Hate the Game

by Rose, Callie

  “Don’t rush me, I’m coming.”

  The door opened a moment later, and I looked her up and down. I approved. She wore leggings with a contoured pattern that accentuated her fine figure, a matching sports bra, and a semi-translucent loose tank top over the whole ensemble.

  “Perfect,” I said, nodding. “Follow me.”

  She started to turn toward the stairs, then paused as I walked in the opposite direction.

  “This way,” I said with a grin. “Gym’s upstairs.”

  “Seems inconvenient.”

  “Only during the set up. It’s super convenient now. Reduces the amount of self-control I need first thing in the morning.”

  “I guess if you don’t have a lot of self-control to begin with, it only makes sense to build failsafes into your life.”

  “Exactl—wait, are you saying I don’t have self-control?” I shot her an indignant look, and she raised a brow.

  “Are you claiming that you do? You forget that I’ve studied your history extensively.”

  “Nah, you’ve studied tabloids. Trust me, darlin’, I’ve got self-control for days.” The scene from the night before flashed in my head. “Obviously.”

  “Oh, obviously? Has it been a strain on your self-control to not be a party boy this week?”

  I glanced at her curiously. “You’re in a mood this morning. I thought we were past all this animosity.”

  She crossed her arms and looked away. A deep flush crept up her neck to her ears until her skin matched her hair. Interesting.

  “Here we are,” I said, pushing through the big double-doors of the last room on the left. Her mouth fell open as she stepped through and looked around. I looked at the room through her eyes and swelled with pride.

  On one side, a polished wood floor ran the length of the room and halfway across. Mirrors lined the walls on all sides, and a ballet barre traced the wood floor. Inline skates in various sizes sat in cubbies on the far end below a stereo system that had cost more than my first car.

  Various machines stood in a militaristic row on the carpeted half of the room. Beyond them, free weights were stacked behind a padded mat. In the far corner were two punching bags.

  “My gym back home doesn’t have all this,” she said enviously. “This must have cost you a fortune.”

  I shrugged. “It wasn’t cheap, but it’s worth it. I always start with cardio. Dancing, boxing, running, biking… pick your poison.”

  “Did you say boxing?” she asked, sliding a sly look at me.

  “You like to box?”

  “Kickboxing and swimming are two of my top ten favorite ways to exercise.”

  “At what rank?” I asked.

  “Second and third place, respectively.”

  “What’s in first?”

  She smirked, then walked toward the boxing gear. “You wanna go?”

  “Let’s do this,” I said with a grin. “Let’s get some mood music going. You like 90’s?”

  “90’s what?” She perked up, interested.

  I grinned. “Not boy bands, sorry.”

  She rolled her eyes and changed direction. “Show me what you have.”

  I pulled the library up on the flatscreen on the wall, switched the display to the appropriate decade, and stepped away so she could see. She scrolled through for a while, then chose an album.

  I whistled. “Wouldn’t have pegged you for a Country Grammar fan.”

  She winked at me, then skipped over to the gear as music flooded the room. We threw on the gloves and padding quickly, then I led her over to the soft pad.

  “I’ll go easy on you,” I said with a wink.

  “Don’t you dare,” she said with hot determination in her eyes.

  I shrugged, then danced around her. She matched my every move, transforming before my eyes from a brainy, tight-lipped journalist to a sleek, supple athlete. She reminded me of a wildcat stalking its prey. I grinned.

  “Gonna dance all day?” I shot at her.

  Her fist collided with my face before I even saw her move. I blocked her next blow, then danced out of her reach. She was right up against me a second later, pummeling my abs. I caught her head in a lock and twisted her under me, stepped over her, and took her down.

  “Foul.” She narrowed her eyes at me from where she lay helplessly under me.

  “What? This is kickboxing, isn’t it?” I asked innocently.

  She blinked at me, unimpressed. I let her up and backed away, raising my hands in surrender.

  “My bad. You said kickboxing, I’m over here thinking MMA.”

  “No, you were over there thinking ‘crap, I’m losing to a girl’. Suck it up, buttercup.” She smirked at me and stuck out her tongue.

  “Watch where you’re pointing that thing,” I said. I bit my lip. God, what I would do to have that little pink tongue working all over my body.

  She must have caught the look in my eye, because the next thing I knew her heel was colliding with the side of my helmet and I had to crunch my abs awkwardly to keep my balance. I jabbed back at her, and she blocked it expertly.

  “I’ve got to admit,” I said breathlessly. “I haven’t done a whole lot of this. What do you say we switch it up?”

  “To what?” she asked warily.

  I glanced at the polished wood floor and shrugged. “Want to dance?”

  She raised a brow. “Tired of getting beat up by a girl?”

  “Frankly, darlin’, I can think of a lot of better things to do with a girl like you.”

  She opened her mouth and snapped it shut again as her cheeks flushed red. “Like tundra golf, I imagine.”

