Razor's Edge: A Bad Boy Romance (Bad Boys of Football Book 2) by Clementine Roux, Penelope Silva

swallowed hard. She’d only said a few simple words and I already understood how difficult it would be for someone as inadequate as myself to compete with him.
     
    “Sam was like no one I’d ever met before. He was kind and gentle but also tough and fierce at the same time. He always made me feel like I was special. Like I mattered,” Hillary recounted.
     
    “You are special. You do matter,” I said, surprised by my candor with her.
     
    Her cheeks flushing, Hillary put her hand to her face. “I shouldn’t be saying this stuff to you. I should be talking about us. About you and me. About how you make me feel.” Sighing, she added, “It’s like I don’t know how to do this anymore. I don’t know how to be me anymore.”
     
    That was the most heartbreaking thing I’d ever heard a woman say to me. Didn’t she see how great she was? Didn’t she know how beautiful and sexy she was? If I was a better man -- a man, who knew anything about love at all, I’d hold onto her for the rest of my life. But, I’m not that man. I don’t do love. I don’t do forever and ever. I do what’s good for me now. I get done what needs to be done to make sure Edge and I are alright. I don’t need a woman in my life forever. I just needed her -- this woman -- to hang around long enough to make sure I can keep my son. I had to remember that or I’d mess everything up again.
     
    “This is going to sound crazy, but…” Hillary’s voice trailed off for a moment.
     
    “Now we’re talking,” I teased. “Let’s discuss your ass… your butt… your beautiful butt…”
     
    Hillary shifted, moving closer to me. “All of this -- this between us -- feels right and wrong all at the same time. Do you understand what I mean?”
     
    I nodded. “You want me. I think is what it means. In fact, I’m willing to bet that’s exactly what it means,” I said as my hand slid down from its position around her shoulders to her back until it rested on the small of her back -- my favorite place to be at the moment.
     
    Hillary shot up straight, turning to look me in the eyes. “Just hear me out. Being with you kind of feels like I’m cheating on Sam. Is that crazy? As wrong as it sounds, I can’t help but want to be with you. Even though you have me all tied up in your child custody nightmare and you haven’t given me one reason to believe you actually care about me, I still want you and it feels wrong.”
     
    Ouch! Where did that come from?
     
    I grasped her full hips to pull her toward me again. “But it also feels oh-so-right, doesn't it?”
     
    She blushed. “That’s what I’m telling you. I fully intended to never have to see you again, but as hard as I try, I can’t stop. I think about you all the time. You make me so mad, but you also make me want you. How do you do that? Is this some kind of mind game you’re playing with me? Is this what you do to women? Is this how things got so bad for you? I mean, I might be out of a job because of you and yet, here I am. I don’t know what’s happened to me. It’s like I’ve lost my mind or something.”
     
    Hillary was making me lose sight of my goal. I was losing my grip. I could feel it. I had a plan -- an end game -- but listening to her, made me question myself and my motives and I didn’t like it.
     
    “Don’t you have anything to say? Did I scare you?” Hillary asked.
     
    I opened my mouth to speak -- to say something to diffuse the situation and get her back in bed with her legs wrapped around me -- but I couldn’t find the right words. It was like a part of me shut off. “I… I…” I tried.
     
    Her shoulders slumped. “This is just another tryst to you. I get it,” she said, sounding defeated.
     

Chapter Eleven – Hillary
     
     
     
     
    I   sat in my car staring up at the building. After meeting with the superintendent of schools, I was in no better position than I had been the day they suspended me. Basically, he said, it was better I take a