Page 30 of More, Daddy (Bluebell Bruisers #3)

CHAPTER

TWENTY-ONE

“You look like someone just told you that you have a booger in your nose and you didn’t know,” Leah says, dropping a stack of manila folders onto my desk.

I’ve been staring at my computer for the better part of… fuck, I don’t even know. I thought maybe half an hour, but when I glance up at all the shit Leah’s just unloaded, I notice the sun shining brightly against the office doors—an afternoon kind of bright.

I lift my hand and shield my eyes. “Close my office door. It’s fucking bright out there.”

Eyeing me, Leah closes my office door but doesn’ t sit. In a bubblegum pink pants suit, she holds onto the doorknob as she studies me.

“Okay, so either I was wrong about the booger, or you picked it.”

I have to look away, because her glare is way too intense for how I feel today, even with the joking. I can’t fight her, and equally, I’m too weak to hold up my shield, either. I remain silent.

“What could it be?” she questions rhetorically, enunciating the last letter of each word in a way that has me exercising my restraint.

We may be close, but she’s still my boss. As much as I want to tell her to get the fuck out and leave me to agonize over the twisted organ in my chest that I have the audacity to call a heart, I can’t.

“Ahh,” she says decidedly after a minute or so of us giving each other dead eyes. “It’s a woman.”

Fuck.

I shake my head, then scratch at the side of my jaw. “I need to get back to this.” I glance at my screen, which is devoid of anything. No browser tabs, no intranet, no gradebook, hell, I don’t even have a game of Solitaire going.

She nods to the award on my bureau, behind my desk.

“You realize your Superior Youth Athletic Training Award is super shiny, right?” Leah releases her grip on my office door handle, and sits in one of the two seats across from my desk.

“There’s nothing on your screen. So tell me her name, and if you don’t, I will 100% let my imagination run away with me, and then start spreading vicious rumors. ”

I know she’s joking, and I also know this is her soft way of telling me she’s here if I need to talk. And I assume because I know all of that about her , then she’ll know that I’m not a complete asshole when I say, “It’s my business, not yours. ”

Another moment enduring her eyes on me, raking over the rumpled, untucked ends of my shirt, the way one of my boots covers my jeans and the other doesn’t, the dirty Cattleman I wore today instead of my nice suede hat, and my ruffled hair, uncombed and kinda greasy.

My jaw is coated in stubble, and since she’s been in my office, I’ve caught no less than three yawns.

“If you need anything,” she says, getting to her feet. “Aside from a shower, a shave, and a laundromat. Seriously. You know I’m next door.”

I nod, and she leaves, and then I go back to sitting and stewing.

At three o’clock, I have to trudge across campus and do some training.

Work. Real work will take my mind off of this bullshit. I’ve been torturing myself since I found out, and all I want to do is stop thinking about this shit.

Stop thinking about her.

She said she’s in love with me three times last night. How can she be in love with me? She doesn’t even know me.

And yet… I fell in love with her. Except, no, it’s different for me. I really did fall in love with who I was talking to. I just didn’t have all the information, like the fact she is actually a teenager who graduated high school— the same high school I work at —last fucking year.

It’s absurd. It’s insane. It’s absolutely disgusting.

I cannot be attracted to someone ten plus years younger than me. I am not attracted to younger women. I never have been.

I jerked off when I saw her body. That photo, that picture I took of the one she sent, velvety curves on display, skin like porcelain, tits like the fucking Venus de Milo?—

“Mr. Dupont! What’s up!” a sweaty boy in a football jersey walks past, initiating a high five, which I do. I give him a nod, and duck into the training office.

Put it out of your head, West. None of it matters anymore.

Not even how fucking compatible we were sexually.

She was so good at being my loving girl, my baby.

Or, I don’t know, was she ? Or was that all just acting, for my benefit, to make me fall for her?

For me, all of it was real and that realization infuses my stomach with a fresh bout of nausea, causing me to grip the edge of the training table and tug my hat off, welcoming fresh air to my warm skin.

It was real for me.

I was ready to exist beneath the sun and in the light of the moon. I was ready to put a ring on her finger, even though it felt fast. Even though it was crazy.

It was crazy good. She was crazy perfect.

But she isn’t even who I thought she was, so I have to wonder, was any of it real? Or was I just her joke?

