Dropping The Ball - A New Year’s Billionaire Romance - Weston Parker Page 0,58

Even tonight, he still hadn’t known if he should.

But he had. Surely, that had to count for something. Right?

I was more confused than I’d ever been in my life, but there was one thing I was sure of. Our story didn’t end here.

Although I played with the idea of getting him replaced as my bodyguard, I knew I wouldn’t do it. This was between us, and I wasn’t bringing his job into it. I still trusted him to protect me and he’d trusted me when I’d said that what happened between us at home would stay right here.

I wasn’t petty, and though I was hurt, a large part of it was my own fault. All the blame didn’t belong at his feet and I wouldn’t lay it there. I’d made a lot of mistakes these last few weeks, acted completely unlike myself, and it’d all been for him.

Deep down inside, I also couldn’t say I’d change anything if I could go back. His lie of omission had helped bring us to exactly where we were, and that wasn’t necessarily a bad place. In fact, it might even be a better place now that it made more sense why I felt this way about him.

If he’d told me at the outset, I definitely wouldn’t have had the guts to go after him as hard as I had. I’d have been way too scared of embarrassing myself in front of my big brother’s best friend and my old crush.

I didn’t know what it said about me, but I finally fell asleep when I realized that if he hadn’t lied to me, we might not have been together at all. Did that make it okay that he lied to me? No.

Did it mean it was over between us? I didn’t know, but I didn’t want it to be. I just had to figure out if I could get past it, and I needed time to figure out if and how I could do that.

Chapter 21

CARTER

Rylee hadn’t fired me, which was honestly what I’d been expecting after she refused to even look at me before practically flying out of the hot tub that night. It might’ve been better if she had, though. I didn’t know how much more of this shit I could take.

It’d been a week of us moving around each other like zombies, and I was just about ready to crack. The fact that it was Christmas Eve day and my parents would be here any minute made it a thousand times worse.

Rylee had today and the next couple of days off from rehearsals. Jules had invited us over to his place for dinner, but she’d told him we couldn’t because my parents would be with us. That was how I’d found out she didn’t plan on changing her mind about their visit—because I’d overheard the conversation with her manager.

Things were that kind of fucked up between us right now. I shoved a shirt over my head when I heard the doorbell, my teeth grinding as I raced down the stairs without knowing what to expect from this impending visit.

It felt like a disaster in the making to me, but I wasn’t feeling overly optimistic these days. My heart hurt like hell every time I saw her, and since it was my job to keep my eyes on her at all fucking times, I was more of a wreck than what Tani had been worried Cash would turn this house into.

Rylee was already downstairs when I got there, looking like every dream and every dirty fantasy I’d ever had all rolled into one. It wasn’t what she was wearing that made her look that way. It was just… her.

Get the fuck over it. Only I couldn’t. I’d tried all week to put what had happened behind me and focus on only being her security detail, but my body and the scorched lump of coal in my chest refused to let me.

My heart leaped into overdrive from its scorched status of being burned in its own hellfire whenever I saw her, and my cock remembered far too well what it felt like to be inside her. Even in her washed-out jeans and a god-awful Christmas sweater, I thought she was the most beautiful woman who’d ever been born.

She smiled when she opened the door, and my parents predictably went gaga over her. I hadn’t told them who she was, but the contract prohibited me from doing it. As I’d known they would, they