by K. Bromberg
The one I think she loves more than anything in the world.
Let’s hope I’m right.
The crowd roars as Stevie hits a backhand that flies to just inside the fault line—less than an inch out of reach of Ian’s racket.
She pumps her fist and shouts, clearly feeding off their energy.
She did just what I told her to do.
She walked out of that locker room and taunted Ian. She pulled the crowd into the bet, getting them to cheer for him to agree to it, so that he had no choice but to say yes on national television or look like he didn’t want to support Net Gen . . . and then somehow, someway, Stevie turned it on.
She turned it on and hasn’t looked back since, winning two straight sets in a row and dominating the match in a way that even has me caught up in it.
It’s not only me pulling for her now though. The crowd has turned in her favor, the underdog always a favorite. And when I take a quick peek on social media during a water break, the negative comments have turned to support. The jeers to cheers.
Despite the shaky start, Stevie stands with her hands on her hips beneath the blinding lights of the court.
“Nice serve,” she says with a chuckle after Greshenko serves an ace. “But you know I simply gave that to you. I wouldn’t want you to have a bruised ego from me both winning the match and having more aces.” Her smile is taunting as she all but curtsies at him, egging him on.
The crowd chuckles as Ian’s grumble comes off less than sincere.
I hate to admit it, but the woman is phenomenal.
Sure, she may be a mess and be stubborn as hell, and I still might be grumbling that I’m her fucking babysitter, but the decision rests a little easier tonight after what I just witnessed. A woman clearly lost in whoever she is (unless of course, she’s arguing with me) and who was losing by an embarrassing margin, pulled herself together to be who everyone expected her to be. That’s not an easy task by any means. It’s admirable in so many senses of the word, and I sit here looking at her in a slightly different light.
Simply put, what she just did was exceptional. There’s no other word to describe it.
She went from what looked to me like a breakdown during the first two sets she lost, and then in the locker room during the intermission, to having complete command of the court. Her comments to the crowd are witty and her athletic prowess is remarkable.
For the first time, I see glimpses of the woman she might have been before her father’s death and am impressed.
The crowd cheers as Stevie returns Ian’s serve, forcing the game to a break point, the chance she’s made for herself to gain a set point during Ian’s serve.
Ian’s livid. He paces back and forth behind the fault line, fixing the strings in his racket as he mumbles to himself, looking like a madman while Stevie waits patiently.
“Break point,” the chair umpire murmurs and the crowd quiets.
Ian serves, and Stevie returns the tennis ball with a powerful backhand followed a split second later by a grunt that echoes through the stadium. The ball lands just out of reach of his racket and the crowd erupts in cheers.
And she continues on.
To win points.
Then games.
Then sets.
And then she sits in the fifth set, the sixth game with a score of forty to love. The crowd hums with anticipation as they all stand on their feet to watch the number-one ranked man in tennis be beaten by a woman.
She serves with her signature grunt following. Ian returns the serve. The ball hits the top part of the net before falling back onto his side.
The crowd goes crazy. People are cheering and screaming as the biggest grin owns Stevie’s lips. She tilts her head up to the sky with her eyes closed for the briefest of seconds. It’s almost as if she needs to take this all in—or as if she’s talking to her dad on the stage he set up for her to succeed on.
Either way, I already know this image will be the one blasted all over the media and it couldn’t be a better one. This tennis sweetheart is back and looking damn good.
I move toward the locker room as the pomp and circumstance continues on the court and shake hands with some people I know on the way. This is Stevie’s time to shine, and I can only hope she takes what happened here tonight and uses it as motivation to stay on this track. To be done with her wild streak or whatever the hell she was doing.
My phone vibrates in my pocket. I know without even looking at the screen that it’s Carson calling, wanting to know what the hell turned things around tonight.
I’ll gladly take the credit, but it was all her. All Stevie.
I let the phone ring and will call him back once I get inside the locker room and away from all this noise.
There’s a tug on my arm and I turn, surprised to find Stevie with her wild eyes and magnetic smile standing before me. She should be soaking up the moment.
“Finn.” She says my name and doesn’t even give me time to respond before she launches herself into my arms in a huge bear hug.
Taken aback, I think I chuckle, I think I say her name, but I know I wrap my arms around her and hug her too.
“Congratulations,” I murmur into her ear, completely unaware if she can hear me above the noise of the crowd. “I knew you could do it.”
I’m not sure why I say those words, but I realize the minute they’re out of my mouth that I truly mean them. For some reason, I knew she could beat Ian.
Stevie leans back with tears glistening in her eyes and her arms still holding tight around me and smiles softly.
“I—thank you.”
And there’s that look again from her. The one that screams she’s still a lost little girl—that maybe only I can see for some reason.
But this time I can’t shake away how it makes me feel because she’s in my arms and her lips are inches from mine, and Jesus Christ, there are a million people around us but all I can think about is her lips.
In wanting to kiss her.
Fucking hell.
