Page 110 of The Score We Never Settled

She’s tried to keep emotionally closed off here.

“I know you’ve made memories since I’ve been gone,” I divulge lightly. “Where are pictures of you, Zo, and Fallon?”

“In my phone somewhere.”

I look at her, and she’s emotionless, trying to hide the truth behind those rosy cheeks and hazel eyes. “You forget how to work a printer or the internet?”

“I’m not here much.” She lifts her shoulders as if it doesn’t matter. “I just have things comfortable.”

I tip my head downward. “Alright. Well, fewer things to move.”

“Move?” Her brows go toward her ceiling because she must be remembering what I said earlier. “You can’t be serious.”

“When have I ever not been serious?”

She blinks. “Every day of your life?”

Alright, specifics.

“When have I never been serious about you, Layla Jean?”

Drawing her bottom lip between her teeth, she sighs. I meant what I said about the house I bought being ours. I made it specifically for her and me.

“Never, it seems.”

“Good girl.” I smack her ass lightly and move from the wall. “That gets you a treat.”

Before she can respond to what that might be, I lightly toss her to the couch, watching her bounce twice while her hair goes every which way, before I climb on top of her and between her legs.

“Round two starts now,” I vouch, peeling her panties down on one leg and not bothering with the other. “Feel free to scream on this one.”

Then I position my cock, shove it inside her, and receive Layla arching her back for more.

I last longer on this time, thank God, because my pride would not survive a two-pump chump status tied to my name.

Layla screams my name when she finally comes.

And, me…I come inside her again because it’s the only way I’m going to cement it in her head that I’m here to continue the long haul.

Forever.

30

LAYLA

There’snothing like cool sheets on any day of the week. The crispness against your skin is one of the best feelings in the world, by far, butnotwhen there’s supposed to be another body next to yours.

Another body that fucked you six times over the course of hours before you fell asleep in his arms.

When I explain the amount of rage that coursed through my body the moment my eyes cracked open, expecting to be staring at the only man in the universe who still gives me butterflies and, apparently, just enough outrage that I blindly got dressed and drove over to hishouseto let him have all of it.

The audacity of his words mixed with his actions makes me want to throat-punch him so hard, I’m anticipating the choking sound he’s going to make after I do so.

However, after I pound on his front door with tight fists and brew angrily on his porch so much I’m surprised steam isn’t coming out of my ears, he magically throws that on pause when he opens it.

Shirtless.

My eyes immediately descend downward, finding a white towel wrapped around his rigid, unfairly muscled waist andtorso, and I grapple with how I came here, in what condition I arrived, and what I woke up to.