by Claire Adams
Richard turned to look at me, his face a mask of rage, betrayal, and disbelief combined. His eyes bored into mine, searching for answers. I gave him none.
My stomach dropped. My palms went clammy for the first fucking time that I could remember.
Shit.
“Is this true?” Richard asked me, his eyes not leaving mine for a split second. His voice was low and demanding. My world narrowed.
Goodbye best of both worlds...
In my mind’s eye, I could practically see that ship sailing away from me with the way that Richard looked at me. I had to catch that ship. I didn’t have any fucking choice in the matter.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Gabrielle
My heart pounded in my chest. My father and James both stood frozen, locked in some battle of the wills as they stared each other down.
I couldn’t believe that Olivia had tricked me into coming here. I seethed with rage and tried to keep my entire body from shaking. I wanted to wring Olivia’s scrawny neck, but I pushed that to the back of my mind.
The only thing I could focus on at that moment was James. His answer seemed to be taking an eternity, but it was probably no more than a few seconds.
His expression was unreadable; it was as if he could only see my father. I could only see James.
It wasn’t the ideal way for my father to have found out about us, but somewhere along the line, it had become inevitable that he would. I wanted to be with James. For as long as he wanted to be with me, too, there was nothing I wouldn’t be willing to do to make that happen.
I would have faced a horde of murderous Vikings if that was what it took. James only had to face my father. Sure, he was pissed as all hell, but he would get over it. Eventually. I was sure of it.
My heart felt like it was made of glass, sitting in James’s hands. Was he going to let it drop and shatter, or protect it and keep it safe in his strong grip?
James’s expression changed almost imperceptibly. If I didn’t know him as well as I’d come to know him, I would never have noticed it.
He’d made his decision. My heart kicked into a higher gear and sputtered to a stop at the same time. I trembled visibly. I didn’t care. I needed to hear his answer. It was the moment of truth.
“No.” His voice was firm. Decisive. Steady. “Gabrielle and I barely know each other. There has never been anything going on between us.”
My stomach dropped. Blackness rimmed the edges of my vision. I was pretty sure I swayed on my feet as his words washed over me.
It felt like a battering ram with ten Navy SEALs behind it had slammed into my chest. The man that I loved hadn’t simply dropped my glass heart. He had taken that magical throwing arm of his and launched my heart into a fucking oncoming freight train with all of his considerable strength.
I forgot how to breathe. I was aware of angry voices around me and Olivia scurrying out of the office, slamming the door behind her. I had no idea what they were saying.
My ears buzzed. James’s denial repeated so loudly in my mind that I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to hear anything else.
How can he stand there, completely unaffected, and deny our relationship after everything that we’ve been through together? After everything that we’ve shared with each other?
My survival instinct kicked in. Whatever happened, there was no way in hell that I could allow either of those two men see me falling apart.
Get out of here! The scream came from the back recesses of my mind.
My fingers dug into the back of the seat responsible for keeping me standing somehow. My knuckles were white.
“Gabrielle?” My father’s voice only barely registered. “Are you okay? You look ill.”
It was only then I realized that both men stared at me, wearing expressions of expectation and annoyance. “I asked you a question, Gabrielle.”
Shit. He didn’t mean the “Are you okay” one. He must’ve asked something while I’d been trying to keep my knees from buckling and my heart broke into a million pieces in my chest.
I cleared my throat. I had a voice. I just had to find it. It had to be in there somewhere. It had been fine when I’d announced myself to the soul-sucking bitch out front a minute ago.
My eyes locked briefly with James’s. No more than a heartbeat passed, but all I saw in those hazel eyes that had fascinated me every time I looked into them was determination. And a silent plea.
The plea wasn’t, “I made a mistake.” It wasn’t, “I’m sorry.” It wasn’t even, “Forgive me.” It was, “Back me up here!”
Did he really think that I was going break down and confess everything to my father like a broken porcelain doll after he’d just denied that he’d had any feelings for me whatsoever? Not likely.
Worse yet, did he think I was going admit it out of spite? Maybe he had never truly known me if that was the case. Even if it had felt at times as if he knew me better than anyone else had ever known me, or would ever know me.
White-hot rage spread through my veins, temporarily overpowering the gut-wrenching pain and infiltrating the black space where my heart had been but minutes before.
I wasn’t a pawn that was going to do his bidding. I wasn’t some fucking weakling who was going to admit that I was head over heels for him when he clearly felt nothing at fucking all for me.
It took everything that I had in me, but I met my father’s expectant gaze and found my voice amidst the storm of emotions raging in me. “I’m okay. Olivia tricked me into coming here. I was at the library. I’m just tired, and I don’t have time for this bullshit.”
“Bullshit, huh?” My father’s gaze burnt into me like he was trying to see straight into my mind and unlock my deepest darkest secrets. To see the place that James had taken up residence in.
