by Tara Wyatt
As he spoke, he understood that he was a classic example of not living by his own advice, but his situation was different. Hunter and Marlowe were clearly nuts about each other. He and Cara…yeah, it was different. And it wasn’t that he hadn’t forgiven himself. He just…he had things to fix. “It’s okay to be scared. Having a kid is huge. Being scared doesn’t mean you won’t be an awesome dad. It’s all just part of the package.”
Hunter nodded slowly, then shot him a half-smile. “Thanks. Helps to hear that coming from another dad.”
“Anytime. Stop being so damn hard on yourself and enjoy the ride.”
Javi got up and headed toward the pitching coach, thinking that if he ever wrote his memoirs, he could title it All the Advice I’ll Never Take.
Tuesday, April 16
Aerin: I’m still sore from Friday. Not that I’m complaining.
* * *
Javi: Good, because I’m on the road until Sunday night. You’ll have to get by on memories until then.
* * *
Aerin: Oh, I’ll have a little help.
* * *
Javi: Why, did you secretly record us or something?
* * *
Aerin: No, but I’m intrigued by that idea. I’ll give you a hint: buzz buzz.
* * *
Javi: Well, now I’m intrigued. And hard.
* * *
Aerin: Just how I like you.
* * *
Javi: I thought you didn’t like me.
* * *
Aerin: I don’t think I ever actually said that…
* * *
Javi: Right, but actions speak louder than words.
* * *
Aerin: Fair enough.
* * *
Javi: So then…you do like me?
* * *
Aerin: Are you going to pass me a note asking me to check yes or no?
* * *
Javi: Hey, it worked for me in middle school.
* * *
Aerin: I bet the girls were fighting over you and your dimples.
* * *
Javi: Ah ha! So you like my dimples.
* * *
Aerin: They’re my third favorite part of your body.
* * *
Javi: Third? I’m dying to know what parts took gold and silver.
* * *
Aerin: I wouldn’t want to objectify you.
* * *
Javi: Oh, objectify away. Please.
* * *
Aerin: Now you’re just fishing for compliments.
* * *
Javi:
* * *
Aerin: Hmm, well silver would have to go to your ass. And gold…well. It’s a little obvious.
* * *
Javi: I feel like there’s a joke in here about having the Midas touch…
* * *
Aerin: When will I see you again, King Midas? I’ve got the week from hell coming up, I need something to look forward to.
* * *
Javi: I’ll come straight to your place from the airport on Sunday night.
It’ll be late. Probably after midnight.
* * *
Aerin: I’m already counting down.
* * *
Wednesday, April 17
Aerin: OH. MY. GOD.
FUCKING SHOOT ME.
PLEASE.
* * *
Javi: I take it your week’s going really well.
* * *
Aerin: Suuuuuuuuuuper well.
* * *
Javi: Wanna talk about it?
* * *
Aerin: I want to rip your clothes off and have you distract me for a few hours.
* * *
Javi: I could call you.
* * *
Aerin: Um
Yeah, ok
Aerin stood and closed the door to her office, resting her back against the smooth, solid wood for just a moment before her phone started buzzing in her hand. She swiped her finger across the screen.
“Hey.”
“Hey. So. Lay it on me. What’s going on?”
“Are you sure you’re not busy?”
“Nope. It’s only nine in the morning here in Oakland. I just got back from a run and I don’t have anything on my schedule until a noon meeting with the coaching staff. So, aside from showering and getting dressed, I’m free for the next few hours.”
God, she hated how much better she already felt just hearing his voice. Not only was that a stupid way to be thinking and feeling, it was dangerous—for both of them. She wasn’t looking for anything beyond amazing sex, and Javi wasn’t looking for a relationship, especially with a woman like her. She’d never be the type of person he started seeing when he was ready to move on from his divorce. Not her, with her coldness and her prickly exterior and her ball busting attitude. Not her, with the way she deliberately pushed everyone away to keep herself safe.
So while it felt good to talk to him, she also knew she had to be careful. Very, very careful. The last thing she needed was to let her heart get carried away and do something completely catastrophic, like override her brain.
She took a breath and paced back to her desk, sinking down into the leather chair, swiveling slightly. From her window, she had a view of the Dallas skyline and the traffic below, all steel and glass winking in the morning sunshine. She blinked her tired eyes and reached for the enormous coffee cup on her desk.
“Let me preface this by saying I’m running on about four hours of sleep, tops.”
“Never a good start.”
She bit back the tiniest smile, surprised that she had one in her despite everything going on. “Definitely not. I got in at like three in the morning from an emergency trip to Houston last night. You know Kevin Hightower, the point guard for the Rockets? He broke his hand during last night’s game. He’s getting the best possible care, but I needed to be there to manage everything between the team and the doctors while making sure Kevin was okay.”
