Game Breaker (Portland Storm Book 14)

by Catherine Gayle

Not in the slightest, but I replied, “Fine! Just… Just gimme a second.” I managed to pick up the ironing board, but I couldn’t get it back on the hooks, so I angled it against the wall of the closet. It started to fall again, dragging my clothes off their hangers. They fell to the floor. Frustrated, I tried to right the stupid thing again, but it was all I could do to shove the door closed with everything inside the closet. The ironing board clattered around in there again for a moment.

  But I still hadn’t taken out anything else to wear.

  I tried to tug the door of the closet open, but it appeared to be wedged closed now. There wasn’t anything I could do but put on my ratty, hole-riddled T-shirt again and get rid of Nate as fast as possible. I tugged it back over my head and glanced at myself in the bathroom mirror. Not good enough. At all. I raced back into the main part of the room, grabbed a pillow off the bed, and held it in front of me to open the door so I’d at least have something covering me.

  He looked me over with concern at first, but then his eyes dropped lower. He burst out laughing. “What on earth are you doing in here?”

  I scowled at him, rubbing my temple with one hand. It hurt worse than I’d initially thought. “Are you coming in or not? Because I’m not standing here with the door open all night.”

  He came through the door and closed it behind him, so I scurried into the room and took a seat on the couch. Nate sat next to me. Belatedly, I wished I’d thought to sit in the desk chair, because I wasn’t sure how I felt about being this close to him when he was about to break my heart.

  “You’d already changed for the night,” he said, sounding almost apologetic if not for the hint of laughter coming through in his tone. “You should have said…”

  “But you said it couldn’t wait,” I pointed out.

  “Sounded like you were doing battle with something.”

  “The ironing board in the closet.” I shrugged. “But that’s not why you’re here.”

  “No, it’s not.” Still, he didn’t rush to get to the point. Instead, he passed his gaze over me again, until I shifted away from him and held the pillow tighter to my body, as if it could somehow protect me.

  I didn’t know how much more of this I could take. “Can you just tell me why you’re up here? You said it couldn’t wait, so…”

  He dropped his eyes to his lap for a moment, and I prepared myself for the hammer to fall. It couldn’t hurt too much worse than the blow to my head moments ago, could it? Probably not.

  “I was on Twitter this morning—”

  “You don’t have a Twitter account,” I cut in, completely thrown. “You told me you don’t like reading what everyone’s saying about you, so you avoid social media like the plague.”

  “I didn’t have Twitter. Now I do.”

  “Why?”

  “Because RJ told me I needed to see something.”

  The awful churning in my belly only got worse. There wasn’t anything good he could have found on Twitter, at least not if it was something his friend was telling him he needed to go look at. Jezek knew why Nate avoided it, the same as I did.

  “And?” I asked tentatively.

  “And he was right. There were a lot of things I needed to see. So I could understand—really understand—the sort of effect I’m having on you.”

  I blinked and shook my head. “The effect you’re having on me? Why not ask me? Why bother signing up for Twi—”

  “On your job,” he clarified. “Your career.”

  “I already told you not to worry about all that. Yeah, my boss saw that picture, but he doesn’t have anyone to repl—”

  “I’m not talking about the picture RJ posted. Or at least not just about that. There’s more. A lot more.”

  I shook my head. “So some other people saw it and saved it before he delet—”

  “Someone got pictures of us on that dinner cruise,” Nate said.

  “Oh.” That part took me by surprise, but it didn’t change anything, as far as I could tell. There still wasn’t anyone ready to replace me tomorrow. My boss had been very clear about that part.

  But now I was more confused than ever. Was this all because Nate had just figured out that people on the Internet were jerks? Had he been avoiding me because he couldn’t figure out how to break the news to me? Because our relationship was more public than we might have wanted it to be, at least at such an early juncture?

  Maybe I’d been getting myself all worked up for no reason, and he wasn’t about to dump me. Now I had at least a glimmer of hope.

  “They’re saying all sorts of things about you that I won’t repeat.”

  “That’s not new,” I said, shaking my head to reassure him, uncertain what direction this conversation was heading. “It’s not anything to worry about. People say all sorts of things when they think they’re anonymous. You shouldn’t look at that stuff. It’ll get in your head, the same as seeing what the press is saying about you. It’ll only make you mad.”

  “Mad?” Nate said with a lot more force than I’d ever heard from him before. He was usually even-keeled, as calm and collected as they came, always thinking things through before letting them fly out of his mouth. In that moment, he was the exact opposite. “It made me a hell of a lot more than mad. It made me scared for you and ashamed of myself for being so selfish—”

  “Wait a second,” I interrupted, angling my body so I was facing him but keeping the pillow between us so he wouldn’t see all the holes in my shirt. “Back up. There’s no reason for you to be ashamed, and you’ve been anything but selfish.”

  “Ignoring the fact that the two of us having any sort of relationship that goes beyond being strictly professional would be putting your career in danger isn’t selfish? How do you make that one out?”

  “It’s my decision,” I insisted. “I went into this with both eyes open.”

  “And I went in with blinders on.”