  “Oh, your imagination and mine are going to have to have a conversation,” I said with a grin. “I was thinking of something a little warmer. Dance?” I held out a hand, challenging her with a smirk.

  She narrowed her eyes at me and pulled her helmet off. “Fine. Want to change the music?”

  “Why?”

  She hesitated and glanced back at me uncertainly. “You’re going to dance ballet to this?”

  “Who said ballet?”

  I could see her swallow from where I stood. While I could probably figure out how to dance ballet to 90’s hip hop, it wasn’t what I had in mind at all. I was far more interested in watching her body move naturally, however it felt the need to. I intended to read her and figure out where her head was right now. Something had shifted yesterday, and I was going to pinpoint what it was, one way or another. I moved to the polished wood floor and stretched, waiting for her.

  She joined me after a moment and shrugged. “So? What do you do?”

  “Let loose,” I said with a grin. “If you can.”

  She took the challenge to heart. Eyes flashing, she started to dance, and I with her. She was untrained, her movements raw and unpolished and full of heat. The fight wasn’t gone from her yet, and she danced like she was ready for battle. I matched her energy and heat, silently daring her to blow me away. We slipped into a sort of arm’s-length tango, eyes locked, bodies synchronized.

  The beat dropped and she spun once, twice, three times.

  Without conscious thought, my hands found her hips, lifting her toward me. One of her legs wrapped around my waist, and I held it in place with a firm grip as her hands delved into my hair. Eyes dark, lips crimson, her fierce gaze penetrated my very soul. We stood panting while the last song on the album wound down. Our gasping breaths echoed off the mirrors as the room fell silent. The energy between us was so tight, I could swear something was going to snap.

  Then it did.

  She leaned in and pressed her lips to mine so hard I wasn’t sure whether she was trying to make out with me or kill me. I kissed her back with equal energy, feeding into the mixed-up passionate frustration that was rolling off her in waves. She wrapped her other leg around me and I spun toward the wall, pressing her against the mirror with the ballet barre under her ass.

  The heat between her hips radiated over me, and as I pressed into her she b
egan to rock against me. Her soft tongue tangled with mine, wrestling with the same fierce energy she’d had when we’d sparred. I moved my hands over her lithe, tense little body, hips to waist, then up her ribs. As I approached her breasts, she shoved me away—hard. When I pulled back, startled, she was glaring at me, her lips swollen and red from our kiss.

  “Damn it, Sawyer.”

  “W-wha—?”

  “Put me down!”

  Baffled, I did as she said. She shoved past me and stalked out of the room. She didn’t look back once, not even when she shoved the double doors open with a dramatic flourish and turned down the hallway.

  Still unreasonably turned on and more than a little frustrated, I let her go. I switched the music to heavy metal and took out my aggression on the machines.

  14

  Addison

  I avoided Sawyer for the remainder of the morning, forgoing breakfast and coffee in favor of a shower and a long web-surfing session. Of course, I didn’t retain a single bit of what I read. I was too steamed. Instead, I was obsessively picking apart the morning, trying to figure out how he had manipulated me into that situation.

  It took me until noon to decide that he probably hadn’t intended for things to go the way they had. I had gotten caught up in the moment; he probably had too. And if I was being honest with myself, it’d been hot as hell. Still, I wasn’t about to let it happen again. A single instance of weakness was probably forgivable, but if I let it go any farther while I was still writing about him, I would be in trouble.

  “But only if people find out about it,” I muttered to myself as I paced my room. “And there’s no reason why anybody needs to hear about this. But what if he doesn’t like my report and decides to go to some other magazine and say that it’s just the bad press of a woman scorned?”

  I shoved my hands through my hair and growled. This is exactly what I was trying to avoid, damn it. Him and his stupid, cute butt and his stupid, handsome face and his stupidly strong arms and cut abs and dancing! Who dances anymore? What man dances like that these days? Damn it, and damn him.

  I was upset enough about the whole thing to want to stay in my room for the entire day, but my stomach had other ideas. We had worked up quite a sweat in his gym, and I was actively starving by two-thirty. Hoping he was distracted elsewhere in the house, I crept downstairs. The ugly candy dispenser grimaced at me, and I stuck my tongue out at it. God, I hate that thing. It still didn’t make sense to me that he even had it.

  But then, nothing about the house seemed to make sense. I had picked up on that as soon as I’d arrived, and I’d let it fall by the wayside while I let him drive me crazy. I decided then and there that I was done procrastinating. I was on a mission, and the cluttered house mystery was top of my list. To my relief, the kitchen was empty when I got to it, allowing me to raid the fridge in peace.

  “I was starting to wonder if I was going to have to call your boss and tell her you’d gone into hibernation.”

  Sawyer’s voice startled me, and I jumped, almost choking on my sandwich in the process. I put it down carefully, took a big gulp of water, then affixed the iciest expression I could manage on my face. I turned around slowly.

