Back to the Start (Dangerous Love Book 4)

by Elle Keating

  Then why did he feel like something terrible had happened? That whatever occurred would forever change his life? “Okay. Can you let her know I called?”

  “Sure, Jake. I’ll leave her a note. I’m heading to class myself.”

  Jake thanked her and hung up the phone.

  She’ll call. She knows you have class in an hour. There’s no way she won’t call before you have to leave.

  She didn’t call. Not before class, during or after. Panic started to set in. It wasn’t like her to not check in with him just to say hi, to talk about her day, to tell him how much she missed him. Because of their sports schedules and studies, he hadn’t seen her or made love to her since the night before they both left for college. But they had spoken every day on the phone and emailed each other every chance they got. Jake couldn’t wait to have her in his arms again. Just a few more weeks. He would finally get a break in his practice schedule and be able to surprise her by showing up at her doorstep. It would be an early Christmas gift. He wanted her all to himself, even if it was just for a night or two, before they went home for the holiday break. Once they were back home Jake imagined that Morgan’s time would be hijacked by her mom and his own family, leaving them little time to be alone.

  But as much as he wanted to steal her away, he was eager to go home and tell their parents that they were together… finally. They hadn’t told their family, not even Carina, that they were a couple because they wanted to tell them in person. Jake knew that his parents would be happy over their news. She was already considered part of the family and he couldn’t imagine Aunt Day not approving of their relationship. Jake had a feeling that everyone close to them knew that they would eventually get together.

  Three hours had passed since he called her and had spoken to Morgan’s roommate. Enough was enough. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed her number. Just like last time, it went straight to voicemail. And just like last time, he retrieved Allison’s number from his contacts and called her for the second time that day. Allison picked up on the fourth ring.

  “Hey, Jake.”

  “Hey. Sorry to call you again, but I really need to speak with Morgan. Is there something wrong with her phone? It keeps going to voicemail.”

  “No… I just think she turned it off… you know, because she was sleeping. I’ll go see if she’s awake.” Jake heard Allison’s voice in the background, but it was muffled, as if her hand had been covering the phone. Again, his gut twisted and he couldn’t escape that overwhelming feeling that something was wrong.

  Morgan’s voice finally came through the phone. But it did not put him at ease. In fact, his panic escalated as he listened to her utter a soft hello. He didn’t waste any time and got right to the point. “Morgan, what’s wrong?”

  “I’m not feeling well. Stomach flu, I think.”

  Her answer seemed rehearsed, as if she was reading from some script she had concocted between his two phone calls today. “Did Allison tell you that I called?”

  “Yeah, she did. But I wasn’t up to talking.”

  Bullshit. Everything she was saying right now was fucking bullshit. Maybe she wasn’t feeling well, but too sick to call him back? His girl was stubborn and strong. There was no way she would allow a cold or flu to prevent her from picking up the phone. “Morgan, I was worried that you… ”

  “Jake, we need to talk.”

  “About what?”

  “We need to… break up, Jake. I can’t do this anymore. I’m here. You’re eight hours away. You need to focus on football and I need to concentrate on my studies and hockey. We need to… ”

  “What the fuck are you talking about, Morgan? Are you serious? What flu medication have you taken? You’re not making any sense. Are you really breaking up with me?”

  A robotic ‘yes’ leaked through the phone. She didn’t sound like she was crying. She didn’t elaborate any further. Nothing. He wanted to combat her silence, but shock and disbelief seized him and he just stood there in his apartment staring at the phone. Seconds later the call was disconnected. She fucking hung up on him? He tried calling her back, but she didn’t pick up. What the fuck?

  He almost threw his phone against the wall when he realized that he wouldn’t be able to afford a new one. He paced his small living room and tried to calm himself down. But all that alone time did was make him entertain theories as to why she dumped him. Not in person, but over the phone!

  What had happened? Was she seeing someone else? Fall out of love with him? He deserved to know. He deserved to hear the answers to his questions in person. Jake grabbed his keys and found his roommate asleep in his bedroom. It took some begging to convince his buddy to drag himself out of bed and drive him to the airport, but he did it and two hours later Jake was flying down the runway.

  He had drained his bank account to pay for the roundtrip ticket from South Bend, Indiana to Boston, Massachusetts, but he didn’t care. He also didn’t give a shit if his coach learned that he had just jumped on a plane to see his girlfriend the night before the most critical game of the season. Pro scouts would most definitely be in attendance, taking notes and narrowing down their picks for the draft in the spring, his opportunity to make it to the pros. He pushed his childhood dream to the back burner and tried to focus on what he was going to say when he finally saw Morgan.

  But even as the plane landed four hours later, even as he found her dorm and knocked on her door he still didn’t know what words were going to come out of his mouth. Allison, or so he assumed, answered the door. Her jaw practically hit the floor as she stood there, clearly shocked that he was standing in her doorway. “Where is she?” he asked, inviting himself in. He walked past her and started looking around the two-bedroom suite. He didn’t know where he was going as he had never been to Morgan’s suite before, but he wasn’t leaving until he found her.

  “Jake?” asked Morgan’s possible roommate.

