Page 41 of Off Limits: The Firsts

It’s a lie.

“Come again?”

“We can’t do this.”

“Well, we did do this, and it was fucking incredible, so tell me something I’m actually going to believe.”

I’m afraid of what I’m going to find when I see my dad for the first time in a month.

I clear my throat but lose the battle against tears for the second time this morning, and it takes everything to sound unaffected when I speak. “If Cory were to find out, he’d fire me.”

“Bullshit.” He says the word, but we both know it’s true—the silence hanging on the line tells me, so I take advantage of the moment to try and reason with him.

“I’m contracted by your employers, Easton. I have to remain unbiased . . . and I sure as hell don’t look unbiased if I’m sleeping with you one minute and telling them to reinstate you the next. Call me crazy, but they’d second-guess every opinion I have when it comes to you. My credibility would be shot to hell when it’s a vital, necessary part of my job.”

“Credibility is one thing, Scout. Sleeping with me is another. Now find another way to spin this so you can avoid having to explain why you tip-toed out like you were some one-night stand. I’ll wait.”

I hate that his words make every part of me sag in relief and in sadness. But they do, because he didn’t consider me a one-night stand and because I know it can’t happen again.

“I just can’t right now. If someone found out, then . . .”

“No one’s going to find out. Are you going to tell someone? Because I’m not. Who else knows about last night and is going to say something?”

My mind scrambles for an explanation, a validation. “What if someone recognizes me leaving your place? Another player? The media? The damn girl in the lobby? And they go and tell the press?”

“Girl in the lobby? What are you talking about?”

“Nothing. No one.” I shake my head and grip the steering wheel harder, knowing I sound schizophrenic but unable to stop. “Just never mind.”

“There’s something you’re not telling me.”

“No.” My voice breaks, and I clear my throat. “There’s nothing. It’s just . . .”

“It’s just? That’s all you’re going to give me?”

“I’ve gotta go.”

“This discussion isn’t over, Scout.”

Yes, it is.

I hang up the phone just before the sob breaks free. I know I’m being overly emotional. I know that everything with my dad is making me sensitive. But I also know that there’s something about Easton that I can’t let go of just yet, but I have to.

Is he the type who’d leave?

Of course he would. All men leave, Scout. All people leave. That’s what they do.

But what about last night? What about how he made me feel? And not just the sex—because that was pretty damn incredible—but all of the other feelings I went to bed high on and woke up still swimming in. Do they mean anything? And more importantly, do I want to let them mean something?

I fight the urge to call him back. To ask him if we could table this for another place and time. Tell him that my dad’s sick, explain why this contract is so important, and let him know I’m scared, because if I feel this much after spending only one night with him, how would I feel if we were to spend more together?

But I can’t call him back.

Because it all comes back to my dad.

To the promise I made him.

To the fact that anyone I’ve ever truly loved in my life has left me.