Page 26 of Playing with Forever (Players Club Sinners #1)

Chase

I ’d never had a woman in my home before, not really. I had women over, obviously, but they’d never spent the night and they definitely hadn’t stayed for days, so having Andrea in my space was new territory for me.

I put Andrea in the spare room that she had, ironically, run into the other night when I was chasing her.

The idea of her sharing my bed with me on a nightly basis made my palms sweat.

Not because I didn’t want it, but because I wanted it too damn much.

I wanted to be able to wake up and see her safe next to me, to feel her presence even in my sleep.

That kind of shit was dangerous. I was already in over my head as it was.

Andrea didn’t seem upset with me setting her up to sleep in the spare room.

I’d had some women in the past who’d hoped for more from me in spite of my clarity from the beginning that it would only ever be sex, but Andrea just thanked me for the extra towels for her bathroom and remarked on how comfortable the mattress was.

It was nice, to have someone who respected our relationship and my boundaries.

Knowing she was under my roof, I slept better than I anticipated. I did wake up twice and stepped out into the hall, briefly peering into the guest bedroom. Both times Andrea was sleeping soundly, curled up on her side almost like a cat, her dark hair spread out on the pillow behind her.

When I woke up in the morning, it was to the smell of bacon frying.

Usually I was up pretty early, but waking up twice—and all the stress from yesterday—must have exhausted me more than I’d realized, because when I glanced at the time on my phone I saw that I’d slept in by an hour.

I never set an alarm, never had to after leaving the military, just naturally waking up the way I had when on tour.

Same time every day like clockwork until it was ingrained into me.

I got up and resisted the immediate temptation to look for Andrea, instead hopping quickly into the shower. When I stepped out, I felt more refreshed, more ready to face whatever would be going on in my kitchen.

Andrea was already dressed for work, although she wasn’t wearing makeup yet and her hair was still damp from her own shower. She was wearing a light green dress, cute but still office-appropriate, and in the warm light coming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows behind her…

She looked so fucking beautiful, it made me forget to breathe.

Andrea looked up and smiled at me, and my heart tried to stage a jailbreak from my ribs.

“Hey, you!” she exclaimed, startled to see me. “I thought you’d be up way earlier than I was. Lifting weights or working out, or something.”

I tipped my head to the side. “You found the home gym, huh?”

“I don’t know why I’m surprised you have one.” Andrea served up bacon and eggs onto a plate. “Hope you don’t mind the basics for breakfast.”

“No, this is great, you really didn’t have to.

” I actually couldn’t remember the last time I’d really cooked for myself.

I was capable of doing so, but with it being just me, it was easier to grab something on the way to work.

And for dinner, I ordered takeout all the time from one of the many delicious restaurants Vegas was known for.

It was a city full to bursting with the best of those, after all.

“You’re letting me stay here, so it’s the least I can do as a guest. I cook for Violet all the time. She works such weird hours and I think she once burned water.” Andrea handed me the plate. “Coffee’s brewing. You know you’ve got a big gym downstairs in your building that you could use, right?”

“I don’t like working out around other people.” Lifting weights was meditative for me. Sometimes I did it on nights I couldn’t sleep to clear my mind. I didn’t want other people around for that.

Andrea shrugged and let the subject drop, pouring coffee for herself and for me. She added an unholy amount of sugar to hers.

“No coffee beans were harmed in the making of this drink, so why are you killing the taste with all that sugar?” I asked.

She flipped me off but was fighting a playful smile. “Shush. Just because you’re a masochist who likes it black…”

I flashed her a wicked grin after taking a sip of the dark brew. “What can I say, I love pain.”

“No, you don’t get to make this sexy,” she said, pursing her lips at me in a way I found adorable. “Taking your coffee black doesn’t make you a fun person to fuck. It just makes you a sad and self-loathing heathen.”

I almost snorted my coffee out my nose laughing.

It felt unusually natural to have her puttering around my kitchen. Andrea acted comfortable in it, like she belonged there, and I couldn’t deny that I enjoyed her presence, and even our easy, flirtatious banter.

I stared at her, plate in my hand, for a few seconds too long before I realized what the hell I was doing and went to sit down at the kitchen table.

We ate breakfast quickly. We didn’t have a lot of time to talk since she needed to finish getting ready for work, but it wasn’t the kind of awkward silence that needed to be filled with idle conversation.

It was nice, actually. One of the things I appreciated about my friends, including my brother, was how they could chat and joke and laugh, filling my life with joy even if I was in a quiet mood, which was most of the time.

They distracted me from the dark places in my head.

It was unexpectedly nice to be with a woman that I could just sit in comfortable silence with. No need for talking to fill the space. Just enjoying the morning and each other’s presence.

Shit. I was getting in way over my head with Andrea, yet I couldn’t stop those feelings stirring to life inside of me.

I drove Andrea to work and she didn’t make a single snarky comment about my need to do so. As much as I loved her sass, I appreciated her taking this situation seriously.

We pulled up in front of her office, right at the front door. I didn’t want her even walking through the parking lot on her own. The sun was out and it was a bright morning, but I wasn’t about to take any chances with her safety.