  He didn’t answer her. Instead, he poked his head in one bedroom and found it empty. Jake peered down the hallway and saw a second room. The door was closed and though he couldn’t be certain that the room belonged to Morgan, he opened the door without knocking.

  Lying in bed on her side, with her back to him, he thought she was asleep. But as he stood in silence, he heard the faint sound of music coming from her direction and he realized that she had earbuds in. He walked over and turned the stereo off. She instantly rolled over and yanked out her buds.

  The shock in her eyes registered. But it was her pale complexion, swollen eyes, and cracked lips that he focused on. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and winced… as if she was in pain.

  She really was sick. At least that wasn’t bullshit.

  Her right hand clutched her stomach and she inhaled sharply. “Jake, why are you here?” Beads of sweat formed along her brow and she closed her eyes.

  Concern replaced his anger. What the hell was wrong with her?

  “Morgan, have you been to the doctor?”

  She opened her eyes but kept them zeroed in on the floor beneath her dangling feet. She nodded, but Jake didn’t believe her. “This looks worse than some stomach flu. I didn’t fly four hours to stand here and have you lie to me.”

  Her eyes widened and she finally looked at him. “What are you doing here, Jake? Your game. The scouts will be… ”

  “Fuck the scouts. Fuck football. Tell me what’s wrong with you and why the hell you think you can dump me… say goodbye like you did.” That concern he had felt a few moments ago flew right out the fucking window. “I want you to tell me to my face that you don’t want to be with me.” He walked over and lifted her chin with his fingers and forced her to look at him. “I want you to look me in the eye and tell me that you don’t love me.”

  Her eyes overflowed with tears and she wept into the palm of his hand. She didn’t cry like she had regretted her decision to break up with him. She cried like someone who was grieving, like a woman who was broken beyond repair. Between sobs she choked out, “I
’ll never stop loving you.”

  His fury faded away and true fear grabbed him by the heart and twisted until he couldn’t breathe. She was really doing this. She was telling him goodbye.

  “You… you need… if you leave now you’ll still make your game.” She jerked her chin from his grasp and rose to her feet. She let out a whimper but she remained standing. She brushed her tears away and said, “I won’t let you throw everything away. You’ve worked too hard. You’re so damn close to achieving your dream.”

  “You think playing football is everything to me?” He took her face in his hands. He wasn’t gentle but desperate. “I dream about you. About the life we will have together. The children we will share. I dream of growing old with you.”

  Her lip started to tremble and the floodgates flew wide open. He never heard or witnessed such anguish. She crumpled before him but when he tried to lift her from the floor, she swatted him away and told him for the second time to leave.

  “I’ll take care of her, Jake,” Allison said from behind.

  He didn’t know what to do. His presence only seemed to make things worse.

  She needs time. She’ll come back. When she’s feeling better and she’s thinking straight, we’ll put this ugly night behind us and move on like it never happened.

  Jake left Morgan in Allison’s care and flew home. She didn’t call the next day to wish him luck in his big game. She didn’t call him to congratulate him later for the four touchdowns he had thrown. She never called. In fact, she cut him off completely. She didn’t email him or accept his phone calls, even when he begged Allison to put Morgan on the phone.

  She’ll have to face me over winter break. We’ll both be home. There’s no way she’ll be able to avoid me.

  But she found a way. It was simple, actually. She just didn’t come home for the holidays and stayed in Boston.

  But he didn’t give up. If she wasn’t going to accept his emails or phone calls, maybe he could get through to her another way. He wasn’t the best writer, but he was willing to try anything. Every week for the next eleven months he wrote her a letter and dropped it in the mail. He poured his heart and soul into those letters, but she never responded, not even to the last one he had sent. He intentionally had mailed it on the one-year anniversary of the day she had broken up with him. Unlike the other letters, this last one was his goodbye. He had waited over two weeks for her to contact him, to say… something. But she had remained silent. He knew he would never recover. He would never be free to love another.

  He felt the change occur, that ice crystallize around his heart. He no longer wanted to feel anything. He didn’t turn to alcohol or drugs to rid his mind of her. No, he chose to fuck. A lot. But like a drug, each woman he slept with only provided him with temporary relief. His thoughts would always be taken over by Morgan, even when he was deep inside another woman. He was an addict. He was a hopeless, broken man who didn’t want to kick his habit and erase the woman he should forget. No matter how many games he won, how much money he made, how many women he screwed until they could barely walk, Morgan would forever haunt him.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Morgan

  I’ll wait for you.

  Those were the last words Morgan remembered hearing before she had fallen asleep in Jake’s arms last night.

  Jake may be willing to wait, but would he stick around after he finally learned her secret?

  Jake shifted behind her and she felt his cock pressed against her lower back. Morgan turned into his embrace and studied him. Her gaze drifted from his full, slightly parted lips to his well-defined chest and tight abs. Jake rolled onto his back and his hard cock came into full view. The secret she was keeping from him found its place on the back burner and she propped herself up on her elbow and stared at his arousal.

  He was so beautiful.

