Page 73 of Filthy Player
“Not without Rambo.”
“Jaxon.”
“Potato, po-tah-to.”
We dissolved into a fit of giggles, and I hugged her. I needed this. Needed someone who could make me laugh when all I wanted to do was curl into a ball and ignore life around me.
But I had good friends.
Protectors.
Family.
I had Beaux.
And while we hadn’t said that we loved each other, I knew I had Beaux’s heart like he had mine. And I knew with how protective he was on a normal day, Melanie was right.
He’d do whatever he could; throw any cost and time and resources into keeping me safe.
And for the first time, without arguing about his help first, I decided to let him.
I needed him to do that for me, to be the guy who would do that for me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
BEAUX
I walked back into Paige’s house expecting the eerie silence it’d been filled with when I left earlier.
Instead, laughter came from the dining room along with a manic shout of, “Bullshit!” A loud round of choruses echoed with Mike’s voice the loudest at, “Screw you, Paige!”
The hell?
I hurried around the corner and came to an abrupt stop. At the dining table sat Mike, Melanie, Sam, Paige, and Jaxon. All of them with their hands full of cards, Mike pouting while he scooped up the massive pile in the middle.
“What’s going on?” I asked, walking toward Paige like she was a wounded animal. When I left, she hadn’t wanted anything to do with me. Now her eyes were a bit glassy, her smile lazy.
“I’m drunk,” she drawled in her sweet Southern voice. “And we’re playing bullshit.”
“Bullshit?”
She wagged her finger at Jaxon. “It was his idea.”
He glared at me. His sunglasses were gone, but his eyes were just as black as them. His look told me this game was unequivocally, one hundred percent, not his idea.
Jaxon looked back at his cards and I moved to Paige’s back. “It was Jaxon’s idea?”
“No, that’s bullshit.” She giggled. Melanie joined her. “It was Melanie’s idea and he’s playing against his will because what else is he supposed to do?”
“Make sure you’re safe?” I asked, hating I had to say it. My glare matched Jaxon’s and he shook his head.
“I’m safe,” she said, looking up at me. Her eyes were droopy, barely open and she swayed toward me. “I have you.”
A bullet to the chest couldn’t have caused a more heated ache in my chest. Except this was the best kind of pain.
She trusted me. She wasn’t pushing me away and she wasn’t screaming at me. Perhaps that would happen after she sobered up. I squatted down at her side so we were at eye level. “Yeah?”
She leaned into me, head bumping into my shoulder and stayed there. “Yeah.”