“Yes, don’t ask me to apologize for cursing. I won’t. I have to get back to the library. This was a total waste of time. Please ask your receptionist to mind her own business. If you’ll excuse me, I’m leaving now.” I didn’t wait for either of them to answer. I spun out of the office and practically sprinted to my car, tears pricking at the backs of my eyes.
I just had to make it to the privacy of my car before they could be unleashed. If I could manage it, I desperately wanted to make it home before the tears came. I knew that once the sobbing started and the feelings swimming around inside me came to the surface, it wasn’t going to end quickly.
A sob threatened to rise in my throat.
There. I could see my car. Only a few more yards and I’ll have made to through step two. Step one: get the fuck out of there.
Step two: make it to my car without screaming, crying, or collapsing. Possibly all three at the same time.
I dug blindly around in my bag for my keys when James’s voice called out to me. I bit back a fresh sob.
Every fiber in my being wanted to turn around. To face him. To sink into his comforting arms. To let him hold me so tight that my heart wouldn’t be able to shatter in his grasp. To let him explain and let him wash the pain away with soothing words.
Instead, I managed to find the unlock button on my key fob and hurried into the car, locking the doors as soon as I sank into the driver’s seat.
James appeared at my door just as I slammed it shut. It reminded me of the way that he had so casually strolled up to my door on the night of our first date. I had known that night that he was trouble. I just had no idea how deep I was about to get into it.
“Gabbi, wait. Just give me a second to explain. Please. I promise you that I can explain.” I could hear him through the panels of my car. For just a second, I imagined that I saw my own hurt reflected in his eyes. In his voice. Then I remembered his expression back in the office.
No. He felt nothing. He’d made that abundantly fucking clear not five minutes ago. That hadn’t been the expression of a man choosing between his career and family and a woman that he loved. It was the expression of a man who simply did not give a single fuck.
“I
think you explained quite enough back there.”
I cranked my radio to drown out whatever he was trying to say. I wasn’t going to give in. I wasn’t going to let him feed me some bullshit lines.
On autopilot, I strapped myself in and gripped my steering wheel, and I tore away from the only man that I’d ever loved.
It felt like I was leaving a part of my soul behind. I glanced back in my rearview mirror. James’s shoulders were slightly hunched, and his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans.
The part of my soul that was permanently glued to his called me back. I ignored it. Even if the pain of doing it was so unbearable that it felt like I was being split in half.
I rounded the corner out of the parking lot, and the first tears sprung free when James disappeared from view. Tears ran down my cheeks, warm and heavy and salty. I wasn’t sobbing yet though. Images from our time together played in my mind.
Our first dinner together. Jet skiing and walking on the beach. Talking until the sun either set or rose, depending on which memory I pulled up.
The way that he knew my body better than I did. Lunch at the Spanish place. His complete support and constant pep talks about law school.
A hundred different moments. A hundred different memories that would haunt me for the rest of my life. Not to mention how much I would miss the feeling of being wrapped up in those sculpted arms. Seeing his eyes light up at a joke. Hearing his voice on the other end of the line.
The more distance that I put between myself and James, the angrier I became. The worst thing was that the anger wasn’t directed at him. I was pissed off at myself.
I channeled the rage instead of the pain. I would deal with the pain when I got home.
Until then, I berated myself for ever letting my heart get involved. For allowing myself to fall for him despite everything that I knew about football players. Players in general. I fucking knew better. I did.
In a cruel twist of fate, perhaps a fitting one, a popular song blared through my speakers about a girl knowing that a guy was trouble when he walked in, but how she fell for him anyway.
She was right about one thing: the blame was on me. I had known that he was trouble the moment he walked into my father’s office on that first day we met. I had known that he wasn’t looking for something serious.
What we had was never even a real relationship.
That pain that threatened to split me open and consume me in a blaze of fire? The pain I would never recover from? It was all my own damn fault for allowing myself to fall so hard for James in the first place.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
James
There are a few defining moments in a man’s life.
Moments when you don’t fully understand the ways your life is about to change, but you know that from that moment forward, shit is going to be awesome. I had one of those moments when I signed my first pro contract. I had another when I made the decision to man up and be a dad to Harper.
Then there are moments when you know that shit is never going to be as good as you had it the day before. I had one of those moments when I lost my parents. Then there are moments where you know that you’re fucked or that you fucked up. Royally.
I had one of those moments in Richard’s office when I denied that anything was going on between Gabrielle and me. The words weren’t even out of my mouth, weren’t even cold yet, and I knew I had fucked up. Royally.
I had walked into that office thinking that I was about to have one of the best moments of my life. Instead, it turned out to be in the top three worst days of my fucking life.
It took me awhile to figure out why, but watching Gabrielle drive away from me clarified things. I’d never felt pain like that before. It was different from losing my parents, of course. But it hurt like a son of a bitch nonetheless.
That’s when it hit me, like a knockout punch from Mike Tyson himself. I was in love with Gabrielle. I fucking loved her like I hadn’t ever thought it was possible to love a woman. Like I had never loved anyone before, because I hadn’t. Not like that.