  Carefully, she hovered over him and gently spread his legs apart with her knees. Morgan looked up to see if her movements woke him, but his slumber continued. She licked her lips and crouched between his thighs. The tip of his cock glistened, and she ached to taste him again. She stifled a moan as she took him between her lips. His cock felt like velvet against her tongue. His hips jerked beneath her, forcing her to take him to the back of her throat.

  “Fuck!” he hissed. He may have been asleep a second ago, but now he was gripping her hair and controlling the pace. She dragged a ragged groan from his lungs as she sucked and swallowed against the tip. His balls tightened in her grasp and she knew he was close. Too close. She wanted him to come. But she wanted him to explode inside her, she wanted to feel her body spasm around him as she rode him. Morgan released his cock and crawled up his body. Straddling his hips, she took his cock in her hand. She swiped her entrance with the crown, stroking herself, picturing his cock spreading her wide open. He gripped her hips and said, “I need you.”

  She inhaled, braced herself for the burn she knew she would encounter and sat back until he was balls deep. He didn’t move or thrust his hips. Instead he waited for her to adjust to his length. The strain on his face, the restraint he was exhibiting, made her want him even more. She wanted it all.

  His pleasure.

  His groans.

  His pleas.

  She rose to her knees and then drew him back into her heat. She was so wet, so hot. He lost it and drove into her. His hands left her hips to cup her breasts. He pinched her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers. She ground into him, taking him deeper. She couldn’t tease out her groans from his as they both chased their climax. She placed her hands over his as he pumped her breasts.

  A sudden powerful thrust of his hips sent her to orgasm and she detonated on top of him. Her muscles fisted his cock. A gush of heat filled her and she watched his body shake beneath hers. The thought of his cum mingling with hers made her so fucking crazed and she came again and again. “Ah… so good. Oh God!” He continued his thrusts until her cries morphed into whimpers and satiated sighs. Exhausted and gloriously depleted, she collapsed into his waiting arms.

  The sun wasn’t due to come up for another two hours but neither of them would be lured back to sleep. Instead, they stayed in bed and talked. Jake held her as he told her how he had been drafted in his junior year of college and entered the pros. She asked him about his Super Bowl win two years ago and he went on to explain how his team, which was definitely the underdog in that game, crushed all the gamblers’ predictions by winning.

  “Does your shoulder still bother you? That hit you took in the final two minutes of that game… it left me sick to my stomach.”

  His hand stopped making gentle circles and swirls on her back and he looked down at her. “You watched that game?”

  There was honest-to-God disbelief in his eyes. But underneath she saw what looked like relief. “I watched you play every week. The only time I missed a game was when I was called into work.”

  With her head lying against his bare chest she could hear his heart quicken. “But didn’t… didn’t it piss Owen off that you wanted to watch your ex-boyfriend play football every Sunday?”

  “I never told him about us. He knew we were neighbors, that our families were and are close. As far as he knew I watched you week in and week out because we were childhood friends. If he had known the truth… well, I was afraid he would have prohibited me from watching your games. I couldn’t let that happen. Those games, those three hours a week, were sacred to me. It was the only way I could be with you.”

  His lips parted and he stared at her. He looked like he was on the verge of saying something when she heard her phone chime on the nightstand. She welcomed the interruption, as the conversation was getting intense and touching upon things that could lead to dangerous questions and retrieved what she thought was her phone. She read the text and instantly felt the urge to vomit.

  “Um… sorry. We have the same ringtone,” she said, handing him his phone. He read the incoming message and then placed the phone back on the nightstand.

&nbs
p; Morgan sat up, gathered the sheet around her and pulled her knees to her chest. She deserved this. She deserved the heartache, the pain… all of it.

  “Don’t do that. Don’t hide from me,” he said, pulling her into his arms. “I haven’t slept with her, or with anyone for that matter, since the night Carina got engaged.”

  She heard him, but all she could see was that text:

  “You’re still an asshole. But I would still love to fuck you again. Call me—Lexi”

  Morgan had no right to be angry or jealous. She had left him. She was the one who had set him free… to do whatever and whoever he wanted. The thought of him with this Lexi woman, of Jake pleasuring her as he took her again and again, sickened her.

  “So, you’re not… with her?”

  He sighed. “No.”

  “And you’re not seeing anyone else?”

  “My last girlfriend was you. I had no interest in dating after we broke up.”

  “But that was eight years ago. There wasn’t anyone you… ”

  “No. I put my focus on football just like you told me to do. And when I needed a release, I would find someone who didn’t mind fucking with no strings attached.” There was an edge to his voice, an edge that hadn’t been there a moment ago.

  Again, the visual of Jake pounding into someone other than herself bombarded her thoughts and she fought like hell to hold it together.

  “I’m not sure what you’re thinking right now. But it wasn’t like I fucked everything in sight after you broke up with me. I didn’t look at or touch another woman during that year that followed because I had held onto the hope that you would come back to me, that you would come to your senses. But with every letter I sent that hope dwindled. Exactly a year to the day, I sent you my last letter. I told myself that if she doesn’t respond to this one, then that would be it. There would be no more letters after that and I would have to move on… at least in the physical sense.”