Page 33 of Sexting the Coach (Pucking Daddies #6)

Weston

“Elsie.”

Normally, I wouldn’t act like this. I’m not the kind of guy who barges into someone’s apartment without their permission, but everything feels like an emergency at this moment.

Something possesses my body, and I push past Elsie’s tall friend standing in the doorway and right into their apartment. The doorman recognized me from the other time I walked Elsie in and let me come up, and now that I’ve come this far, I’m not going to let her friend stop me from seeing her.

“Hey,” Mabel says, trying to block me, but I don’t pay her any attention, striding in and coming to a stop in front of Elsie.

Elsie looks a mess—her face is red, and she’s clearly been crying. In fact, it looks like she’s still currently crying, silent tears running down her face. When I step toward her, she takes a step back, and the result is a squeeze so violent in my chest that it knocks the air right out of my lungs.

“I quit,” I say, because I don’t want to waste time. I’m tired of this game of back and forth with her. I didn’t turn in my badge and drive all the way across the city just to waffle with my words now.

“What?” Elsie breathes, and both of her friends take a step back, their gazes wary as they stare at us. I don’t care if they stay or go. I’m not here for them, I’m here for her.

“When I found out that they fired you,” I say, holding her gaze. “I told them not to expect me back. Quinn said she knew I was reacting and that she wasn’t going to take me seriously, but I’m dead serious.”

“Weston,” Elsie says, and when she steps forward, her eyebrows drawn down, it’s the first flash of anger I see registering on her face. “No. Coaching there is your dream.”

“It’s not—”

But she cuts me off before I can finish. “I’m not going back. So, you need to call Quinn and tell her that you didn’t mean it. That you’re not quitting.”

“I won’t.” I’m letting that growl back into my voice, that commanding edge that I use with the guys on the ice, but I can’t stop it.

Something in my head tells me that I need to be gentle with her, soft, but nothing about this feels soft.

It feels, instead, like I’m fighting for my life.

“Like I want to work for a place that would fire you like that.”

“Weston.” Elsie stops, looks to the ceiling, then takes a deep breath, as though centering herself.

“This will ruin your reputation. I’m gone.

I’ll take the fall—I’ll show that text, if I have to.

I started this. Even back when Karlee found us, you argued for coming clean, and I wouldn’t let you. I forced you into this lie.”

“You can’t force me to do anything.”

“They are going to lump you in with Morton,” Elsie says, a note of pleading at the edges of her voice. “Even though this is nothing like that. You know that, and I know that, but all those trolls on the internet don’t. They’ll look at you and see every shitty guy who’s ever harassed a girl.”

“I’m not working there without you, Elsie,” I growl, taking another step toward her, and this time, she doesn’t back away.

“And I’m tired of the silent treatment. I’m sorry if I was too forward that day, if I scared you away, but I meant what I said.

And I said it because I was pretty sure you felt the same. ”

Her breath catches in her throat, and I see her body swaying toward me, as though she doesn’t have control over it. I can’t keep my eyes from flitting over her face, dropping down to her throat, following the path of it as she swallows, her breath coming a little faster.

“Was I wrong?”

She gives me the slightest shake of her head, and it sends a rush of relief through my entire body. At least at that moment, back then, I was reading her right. She wanted me—this—the way I wanted her.

But clearly something has changed.

“Okay,” I say, “so what the hell is going on? Why run off? Why go dark on me like this?”

She opens her mouth, then, so quickly I almost miss it, I catch a new resolve entering onto her face. She steps back, crossing her arms over her chest, looking away from me. A tendril of hair comes loose and falls over her forehead, and I resist the urge to reach up and tuck it back over her ear.

That resolve hardens. Locks me firmly out.

“You’re keeping something from me,” I say, nearly gritting my teeth in frustration. “Just talk to me, Elsie.”

It’s all we’ve been doing, for all these frustrating weeks. Just talking and talking. All the stupid questions to get to know each other. Learning about her brother. Telling her about my injury. Embedding ourselves into each other’s lives.

And for what?

I knew from the first time I saw her that this woman was going to be trouble. Could feel her effusive joy in the air around the stadium, like the trail of perfume behind a beautiful woman. Surrounded and drowned by her, I should have known better than to engage.

But I did.

And now I’m in love with her, and the thought of losing her right now is stifling.

It makes the air in the room feel hot, thick, like I could choke on the idea of a future without her.

Like the oxygen around me is actually impossibly heavily, infiltrating my veins and dragging my body to the ground like a limp, useless puppet.

“Elsie,” I try again, knowing my voice is hoarse but not bothering to fix it. “Can you please just—”

“You need to go, Weston.” She says it like it’s something she has to force out. I’ve seen Elsie like this before, acting one way but feeling another. It’s the primary way she operates, keeping her true feelings under wraps.

I can see that there’s something she’s keeping to herself. I just don’t know what it is.

“You need to go,” she repeats, urgently, desperately, her head still turned. Her shoulders are starting to shake, those tears running down her face again.

“Tell me you don’t feel this, too—”

“I don’t—”

“Look me in the eye,” I growl, hands itching to reach out and touch her, to convince her that whatever it is she’s feeling, she can share it with me.

But maybe that’s not the case at all.

Maybe Elsie was just having some fun with an older guy. Maybe she was carrying on with this out of a sense of duty.

Maybe she’s felt sorry for me. Since I’m on the way down, after my injury, the highs of my career, my prime. Maybe this entire time, she’s been doing community fucking service.

“Look me in the eye,” I repeat, lowering my voice. “And tell me that you don’t feel this, too. And I’ll leave you alone. I’ll walk out that door and never come back. You won’t have to see my again.”

A little sob hiccups up and out of her chest, and I step forward to take her in my arms. It’s maddening, seeing her like this, and knowing she won’t let me close enough to help.

Then, rolling her lip into her mouth and sucking in a deep breath, she turns to me, wiping the tears roughly from her face and saying in a completely even tone, “I don’t feel anything, Weston. This was a fake arrangement from the start. And I’m sorry if I ever made you think it was something else.”

It feels like anthrax right in the middle of my fucking heart. Sticky and spreading, moving throughout my body, poisoning me from the inside out.

I’m an asshole, and for a long time, I’ve only seen the worst parts of life.

Elsie helped to change that. She—as fucking cliche as it is—brought in a ray of sunshine that followed me throughout the day.

Being with her felt like hope. It felt like the future was mine again, like it was something I was allowed to hope for.

I should have known better than to get my hopes up.

Swallowing down the bile in my throat, I nod, turn, blindly walk toward the door. My vision is dark, pulsing with the reality of the fact that this is happening. I told her I would walk out of her life, and I’m going to do it.

Even though when I close her door behind me, when I step into the elevator, when I walk past the doorman and out onto the street, it eats me up.

I’ll keep my promise to her, even if it fucking kills me.