“Thanks for the ride.” Andrea smiled at me and leaned over, placing a soft kiss on my lips before I realized her intent. “I get off at five, so don’t be late. I’ll be starving.”

She winked at me, playful as ever, and hopped out of the car. I watched her head into the building and resisted the urge to bang my head against the steering wheel.

Jesus Christ. I was so fucking sunk.

Annoyed with myself, I drove off to work. I parked, stepped out of the vehicle, but was only just closing the car door when the shot rang out.

On instinct, I dropped to the ground like a stone, my body laid out tight and flat to the concrete, trying to make myself as small a target as possible with the car as a shield. My heart hammered so hard in my chest I thought it would burst free.

I sucked in a breath, but the scent of blood and sand was all I could smell, the memory still so fresh in my mind. A gunshot—I tried to pinpoint the direction. Where had it come from? Who was shooting at—

It’s not a gunshot . That initial panic cleared as I realized it had been a car backfiring. But telling my body this information didn’t matter. There was still blood and sand in my nose. I couldn’t inhale properly, the sand in my lungs choking me, the sound in my ears still ringing…

I attempted to breathe. In and out. I desperately tried to claw my way out of the past so I could remember the countless breathing exercises I’d learned over the years when something triggered my PTSD.

My therapist told me that the trauma I’d endured in the military wasn’t just something I’d magically heal from.

And my response to high frequency sounds—like this one, or gunshot or fireworks—would never be the same as a person who’d never experienced what I had.

“Chase?”

My brother’s voice sounded like it came from incredibly far away, echoing in my head as if I were in a tunnel. I pushed my body back up so I was crouched beside the car and raised my head, which felt like it weighed a ton.

“Chase, hey.” Austin hunkered down to my level in front of me. “It’s me, Austin.”

Relief swept through me as I tried to pull his face into focus.

My reaction to a car backfiring had been embarrassing enough, but I was grateful that it was Austin who’d witnessed the episode, and not someone else.

He’d been with me one other time when the same thing had occurred and knew how to handle me, and the situation.

Thank God it hadn’t happened in front of Andrea.

“Can I touch you?” he asked, aware that any quick movement, if my mind wasn’t clear yet, could make things worse, instead of better.

I nodded, realizing I was shaking all over. I hated this, I hated it more than anything, my mind and body in a panic that I couldn’t control or escape, a prisoner in my own head. It was fucking mortifying.

Austin took me gently by the arm and helped me up to standing, then put a hand on the small of my back to walk me over to a nearby bench. “Well, this sure is a fun start to the day, huh?”

His tone was casual, relaxed—joking even—but not like he expected me to reply. Considering what a smart-ass my brother was the majority of the time, he surprised me by being calm and level-headed when it truly mattered the most.

Once we sat down, he continued more seriously. “Can you do me a favor, give me five things you can see?”

I despised grounding techniques, but I’d learned that they did help to clear the fog from my brain after this kind of incident, diverting my attention from the anxiety still lingering inside of me.

“The cars,” I gritted out. “You. The trees along the edge of the parking lot. The building with the firm in it. Some of the casinos down the strip.”

“Great, that’s great.”

On a regular basis, Austin could drive me nuts, but he had a way of praising me during my panic attack that didn’t make me bristle, but relaxed me instead.

“Four things you can hear?” he asked.

I briefly closed my eyes to concentrate on the sounds around us. “The cars, the birds, the wind, and you.”

“Three things you can touch?”

“The bench, your shirt, my feet on the ground,” I replied, feeling my anxiety easing.

“Two things you can smell?”

“Car exhaust and Mexican food.” There was some kind of taco truck down the street selling breakfast burritos, most likely.

“And one thing you can taste?”

“Bacon.” It lingered in my mouth—and I realized that I tasted my breakfast, and not blood.

“That was really good.” Austin glanced down at my chest, like he had to make sure I was still breathing.

“My eyes are up here,” I joked dryly.

My brother smirked at me, relief in his eyes. “If you’re feeling well enough to crack jokes, that’s a good sign.” Austin put his hand on my shoulder. “Keep breathing for me, okay? And don’t give me that look.”

That look of annoyance, but it was mostly directed at myself. I slumped back against the bench. My panic attack might’ve been over but my heart was still racing.

“I’m sorry,” I croaked out, embarrassment creeping in now that I felt more grounded. “You shouldn’t have had to deal with this shit.”

Austin frowned. “It’s no big deal. Nobody else saw, and I’m your brother. I’m glad I was around to help you.”

I nodded. My stomach still felt shaky.

“Are you steady enough to walk into the office and get some water from the break room?” Austin asked. “Maybe splash some water on your face in the bathroom? Nobody’ll notice a thing.”

Yeah. Nobody would notice. I was good at hiding my inner turmoil, most of the time. But then something like this would happen—again, I was grateful that Andrea hadn’t witnessed my extreme reaction to a car backfiring.

I hated feeling weak, so out of control. Paralyzed, even. The idea of Andrea seeing me like this, someone she relied on to protect her so easily triggered…it was possibly the worst thing I could imagine.