  “Doesn’t matter now. Any damage that could come from this is already done.”

  “Not exactly,” Nate insisted, eyes flashing.

  I shook my head. “Meaning what? I already know the consequences I’m facing with my employer.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably losing this job. That’s already been established. But what happens when you try to get your next job and all these rumors and innuendo follow you?”

  “I point out that they’re nothing more than people being idiots on the Internet, which, by the way, is as good as an epidemic. I admit where I went wrong. And then I hope my prospective employer is able to see past the stupid people tweeting at me to find the truth. But seriously, I doubt they’ll see any of this stuff—”

  “Seems like an awfully big assumption. Especially if nothing happens to quash it all now.”

  I frowned at him, hugging my pillow closer. “My father’s already doing what he can on that score. He’s got his lawyer working on going after the worst offenders.”

  “But what if that’s not enough? What then?” Nate raised a brow. “And that doesn’t have anything to do with how future employers will look at all the things that are floating around about you.”

  “What things?” I demanded, my frustration leading to the words sounding snippier than I intended. “I don’t see how any employer could refuse to give me a chance simply because a bunch of idiots think I need a good rape, just because I’m a woman trying to make it in a man’s world.”

  “Rape?” Nate practically roared. “Who said anything about rape?”

  “A few hundred men on Twitter, last time I looked. Could be a few thousand by now, though. I told you about it before.”

  “Yeah, but I thought you were exaggerating.”

  “Not exaggerating. At all. But I doubt the lawyers have gotten very far with making them stop. And frankly, the police have a lot more important things to worry about, given the state of the world right now. Have you seen the news tonight?”

  But clearly, the rape threats weren’t what he’d seen, and whether he’d seen tonight’s
news or not, he wasn’t in any mood to be deterred from the conversation he’d started… Not if the utter fury causing a tic in his jaw was any indication.

  I rolled my eyes. “It’s not like you haven’t been up against the same and worse.”

  “No one’s threatened to rape me that I know of,” he grumbled.

  “Maybe not, but they’ve certainly made unfounded comments about you based on nothing more than the color of your skin. And things are getting worse out there.”

  “That’s not the same.”

  “Isn’t it? Tell me how it’s different. Tell me how it’s not all a bunch of ignorance and hatred and idiocy, because I don’t see it. You’ve had to face racism. I’ve had to face sexism. Big whoop.”

  “How can you be so blasé about something like this?”

  I threw a hand up in annoyance. “What else do you want me to do?”

  “I don’t know,” he shouted.

  “It’s not like you’ve been fighting back with everything you’ve got, either. You’re just pretending like it didn’t happen. Wishing it would go away, even though it isn’t. Two black teenagers got shot and killed by the cops tonight, not too far from here, you know. This city’s about ready to explode with tensions.”

  “You’ve been helping me with pretending it wasn’t happening,” Nate pointed out. “And what am I supposed to do about kids getting killed? I’m just trying to do my job. That’s it.”

  “I have been helping on that score! That’s absolutely right. I’ve been focusing my show on anything and everything else, to try to draw some of the focus off of you. I admit it. So how is this any different?”

  “Because all that happened with me was a couple of assholes throwing a fucking banana peel on the ice and shouting a few slurs. No one threatened to fucking hurt me.”

  “They’re just threats! What better way is there for me to fight back other than to go on about my life like they don’t have any effect on me?”

  Nate glowered, but he didn’t immediately spout off a comeback. “But maybe—”

  “Maybe nothing. Like I said, Dad has his lawyer on it. There’s not anything else I can do about it if all they’re doing is offering up vague threats on the Internet. No one’s acting on them. In a lot of ways, what happened with you was more real. They were physically there. In the building. You could see them, and they could see you. And there are real, physical things happening right now, in this city, related to the racial tensions. That’s a hell of a lot more real than anything I’m facing online. With this stuff, it’s all just…” I shrugged. “They don’t see me as a real person, you know? Someone with feelings. As long as they can hide behind the Internet, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.”

  “I hate this,” Nate said, his jaw tic intensifying. “I hate everything about this.”

  “I know. So do I.”

  “Noted,” he grumbled.

  “So what kinds of things did you see if it wasn’t that?” I half dreaded hearing his answer. But I wanted to move the conversation well away from the anonymous threats that I hadn’t thought about in weeks. “What are they saying now?”

  He shook his head a couple of times, an internal war going on in his head. “They seem to think that the only way you got your job is by sleeping your way into it. They think you’re sleeping with me, with your boss, with Jim Sutter…with all sorts of people, just so you can keep your job.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s not anywhere near as bad as I was assuming based on the way you’re acting.”

  “You don’t care about that?”

  I shrugged. “When you’ve seen all the threats I’ve seen, this isn’t all that bad. It’s just gossip. It’s not anything to worry about.”

  “It is for me,” Nate said. “Which brings us to why I wanted to see you tonight.”

  In the midst of our argument, I’d forgotten all about my fears from earlier, but now they came rushing back like a tidal wave, threatening to tow me under. I swallowed, barely managing to get the sudden excess of saliva past the huge lump in my throat. “Why is that?” I croaked.