I can’t be thinking about shit like this right now. About how much I want her. About how fucking hard it is to keep her at a distance when I have to deal with her moment by moment.
My cold shoulder was working perfectly to keep her at a distance—to keep this from happening—until right now. Until she was in my arms, her lips close to mine, her body pressed to me, and adrenaline pumping through both of our bodies.
We stand in this extended state of anticipation, staring at each other without speaking for a few long seconds, before the noise of the crowd seeps in and the flash of the cameras break through my focus.
Stevie and I jolt away from each other as if we’ve been electrocuted.
What the fuck just happened?
STEVIE
I’M AMPED, RESTLESS, AND STUCK in that state between utter exhaustion and wanting to ride the high of tonight.
“You only have a few more interviews,” Hayley says when she walks into what we’re using as a green room between media interviews. “Then you’re done.”
“Thank God,” I say, leaning back against the couch and closing my eyes. For a moment, I relive tonight’s match. The grimace on Greshenko’s face when he realized he couldn’t salvage the match. The roar of the crowd when I won. The look in Finn’s eyes as he stared at me.
Hayley stands just inside the door with her back to the wall, eyeing me. I don’t exactly like her—or rather I haven’t exactly been easy on her during her short tenure—so I’m sure she’s waiting for a temper tantrum of some sort from me.
I’m too tired and at the same time too damn relieved to do any of the above.
“I want to prepare you though—”
“I can handle the questions about my dad. I’ll be fine.” I wave a hand at her. It’s not like I haven’t been answering them all night long anyway.
Of course, it affected me stepping onto the court without him sitting in the stands, his red hat the beacon I’d look to when I was struggling.
“That’s not what I was going to say.” Her smile is tight, her hands fidgeting. “ESPN just ran a story.”
“As they should.” I snicker. “I beat the number one men’s seed. It’s a big friggin’ deal.”
“Look it up on your phone,” she states and there’s something about her tone or the pinched expression on her face that grabs my attention.
I groan as I pick up my phone on the couch next to me. What is it now? What are they going to dredge up to try and minimize this accomplishment? Because it’s not as if some of the journalists tonight haven’t already tried to rewrite the fact that I beat Ian—downplay that a woman beat a man—by implying that he went easier on me after the intermission when I turned it around.
The accusation is total bullshit and they know it.
So I wait for the story to load with my hackles already raised and my temper ready to fire.
And then the cover picture loads, and I’m not exactly sure what to think or say or how to even feel at the image looking back at me.
It’s not of me on the court after I won like I would have expected, where I was looking up at the sky with my eyes closed talking silently to my dad. The picture of victory with a cost.
Nope. Not in the least.
Instead, it’s of when I ran to Finn after the match, needing to thank him somehow for believing in me when even I didn’t. For egging me on so I didn’t give up and make an ass out of myself on national television. For having the guts to say what he said when I’ve been nothing but a bitch to him over the past week.
The image is when I’m in Finn’s arms and we’re looking at each other, our faces inches apart.
To anyone on the outside who doesn’t know our history, it looks like we’re gazing lovingly at each other. A couple celebrating victory.
Knowing our history—the banter, the fighting, the being stuck together—I’m not exactly sure how to feel about the portrayal or implication.
I know I hate that my throat feels like it’s closing up as I study the two of us. As I take in his dark eyes and smile that is equal parts pride and happiness. As I study the way he’s looking at me—as if there is more there than an angry agent forced to be with a punk client.
His look stirs things inside of me that I’m not sure I want stirred. Lust is fine. Using sex to feel in sensations is all that I was looking for originally when it came to him.
But looking at this photo, looking at the way we’re staring at each other, a part of me wants him to look at me like that all the time rather than just in a snapshot of time.
I shake my head to clear the stupid thought and try to remember the many reasons I’m supposed to hate him. The problem with that train of thought is after tonight, after he believed in me when I didn’t even believe in myself, it’s a lot harder to shake them than it was before.
“Did you read the article?” Hayley asks.
I scroll down and grit my teeth when I see the words to the story. “New relationship.” “Love interest calms Lancaster.” “A calming force to the hurricane.” “Who is Stevie’s new man?” “Is Finn Sanderson the one who made the difference?”
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter.
“At least it takes the spotlight off your other . . . ventures of late.”
I snort in disgust and she startles. “Yeah, but it implies that he’s the reason I won. That I need a man at my back—or in their eyes leading me—to succeed. Fucking pricks.”
“We can respond with something similar, minus the fucking pricks part, if you’d like,” she says.
“Yeah. Sure,” I murmur, glancing back at my phone and getting lost in the picture again.
My eyes go blurry and I sniff the tears away as I stare at the two of us. A man more than sure of himself and a woman who didn’t realize until just now, how lonely she is.
That’s what that was. The running over to him. The hugging him. The trying to tell him without words how much his belief in me meant.
It was the fact that after every match, I’d always shake my opponent’s hand over the net and then go hug my dad.