I don’t know, but I’m more grateful than ever when Tanner Colt walks in, a bag of melted ice on his collarbone. Finally, something that takes my mind off of her.

“Let me just get you one more bag of ice, for the ride home. It’s hot out there, and your mom’s AC in the car is broken, right?” I ask Tanner as he sits up on the table, fitting his arm back through his shirt.

He shakes his head. “She got her AC fixed. But we don’t have an ice machine at home, so I’ll still take that bag, if you’ve got it. ”

I hand him the bag, and we walk out together. After making sure he gets loaded up into his mom’s car, I head back to the training office.

When I return, I let out a string of curse words as I grip the door and step back, one boot inside, one on the hot pavement outside. “Jesus Christ, what the fuck are you doing in here?”

Briar sits atop the training table, wearing spandex little shorts that the cheerleaders practice in, and a sports bra. Nothing else. A few weeks ago, hell, even a few days ago, seeing her like this would mean nothing. A junior coach wearing practice clothes. That’s all it is.

Now that I know every curve of her naked body—her soft, tantalizing bare breasts, the way her form sets my blood on fire—seeing her in practice clothes feels like a violation, like stumbling into a private moment in a restroom.

I force myself to look away, to tear my gaze from this devious little liar, her flawless thighs, her supple ass—every inch of her is a dangerous temptation I’m fighting to ignore.

Her honey blonde hair is off her shoulders, pulled into a messy, sagging ponytail, the ends dusting between her shoulder blades as she turns to face me.

The fantasy I had about Cadence comes rushing back—the one where I wake her up with my words at the back of her ear, cock pressing into her pink panties while I whisper for her to keep quiet, to let daddy make himself feel better—and this time in the fantasy, when Cadence peers at me over her shoulder, cheeks flushed, lips swollen, eyes hooded with desirous foreboding—I see Briar.

She disrupts the disturbing fantasy.

“I need to talk to you, and you’ve been avoiding me all day,” she says, sliding down from the table to cross the room toward me. I stick out my hand, indicating that she should stop. That she should not get in my personal space.

Her ponytail bounces when she stops, and her tits do, too. Fuck. I should not be looking at her tits. Despite the fact I know what they look like unclothed, I know what the tips look like when they’re needing a mouth, when they’re needing a palm.

I hold her eyes to impart the severity of my next words. “Leave me alone.”

As if I never spoke, Briar steps closer, close enough for me to see the ring of emerald mixed into the blue of her left iris. “I love you, West.”

“Quit fucking saying that!” I hiss, rearing back to make sure no one is outside.

The coast is clear, so I pull the old, heavy metal door shut, sealing us into the hot, mostly dark training room.

I shrug out of my suit jacket and toss it onto the training bed as sweat dampens my back and neck.

“You–you knew who I was the entire time. You pretended to be a stranger when all along, you were fucking hunting me! You told me your dad is staying with you… You said you were Cadence. All you’ve done is lie to me,” I hiss, wiping my forehead with my palm. “Look, you have to stop now. Okay?”

She shakes her head. “No. I won’t stop because of a tiny little hiccup.” She folds her arms over her chest, oozing defiance as she purses her lips. God, she’s being such a fucking brat. I want nothing more than to take her over my knee and punish her.

That thought— daddy punishing his bad girl —stops me in my tracks.

“A hiccup?” I hiss, quickly trying to control the burgeoning rage in my veins.

Taking in a deep breath through my nose, I let it out calmly through my mouth, adding, “A hiccup would be lying about your height, okay? Lying about who you are is not a hiccup.” I reach past her and pull open the door, letting heat and sunlight pour inside, illuminating the torn leather of the training table. “Leave.”

“It wasn’t all lies. Hardly any of it was.” Her voice is disarmingly tender. “We need to talk about us, West.”

I shake my head and stare down at my boots, keeping my voice as low as I can. “There is no us.”

A beat passes, and her silence draws my attention to her wide blue eyes. “There is an us.”

I shake my head, forcing myself to ignore the vivid emerald ringing her pupils and the way freckles bloom across her flushed cheeks like constellations.

“I thought there was an us,” I say, my voice raw, cracking under the weight of her betrayal.

“But the person I poured my heart into? She doesn’t even exist.” I lick my lips, letting the storm raging in my chest fuel my words. “You’re a liar, and we’re nothing.”

My words wound her, evident by the way she recesses back a moment, stretching her arms around herself, hugging.