  The intensity in his eyes spoke of a dozen different emotions at once: anger, sadness, fear, lust, and countless others I couldn’t differentiate. And determination. That one, I could make out.

  “I can’t be the one responsible for your career being ruined,” he said after what felt like an eternity.

  “But you’re not—”

  “I think we’ve already established that the kinds of things being spread around about you right now can and will destroy your career. Maybe not the job you have now, but it’ll follow you forever.”

  Every word he said sucked more air out of the room, leaving me fighting for each and every breath I could get.

  “So that’s it?” I demanded. “You’re done? You want out? It’s not like we were really a couple or anything, any—”

  “Bullshit we weren’t.”

  “That’s still what you’re saying, though, isn’t it? Whatever we might have been, you want to end it.”

  “That’s not what I want. At all.”

  “Then what?”

  “You,” he shouted. “I want to be with you.”

  “Well, great. I want to be with you, too.”

  “Good.”

  “So what are we even fighting about?”

  “This isn’t a fight,” Nate insisted. “We aren’t fighting.”

  “Sure seems like a good imitation of it.”

  “We’re not fighting. We’re having a discussion. Maybe an argument, but not a fight. I’ve seen people fight, and that’s not what this is. I’m telling you that it doesn’t matter what I want, because I can’t be with you. Not if it’s going to—”

  “Shouldn’t I have some say in this?” I demanded. “I mean, it’s my damn career we’re fighting over.”

  “We’re not fighting.”

  “It’s still my career,” I said, rolling my eyes. What the hell was it supposed to be like if we really were fighting, in his opinion? I didn’t want to see that. But, in a way, I was kind of glad we were getting a good argument in now—before things went too far between us. This way, either we would know that we could disagree and still move on as we were before, because we cared enough about each other to keep it from coming between us, or it would be too much and we could make a clean break.

  He gave me a pouting sort of look and crossed his arms. “Fair enough. But I don’t want to—”

  “To tell me what I should and shouldn’t do with my career, right?” There was no hiding my sarcasm. It was dripping through my pores and invading every inch of the space between us. “Because you’re not the kind of guy who would try to tell a woman how she needs to go about her business just because you’re a man.”

  Nate scowled, but he didn’t try to argue his way out of that one. Good thing, too, because I was ready to jump all over him if he tried it.

  “I just think,” he said slowly, “that you’ve worked so hard and given up so much in order to even have a career, so maybe you shouldn’t throw it away so easily.”

  “What do you mean by that? What have I given up?”

  “Your relationship with your mother and her family.” He didn’t even hesitate when he said it, just laid it out there like it was a fact.

  In a way, he was right. Absolutely right. But… “Don’t you think that’s even more reason I shouldn’t walk away from something like this?”

  “Like your job?”

  “No. Like us. Like what we’re building, whatever it is.” I sighed, because he didn’t immediately jump on board and agree with me. “There’s a lot more involved in my relationship with my mother than her not approving of my choice of career. That’s oversimplifying things to an insane degree. But I’m not willing to let my job ruin what we could have.”

  Nate stared at me a long time, his dark eyes scanning every inch of my face, like he was trying to see into the depths of my soul. “Then I think we’re at a bit of an impasse.”


  “We don’t have to be.”

  “We don’t?” He raised a brow.

  “Nope. Look, we both want to be together. Isn’t that enough for now? We can figure out the rest later. It’s not like we can solve the issue of my job tonight, let alone my entire career, while we’re sitting in this hotel room.”

  “With you in your pj’s,” he said, winking.

  I snuggled the pillow closer to my lap, but he grabbed hold of a corner and tugged it away, leaving me with nothing but those boxers and that holey T-shirt to cover me.

  “That’s not fair,” I complained, but my laughter ruined the effect of my argument.

  “Why not? You’ve been coming into the locker room for years with me in next to nothing. Besides, you look hot like that.”

  Hot? I bit my lower lip and looked down, hoping to understand what he was seeing. All I could see were my clothes that needed to be trashed, not worn, and skin that I never let anyone see. I tucked my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around my legs, hoping to cover as much as possible in lieu of racing over to the bed and burrowing beneath the blankets in an effort to disappear.

  “Someday,” he said, not seeming to notice how uncomfortable I was, “some morning, I want to see you in my shirt and boxers, your hair all messed up, maybe borrowing my toothbrush.”

  “I want my own toothbrush.” And a lot more clothes than what he wanted to see me in, but it wouldn’t do either of us much good to argue over that right now.

  “Okay. You can have your own toothbrush, but I want you in my clothes. My bed.”

  My stomach fluttered again, but this time from an entirely different sort of nerves. “So does that mean you’re done trying to get rid of me for my own sake now?”

  The corners of his lips quirked up in a grin. “At least for now. But I’m not done worrying about you.”

  “I suppose I can live with that.”

  “And I want to talk to your father to see if there’s anything I can do to help.”

  I sighed, but there were worse things in the world than having men in my life who cared enough to involve themselves, even if getting involved was bound to be a hopeless cause. “You free Wednesday night for dinner?”