His lips collide with mine, and it feels like I’m back home again.
It feels like everything I’ve been missing for the last nineteen days since he left Paradise Island Resort.
He opens his mouth to mine, the urgency ever present as the kiss intensifies. His tongue dances with mine as our bodies remain close together. He shifts, and I feel his erection on my lower stomach. He’s ready as ever, and I’ve been ready since the last time I was with him.
He pulls back, and his eyes find mine. They’re heated, and his lips are already swollen from our kiss. “I just need to say one more thing,” he says.
I nod, my brows pushing together as I wait for his words.
“I love you.”
Tears track down my cheeks at his words. My chest tightens, and butterflies take flight in my stomach as electricity zips down my spine. “I love you, too.”
His face smooths in relief at my words, and his mouth crashes back down to mine.
We pick up right where we left off. We kiss for minutes or hours, and he slowly strips me out of my clothes as his hands wander up and down my body.
Seeing him on the field tonight, hearing the roar of the fans for him, and now having him here with me professing his love to me…this right here is the dream. This is the goal. Not going viral or getting enough engagement, not paid partnerships or free stays at hotels.
Everyone deserves to be loved. Everyone deserves second chances. Everyone remorseful deserves forgiveness.
And everyone deserves the opportunity to choose to put their person first.
Once I’m out of my clothes and he is, too, he slowly walks us over toward the bed. He picks me up and lays me down first, and then he kneels on the floor, pushes my thighs apart, and glances up at me, pure lust and need in his eyes.
“Fuck, I missed this pussy,” he murmurs, and then he dives straight in.
I have nothing to hold onto, nothing to grip, so I clutch the sheets in one hand and pull his face more tightly against me as the onslaught of pleasure hits.
It’s fast and furious as he licks his way through me, into me, stopping to suck on my clit before dipping his tongue back inside.
He adds a finger, and I’m twisting and writhing beneath him, fighting the pleasure because it’s too good, too quick.
I need time to savor this. What if this is it?
What if it all disappears again and this is just some wild dream I’m having?
As my first orgasm plows into me, I’m positive this isn’t just a dream.
The feelings are too real, too intense. And it’s not just that feeling of pleasure he’s delivering.
It’s also this overwhelming feeling of love for this man who is so very clearly the person I was always meant to be with.
How else can I explain that we were at the same resort for the same amount of time? It’s fate, pure and simple.
As my body starts to calm, he moves into place so he’s hovering over me.
His eyes are on me again, and I spot disbelief in his. “I can’t believe you’re really here,” he says.
“I missed you so much,” I murmur. My eyes flick to his lips, the lips that were just on my pussy.
“I missed you, too.” He leans down to press his lips to mine, the tang of my pussy still on his tongue.
At the same time, he reaches down between us to align his cock with my body.
He pushes into me, stretching me with his generous size, and we start to rock together, immediately finding our rhythm together once again as if no time passed at all.
“Oh, God, Archer,” I moan.
He pulls back and looks at me, a smile playing at his lips. “Your cunt missed me, too,” he says.
I nod. “So damn much.”
He chuckles, and he pulls back a little slower, a little more deliberately, before slamming into me again. I gasp at the feel as I claw at his back, my nails digging in as I hold on for the ride.
I wrap my legs around his waist as he slowly rears back again. “Your cock missed me,” I challenge.
He slams forward again. “Fuck yeah, he did.” He picks up speed, pushing into me with a heavy, hard rhythm, and I start to bend under him as my body betrays me. I want to make up for lost time all night, but it doesn’t seem like our bodies got that memo.
“Fucking hell, Mills. I wish I could wreck this pussy with my cum. Fuck, I’m so goddamn close,” he mutters.
“Do it,” I say.
His eyes fly open as he searches my eyes. “Are you sure?”
I nod.
“Christ, that’s hot,” he groans, and then I feel it, the first spurts of his cum as he releases inside me for the first time ever.
It’s a strange and beautiful feeling, hot and sexy, illicit and pure all at once. It’s the most base act two people can do together, yet it’s the first time we’ve done it this way.
It’s beautiful. Magical. And it pushes me straight into my own climax. Just the thought of his cum inside me does the trick.
I yell out his name as my body unleashes everything it has had to hold in for nearly three weeks. I claw at him and thrash as he finishes out his own orgasm, and as mine starts to slow, he pulls out of me.
His cum leaks out of my pussy, and he reaches down and moves it around, rubbing it on my clit. In a totally unexpected turn of events, the feel of his fingers on my clit moving around his own pleasure and mixing it with mine sends me into another orgasm—my third of the night.
I feel it coming as he rubs slow circles, but then it hits me out of left field, plowing into me with a brute force. He leans down to suck my nipple into his mouth as I ride out this climax, both of us panting and sweating and absolutely glowing with love.
We came through the worst of it. It’s all up from here.
And now, maybe we can focus on a future together…a possibility I never allowed myself to imagine, but totally and completely the biggest, best, brightest dream I ever could have pictured.