Always.
And tonight, when I played the first real match since his passing—when I won—I was a little lost with where to go and what to do. As much as I resent and respect my dad in equal measure, he was still my best friend.
With him gone, I’ve lost my harshest critic, my biggest believer, and my closest friend.
STEVIE
“WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED LAST night?” Carson asks.
“I won,” I say into my cell with a glance toward the closed door of Finn’s room in the suite. The same door I looked at last night when I came back after the press junket, wanting to talk to him, to explain away the hug and the crazy rumors he was going to wake up to, but figuring I better leave well enough alone.
Does he know yet that the world thinks we’re a couple?
God help me when he does. I mean, if the man rejects my kiss, he’s going to hate the world thinking we do so much more.
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” he grits out, and I suddenly stiffen when I realize what I thought was excitement in his voice actually sounds like anger.
Jesus. What now? Can’t I do anything fucking right?
“I don’t understand, Carson. I thought—”
“After all that . . . and then you. Then he . . .” He says something that sounds like a curse. “I deserve answers.”
“Well, hello to you too,” I mutter as I take a seat on the edge of the couch, my muscles more than sore from last night’s game. “I mean, I thought you’d be full of praise.”
“I did leave praise. Check your voicemail and texts. They’re all there. That’s why none of this makes sense. Obviously whatever Finn was doing was working so why did you fuck it up?”
Carson cusses but not at me. He’s old school and thinks women shouldn’t hear profanity so, I’m a little taken aback when he throws fuck in there.
Besides, of all the days in the past two months, yesterday was the one day where I felt like I did everything right. And as if it doesn’t matter, I’m still being accused of doing something wrong.
“Carson. Just tell me what you think I did. I’m sure there’s a valid explanation I can give to—”
“He quit.” Emotion I can’t pinpoint vibrates through Carson’s voice.
“Who quit?” I ask, startling, but I’m already pushing off the couch and moving toward the closed door I was looking at moments ago.
There’s no way he’d quit. Not after last night. Not after we actually worked together instead of apart. Not after—
“Oh.” It’s all I say when I push his door open to his room to find the bed made and all of his things gone. Finn quit?
“He called just a moment ago and told me that he will no longer be able to represent—”
“Babysit—” I whisper in some kind of reflexive reaction that doesn’t even matter at this point and time.
“—you, and I want to know what the hell you did because it takes a hell of a lot to make him walk away from someone.”
Finn quit . . .
“I don’t understand.”
“That makes two of us, Stevie. The man who was clearly helping get you back on the right side of wrong walked away and I deserve an answer as to why.”
“I—I—” I tried to kiss him. The world thinks we’re a couple. He’s seen me naked. The thoughts run a marathon through my head but none of them make sense. None of them are valid reasons why he would quit. Especially after the success of last night. “I don’t know. He didn’t give a reason? An explanation? Anything?”
“Just that he thought he’d be able to make it work, but now doesn’t think it will.”
“So he quit on me.” My own words sting as I say them. It didn’t matter how well I did last night or that I came back and fought, he still quit on me.
He still left me.
The minute the tears well up, my temper ignites with a raging anger I don’t completely understand. I
t’s the only way I know how to cope with this type of rejection. With being abandoned yet again.
“I’ve got—my other line is going—Christ, kid, I needed him to help you.”
Disappointment rings through his tone. Is his anger directed at both Finn and me?
I shake my head, although Carson can’t see it before the call disconnects.
I stare at Finn’s empty room and his bed that obviously wasn’t slept in. Did he even come back here last night? Did he come back but never sleep as he pondered what to do?
I behave and this is what I get?
Confusion reigns and anger builds as I try to understand what happened. As I try to fathom why I’m so hurt by this when I didn’t want him here as my shadow in the first place.
But I am hurt.
And rejected.
And questioning myself.
With the phone in my hand, I close the door and blink away the tears.
Fuck Finn Sanderson.
Fuck him and his lack of reasons.
Carson’s wrong. I don’t need him.
I don’t need anyone.
I’m hurt when I shouldn’t be.
I’m angry when I know I’m the one who put myself in this position.
But more than anything, I wonder why I wanted a man I disliked—purely because of circumstance—to still like me.
FINN
“SANDERSON.” CARSON’S VOICE COMES THROUGH loud and clear on the voicemail, and I cringe. I deserve whatever shit he’s going to give me. “I understand why you don’t want to take on Stevie as a client, and I respect your decision. I can’t say that I’m not disappointed in it, but I understand there are times in your life when certain clients aren’t beneficial to you or your brand.” He sighs heavily. “Whatever your reasons are, I’m sure you’ll explain them to me someday. And yes, apparently, I’m getting softer in my old age.” His chuckle can be heard before the line goes dead.
I stare at my cell and shake my head, marveling at the man I look to as a father. He knew I’ve been stressing over my call to him and took the pressure off me by calling first.