Chapter 54
Chapter Fifty-Four
Hayes
We allow all my teammates and Callie to stay for dinner. Afterward, they take the kids to the ice cream parlor, giving us time alone together. Foster wasn’t on board at first, but Lincoln found his new favorite Colts player, much to Easton’s displeasure.
Leighton takes my hand and leads me to the stairs. “Come on.”
“Baby, it’s been so long since I’ve had you, I want to take my time.”
She stops on the second stair and turns around. My hands find her hips, and she bends down to kiss me. “I’m not bringing you up here for sex.”
“Good, because after the kids go to bed tonight, I’m gonna spend an obscene amount of time feasting on your pussy before I slide inside you. I missed my playmate.”
Her cheeks flush, and she moans. God, I love those sounds.
“Okay, you need to stop with the dirty talk until after I show you this.” She tugs my hand, and I let her lead me up the stairs.
She stops at the top, not taking me to her guest room. I realize that Sky and Patrick’s bedroom door is open. She pulls me through the doorway.
It looks as though she’s in the middle of painting. The space has been cleared out of everything except a ladder—and the picture of Leighton and Sky resting on the otherwise empty dresser.
“What do you think?” she asks.
“I think it looks great. The color’s a little feminine for me though.” She tilts her head, and I walk over to her. “I love it. I think this will make a great bedroom for you.”
“And you?” Her eyebrows rise.
I pretend that my heart isn’t leaping out of my chest at her suggestion that I move in here. “You want me to move in?”
“I know it’s sudden, but going through all their stuff, it told a story of their life together, and I realized that I want that. I want the different decades of our favorite clothes hung in the closet. Years of makeup in a drawer. I want to accumulate stuff with you.”
“So romantic.” I chuckle.
“So, I suck at words, but I want to lie next to you every night. I want lazy mornings where we order donuts for the kids so we can stay in bed just a little longer.”
I pull her to me and kiss her forehead. “You’re taking all my lines. I’m supposed to woo you, and now you’re wooing me.”
She rests her chin on my chest and stares up at me. “I think we woo each other. That’s the whole point, so the spark doesn’t go out.”
“Baby, the spark is never going away.”
“It might. But like you said, that’s life, right? We’d find it again.”
In this moment, I can’t imagine never wanting her.
“So?” She bites her bottom lip.
I stare into her eyes and cradle her cheek with my hand. “I love you, Leighton Sinclair, and I’d love to move in with you.”
She blows out a breath and sighs. “I thought you were going to say thanks, but no thanks.”
I frown. “Why?”
She shakes her head. “Because I thought I messed this up between us, and you might want to take it slow. That my issues—”
“Never. Let’s make a deal. You never kick me out again, and I’ll never leave you.” I take her hands so she can’t pull away and look into her ocean eyes. “I promise to never leave you.”
Leighton smiles, and she doesn’t try to get free of my grip. “I know. And I’ll never kick you out again. I might ask you to sleep on the couch though.” She chuckles.
“I’m not sleeping on the couch. I’m putting in a rule that we don’t go to bed mad. I’ll eat your pussy for hours straight until you forgive me if I have to.”
“Jeez, Hayes.” She’s protesting, but her blush says she loves it when I talk to her like that. “Oh!” She squirms out of my arms, and I want to grab her shirt and tug her back. “There’s another reason I called you up here.”
“What is it?” My head tilts.
She opens one of the dresser drawers and pulls out a phone, bringing it over to me. I sit on the edge of the bed and pat my leg for her to sit on my lap, which she does.
“I found this phone in Patrick’s backpack. It was an extra one. I charged it, and that night there was a call on it. I answered.”
My eyebrows lift.
“It was a private investigator that Patrick hired. He claimed that since he hadn’t heard from Patrick, he was going to destroy the photos because he had never received payment.”
“Did he say why Patrick hired him?”
She shakes her head. “No. He said if I pay him, he’ll tell me.”
“And did you pay him?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know if I want to know. I mean, there are only so many reasons a man has a second phone, and he hired a PI. Something is up. I could let it all remain a secret…”
“What do you want to do?” If I was her, I would’ve already paid, but I also understand why she might want to let the secret die with them.
She mulls it over, then blows out a breath. “I think I want to know. Is that bad? Is it an invasion of privacy—”
“You’re raising his three kids. It doesn’t necessarily mean what you’re thinking. It could be something other than infidelity.”
She nods. “Okay, I’m gonna call the PI back.”
I kiss her cheek and run my hand up and down her back in silent support.
She calls the number, and I hear her end of the conversation. She tells him to send her the bill, and she’ll pay it. Then he’ll get her the pictures.
It takes the guy a minute to get us the invoice, and since I have my wallet on me and her purse is downstairs, I put it on my credit card. I wanted to volunteer anyway, but I didn’t want to overstep.
Minutes after we pay the invoice, she receives an email from the investigator.
“Wait!” she says before we can click on the pictures. “I don’t want to do it here. Let’s go into the guest room.”
“Are you worried about bad energy or something?”
She shrugs. “Just in case. This room is ours now, and I want whatever those pictures show to stay out of it.”
I laugh but understand. “Lead the way.”
We get into the guest room, and we settle on the edge of the bed, side by side, our thighs and arms brushing.
“Ready?” she asks.
“I feel like I should be asking you that.”
“I am.”
She nods and clicks on the link, and when the first picture comes up, we say in unison, “What the hell?”