Page 2 of Penn

“Why would I want to spend time with them?” I ask.

“Because they would actually want to hang out with you.”

“You don’t want to hang out with me?” I ask, pressing a large hand against my chest and gasping. “I’m hurt, Dixie. Really fucking hurt.”

She rolls her eyes and shakes her head. “Yeah, yeah, real hurt.”

“I think you should probably make it up to me. I’m actually a very sensitive man, and that little comment might make me believe you don’t like me.”

“I like you just fine,” she says, grabbing two beer bottles for Lainey Sloan. “I just don’t want to fuck you.”

That actually hurts. I know she has a boyfriend. She’s made that perfectly clear. But to hear that she has no interest in getting naked with me does chip away at the old ego.

Good thing it’s bigger than she assumes.

“Seriously, Penn,” she says, leaning forward again, “you’re over six feet tall and built like a brick wall. Plus, you have that whole dangerous outlaw thing going for you. You could have just about anyone in this bar. Some of the men included.”

I don’t bother trying to avoid looking at her cleavage. What I wouldn’t give to have my face buried in there. Or another part of my body. “What’s your point?”

“My point is, why do you keep flirting with me when you have girls practically drooling in their drinks waiting for you to glance in their direction? You know I’m unavailable, so why not put that effort towards someone who will actually climb on your lap and ride you like the bull I know you believe you are?”

So she has thought about fucking me. No one else would give that much description if she was totally uninterested.

“I seem to always want what I can’t have, I guess,” I say, taking a drink of my beer with a one-shoulder shrug.

She lets out a soft, dry laugh, but I don’t sense any humor behind it. “That’s not a good thing, Penn. In fact, it sounds pretty pathetic.”

“Pathetic?” I ask with a small cough as I choke on my beer.

“Wanting what you can’t have only ensures you’re never going to find happiness. All you’re doing is setting yourself up to get hurt. Or maybe you use that as a pathetic way to protect your heart.”

There’s that word again.

The words hit me like a punch, and the air escapes my lungs. The smirk disappears from my face as the sound of static fills my ears. I’m no longer sitting in the Seven Crows in Gravelton, Nevada. I’m back in my five-bedroom, three-bathroom house I worked my ass off to buy.

Rather than stale beer and pizza, I smell the fresh floral scent of the woman I thought I’d spend the rest of my life with.

I just returned home early from a business trip, and I hear noises I shouldn’t hear from our bedroom. Walking up the stairs, my heart pounding, and I’m surprised no one else can hear it. In my hands, I held the chocolates she loves that only come from a small shop just outside the O’Hare International airport. Something I always got for her no matter whether it’d potentially make me miss my flight or not.

I stepped into the house wearing a proud smile, happy to surprise the woman I’m supposed to marry in a week. But the deep, breathless groans and desperate gasps as she begs for the climax she works towards wiped the grin right off my face.

When I pushed the door open, I saw my fiancée. Tangled in the expensive white bedsheets she insisted we needed, she was riding a man who wasn’t me, her fingers gripping the headboard as her hips rock, and her face flushed with primal pleasure I thought was reserved for only me.

And stupid me could only stand there, frozen in place. Even as large, familiar hands slid up her sides and roughly manhandled her breasts in a way she claimed she didn’t like. Her hips continued to move with frantic need before she’s pulled down to his chest, and he pounded his hips up into her. She cried out, her body trembling the way it did when she came, and I wished I’d interrupted. Stopped her from achieving the pleasure she desperately sought.

That’s when they finally spotted me, and my fiancée clambered off, pulling the sheet with her as she tried to cover herself. The two people who should have never betrayed me completely ruined me. They killed every dream I had built inside me, and I just said, “I’ll never forgive you.”

And I meant it. To both of them. And I never have.

“Penn? Hey, you okay?”

Dixie’s voice brings me out of my nightmare of a memory. My heart hammers in my ribs like it did that day, and I clench my fists as I try to focus on where I am. Letting out deep breaths, I force myself to relax, taking in her look of concern.

“I’m fine,” I say.

“You look like you saw a ghost,” she says, her voice soft and surprising.

Tossing back the rest of my drink, I set it on the counter and pull out my card. “I should get going. I could use a long, hot shower.”