Instead of stepping up like a man, I’d thrown her away with both hands. The expression on her face when I denied our relationship to her father and his reception bitch, the agony that I saw there when I caught up to her car, it told me that she might just have felt the same way about me.
Before I’d ripped her heart out and stomped all over it like a one-man marching band. It haunted me all night. I didn’t get one minute of sleep.
All that I could think about was that I had to make this right. If she wanted to have nothing to do with me after, so be it. I had to tell her that I loved her. I had to face Richard and tell him that I loved her.
If he chose to revoke the offer, that was the price I would have to pay for making the biggest fucking mistake that I’d ever made.
I would leave Miami and never look back. I would work my way up with another team and give Harper the future that she deserved.
I would throw myself into work every second that I wasn’t with Harper and resign myself to the fact that I’d fucked things up with the love of my goddamn life. That I was damned to be lonely forever as a result of my own actions.
The plan that had taken me all night to come up with wasn’t exactly rocket science. Although, from what I’d heard, rocket science wasn’t exactly rocket science. The plan wasn’t necessarily complex.
It wasn’t the big romantic gesture that Gabrielle deserved. It was all I could come up with through the blinding pain that wrecked me from the inside out.
It started with Richard. I had to come clean to him first. When I told Gabrielle, I had to be able to tell her that I’d been entirely honest with Richard. That I wasn’t asking her to go behind his back again.
If she chose to forgive me, to be with me, we’d be doing it right. It was the only way to take a real shot at having a real relationship. No sneaking around, no doubts about what we were to each other, or why we were in it.
All of which relied on my not having entirely misread her the day before, and she would actually want me after what I had done.
Jesus, I sounded like a pussy. Even to myself.
Strangely, I found that I didn’t mind it so much. I wasn’t stupid. I had found my girl. The only one who had ever held my interest for longer than a couple of fucks. The only one that I had ever wanted to talk to, to learn about, to wake up with.
I would be a pussy if I gave her up because I was too afraid to face her father, or if I let her go without laying my cards on the table and fighting for her.
After a long, fortifying shower, I pulled on a pair of jeans and a Henley, grabbed my keys and my sunglasses, and went to fight for my girl, hoping to all that was holy that she knew me well enough to know that I was being honest today, not just covering up my fuck up from the day before for another shot at getting into her pants.
I marched past Olivia, ignoring her scathing stares and calls that Richard was busy and that I couldn’t just burst into his office. I no longer gave a flying fuck about her or her opinions.
Not being a complete asshole, and on the off chance he was doing something in there that I shouldn’t see him doing, I rapped my knuckles on his door and waited for his gruff voice to bark, “What,” before turning the knob and letting myself in.
I didn’t know where I expected Gabrielle to be that morning, but it wasn’t sitting in her father’s office gaping at my sudden appearance.
My breath caught in my lungs.
Holy shit, she was fucking beautiful. Even with tired circles under her eyes and red rims around them and all.
To an ordinary onlooker, she might just look tired. I could see that she’d been to hell and back since we’d been in that very office not 24 hours before.
She sucked in a deep breath at my appearance, letting it out with a shudder. God, what I wouldn’t give to feel her shudder underneath me again, while I wrapped a fist into that soft hair that hung loosely over her shoulders that morning—
Fuck, focus, Skye. That was not the time. I was there to tell him that I loved his daughter, not that I wanted to sleep with her.
Speaking of whom, Gabrielle’s shoulders hung slightly, and she ran a frustrated hand through her long hair. “I was just leaving.”
“No, stay. Please stay, Gabbi.” It slipped out, but both she and her father fixed me with shocked eyes. I meant to tell Richard first, then go over to Gabrielle’s, but she was here. I had never been much a believer in fate or destiny or anything like that shit, but if that wasn’t a sign, I wouldn’t know one if it hit me over the head with a cast iron pan.
“Gabbi?” Richard cocked an eyebrow at me, confusion fast giving way to something else. Something significantly less positive than confused.
“I did come with good news,” I said. “At least, I think it’s great news. You two might feel otherwise.” Gabrielle hadn’t moved a muscle. She seemed to have been planted in place again. Richard looked torn between absolute joy and murderous rage. It was quite the combination. He seemed to be waging a world war in his head.
“I want to accept your offer, Richard. I really do. More than I can express to you. My people have looked it over as a formality, and they agree with me. But before I can accept the offer, I need to be straight with you. There’s something you need to know first.” I blew out a deep breath.
Gabrielle’s eyes grew wide, and she shook her head almost imperceptibly at me, her eyes flashing with some kind of warning. Too late to stop now.
“I lied to you yesterday,” I said. “Olivia put me on the spot, and I reacted horribly. The truth is, there is something going on between Gabrielle and me. Or there was, at least. It’s entirely up to her whether there still is or ever will be again.”
The vein in Richard temple throbbed, and his face turned beet red. The muscles in his jaw twitched.
The fact that he hadn’t clocked me yet had to mean something, though. I took it as a sign of encouragement to continue.