“That sounds like a lot to have on your shoulders. Is he going to be okay?”
“He’s not going to need surgery, which is what were afraid of, so it’s as good as the news could be right now.” She sighed. “But it’s not great. The playoffs just started, so he’ll be under intense pressure to come back as early as possible if the Rockets make it out of the first round. Meanwhile, I’m in the middle of trying to negotiate a five-year contract extension for him. This injury could make that challenging.”
“To say the least.”
She slumped back a little in her chair, already feeling a tiny bit lighter. “Right. And then on top of it all, I was supposed to have a late dinner with some guys from…” She hesitated, knowing she was already dancing on the line of what was appropriate to disclose. “I can’t tell you. Let’s just say it rhymes with schmikey, okay? I’m trying to get them to sign an endorsement deal with Nick Giannakis, the MMA fighter.”
“I didn’t realize you repped MMA fighters. I’ve heard of Giannakis. He’s good.”
“He is. He’s also good looking and charming as hell, so if anyone’s got the ticket, he does. Anyway, I had to reschedule N—I mean schmikey—for this morning, and then they bailed. Which led to a very thorough chewing out from Will, my asshole boss. Who, by the way, promised me a promotion weeks ago but it’s been nothing but crickets around here since.”
“If you think he’s an asshole, he must be pretty bad,” said Javi, and she could hear the slight teasing edge to his voice. It skated along her tense shoulder muscles, loosening them just a tad.
“After some major schmoozing, I managed to get schmikey back on the calendar for tomorrow, but that means shuffling other things around, which again, got me on Will’s shit list. See, we all have our own clients, but Will and Adam, the two managing partners, decide who gets priority. I shuffled someone who Adam had decided was priority so there was a lovely shit-o-gram of an email waiting for me. I get that every client likes to think that they’re the number one f
ocus, but it’s impossible to prioritize everyone. That’s just reality.”
“It sounds to me like you bust your ass for them and they don’t realize what they have.”
She let out a heavy sigh. “And this was all before nine this morning. I then proceeded to lose a multi-agent bidding war for an up-and-coming quarterback who has star potential written all over him, and then got dumped by a veteran pitcher on the Royals because he really, really needs to retire and doesn’t want to believe it.” She swung idly in her chair, her eyes staring unfocused at her desk. “I knew this was going to be a tough week with the schmikey endorsement deal negotiations and the bidding war for Brody, the quarterback, but I didn’t expect it all to go so colossally wrong and to be getting my ass chewed by the cretins who dangled a promotion over my head only to seemingly have forgotten about that little carrot. You know,” she said, gathering a full head of steam, “it would serve them right if I took all of my clients and left.”
There was a beat of silence before Javi spoke. “So…why don’t you?”
She blinked a couple of times. “What?”
“It sounds like your bosses take you—your work ethic, your talent, your intelligence, all of it—for granted. So why don’t you go out on your own?”
“I…” She shook her head. “It’s too complicated. I didn’t really mean it—it was just one of those idle revenge fantasies, you know?”
“Yeah, but sometimes the stuff that comes into your brain when you’re not actively trying is the good stuff. The real stuff. The hidden but oh-so-true stuff. Tell me why it would be so complicated.”
She swallowed, a pit forming in her stomach, making her hastily gulped smoothie slosh uncomfortably. “I don’t know if all my clients would follow me. I don’t know if I could attract other agents to work under me. I’d need a business plan, a distribution strategy, marketing, branding…” She was exhausted just thinking about it. And underneath that was the fear. What if she poured herself into it and it failed? What if it blew up in her face, making her life even more of a trainwreck? She chewed her lip.
“I don’t know, Aerin. None of that sounds particularly complicated to me. Hard, and not without risk, but trust me on this. I know a lot of sports agents and if anyone could do it, it’s you.”
A warm glow started to chase away the chilly fear inside her. The fear that she wasn’t smart enough, or talented enough, or brave enough to take something like that on. In all honesty, she’d never given it any serious thought before, always focusing on working up the ladder where she was.
But what if she built her own ladder instead of climbing the one in front of her? Hell, what if she said screw the ladder and hopped on an escalator of her own design?
“Yeah,” she finally said. “Maybe.”
“You know, when I was first offered the manager position here in Dallas, I was scared shitless. It was a high stakes move, lots of eyes on me. If I failed, it would be completely public. There was no hiding. But I did it anyway. It’s often the things we fear the most that we should lean into because that’s how we’ll grow and become better. And you, Ms. Stone, don’t strike me as the kind of woman to let fear get in her way.”
She let out a soft snort, his comment emphasizing how he didn’t really know her at all, and that was entirely on purpose. She’d deliberately kept her real self—the vulnerable, soft parts of her, the parts riddled with fear and self-doubt—hidden from view. “Maybe I’m just good at faking it,” she said softly, picking up a pen and twirling it between her fingers.
“I wouldn’t know, seeing as you don’t fake anything with me,” he said, his voice taking on a slightly gravely tone.
She laughed. “How’d you get so smart, Flores?”
“When you manage players, you get good at reading people. It’s my job to figure out what makes my guys tick. What motivates them and what scares them. What they need and how to push them to get the best out of them. Sure, on a day to day level, I manage games. But in the bigger scheme of things, I manage performance, and that takes a lot of insight sometimes.”
“Mmm,” she said, making a non-committal humming sound, even though what he was saying was both resonating with her and scaring the crap out of her. “Well, you’ve given me something to think about, anyway.”
“Good. What does the rest of your week look like?”
“This afternoon we have the agency’s quarterly strategic goals meeting. It’ll probably go late, which means I’m definitely going to need more coffee. I need to check in with Hightower and keep tabs on that situation. Make sure Giannakis isn’t pissed about schmikey dodging us when I promised him an endorsement deal with a major sporting goods company. I have about a million contracts to review. Five…no, wait, six conference calls. A negotiation meeting with the NHL and two players on my roster. A meeting about getting one of my retired NFL guys a color commentating job with Fox Sports. So you know. Just a metric shit-ton of stuff that needs to happen before, oh, probably Friday at noon.”
“Okay. I’m off Monday. I’m taking you someplace where you can destress. You’re gonna turn your phone off—just for a couple of hours—and relax. Plus you need something to look forward to. Shit weeks go faster if you have something good planned.”
Aerin froze, the pen she’d been twirling dangling in mid-air. “Javi, we said no dates. That sounds like a date.”
“It’s most definitely not a date. It’s one sports professional helping another. But if it helps, I’ll throw in some sex, just to get us back onto familiar territory. Sound good?”
“Sex with you always sounds good,” she said before she could stop herself. He laughed and she felt it throughout her body, like a gentle, warming vibration that made her miss him.
“Then it’s settled. I’ll pick you up Monday at ten in the morning. Wear comfortable clothes and shoes. I’ll take care of everything else.”
“Okay. And Javi?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for this. I…just, thanks.”
“Anytime. Now go put your wolf mask back on and raise some hell.”
Eleven
Late April sunshine warmed Javi’s skin as he squinted up at the pristine blue sky through his sunglasses. The temperature was in the high seventies, and a soft breeze rustled through the trees around them, mingling with the birdsong to create a soothing soundtrack.
He’d picked Aerin up at her place about an hour ago, and while the sight of her in a loose tank top and leggings had made him want to tear her clothes off and fuck her against the wall, he’d promised her a couple of hours of stress relief. She’d sounded so absolutely exhausted and worn out when they’d talked on the phone that he’d immediately gone into coaching mode. Into fix-it mode. He’d tried to tell himself that he was doing it because coaching and helping was what he did, but somewhere in the back of his brain, he knew there was more to it than that. Hearing her voice—so tired, so defeated—he’d wanted to pull her into his arms and find a way to make her feel better.
He cared.
About Aerin Stone.
And the more he saw of the real her—the tiny, fleeting glimpses that she let him see through the chinks in her armor—the more he wanted to see. The more he cared. The more he wanted to know about her. What had happened that she put on all this frostiness to keep people away? Why was she so terrified of the big things in life—career ambitions and connecting with people?
He adjusted his backpack slightly and then glanced over his shoulder, his heart slamming into high gear when his eyes landed on Aerin just a few feet behind him on the shady but steep path. Her gray tank top and light purple leggings clung to her toned, graceful frame, showcasing the glory he knew hid beneath. But even better was the fact that the little lines between her eyes had relaxed; her neck and jaw were visibly less tense than the last time he’d seen her. The idea that he could give her something she’d needed—beyond sex—filled his chest with a foolish kind of hope.
They hiked in silence along the Piedmont Ridge T
rail for a good forty-five minutes before coming to the secluded spot he’d picked. There had been hardly anyone else on the trail this morning, and very few hikers wound their way up this particular path. He stopped, reaching for Aerin’s hand and pulling her to his side. They stood near the edge of a rocky outcropping, almost entirely enclosed by the greenery surrounding them. A serendipitous parting of branches created a window, showcasing the lush valley below.
Slipping his backpack off of his shoulders, he glanced at Aerin again. A fine sheen of sweat had gathered at the base of her neck, between her collarbones and shimmering down into her top. His fingers itched to trace its path, his mouth watered at the thought of tasting the salt of her skin, but he held himself back. This was about her—getting her out of the office and away from her phone, into the fresh air and sunshine for a little exercise and relaxation. And, okay, maybe trying to get to know her a little better. Maybe.