  He grinned. “You have a little something...” He gingerly wiped at his own cheek with his fingers.

  “Oh!” I wiped my mouth, flustered, then crossed my arms.

  He let the moment slide with nothing more than a twinkling smile. “You should get ready anyway. The guys will be here in a couple hours.”

  “The guys?”

  “The team. Most of them, anyway. We’re having a little party since there’s no practice today.”

  I perked up instantly. This was exactly the kind of thing I’d been waiting for. “So you do still party.”

  He shrugged. “Depends on your definition.”

  “And what’s your definition?”

  He shook his head. “Guess you’ll have to wait and see. I have to run out for a few things. The guys’ll start showing up around five. You might want to get dressed.”

  I glanced down at myself. After my shower, I had thrown on the first things I’d grabbed, which happened to be an oversized t-shirt and the harem pants I’d worn the night before. Way to be professional, Addison. I was really going to have to start dressing appropriately if I was going to stay here much longer.

  “Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s cute,” he said with a smile.

  “I bet you do.”

  His brow furrowed. Even that was cute. I glowered in response to it.

  “Are you angry at me?” he asked directly.

  “Yes. No. I… ” I couldn’t finish the thought because I truly didn’t know. I was angry, but at whom? I was as much to blame for that kiss as he was. Maybe more so. I was angry because he was being sweet, and that didn’t make any sense at all. He took a step toward me, concern shining from his gorgeous blue eyes.

  “Addison. Are you all right?”

  Something snapped inside of me. “No! No, I’m not all right. This was supposed to be simple. You were supposed to be a gross party-boy super-bro jock, and I was supposed to show up, expose you in a day or two, and go home. I’ve won awards on more difficult jobs—this was supposed to be a piece of cake.” I ran a hand through my hair and turned to pace.

  He leaned against the counter and watched me. After a moment, he shrugged. “I’m sorry. That’s just not who I am.”

  “Anymore,” I shot sarcastically.

  “No, Addison. Ever. It’s never been who I was. It was only ever what I was doing. I was living reactively, and there was a lot of negative crap to react to. I’m not going to say I’m the best person in the world, far from it. But I’m not a… what did you say? A party-boy super-bro jock? Not at my core. I’ve shown you who I am. If you had any professional integrity, you would accept what your eyes are telling you.”

  “Professional integrity! I have nothing but professional integrity.”

  He raised his brows in a silent oh, really? Then flitted his eyes up and to the right, in the direction of the gym.

  “That… that was a mistake,” I said. “I shouldn’t have… done that.”

  “Why?”

  I blinked at him in disbelief. “Because it’s a conflict of interest, Sawyer. While I’m writing this story, that… all of that… is not professional.”

  He crossed his arms and tilted his chin defiantly. “I see. So finish the report, then we can finish what we started.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I still don’t know what you’re hiding.”

  “You’re assuming that I’m hiding something.”

  “I know you are!”

  He narrowed his eyes, and a muscle began to work in his jaw. “All right, Addison. You win. I’ll be gone for an hour and a half. The house is yours. Every door is unlocked. You have full access to everything. You think I have a secret? Find it. I dare you.”

  Those words had an instant effect on me.

  I felt a twinge of guilt at the frustration and the hint of something else—hurt?—in his eyes. But the bloodhound journalist in me couldn’t help but perk up. I was going to comb the house from basement to rafters; I didn’t care how long it took me. He left before I could respond, and a moment later, I heard the front door slam. For a moment, I hesitated. I felt bad about how that had gone down.

  But you know what this means, right, Addison? You have his full permission to rifle through his bedroom. Get it together, and do your job!

  “Every room,” I told myself as I raced up the stairs. “He did say every room.”

  I went through every drawer, closet, and shelf in his room. I checked under the mattress, behind the curtains, and inside the pages of every book. I didn’t find so much as a hip flask. I did find that he liked to read bloody mysteries and physics books.

  “That collection of fairy tales doesn’t really fit your tastes, does it?” I murmured as I went back to the first bedside table
I had poked through. I pulled the book out once more and gingerly flipped through the pages. A photograph fell out, and I bent to pick it up. It was an old Polaroid of three kids in a wading pool, grinning at the camera. I recognized Sawyer’s smile instantly, even with the oversized front teeth and kitchen-shear haircut. I turned it over.

  Amelia, Sawyer, and Elyse. Family reunion barbecue, 1998.

  I turned the picture back over and studied the faces of the two girls. They could be his sisters, though he’d only mentioned one. Probably cousins, I decided. I carefully slid the photo back into the book and put the book back in the drawer. I frowned at it. It was the only thing in there, so it was obviously special for some reason. The handwriting on the back of the picture matched the writing at the front of the book. But who would’ve given Sawyer a book of fairy tales? No, they hadn’t given it to him. Not unless he had been a little princess at some point.

  “Irony? No. Doesn’t fit.” I stood scowling at the book, lost in thought, for way too long. Before I knew it, his car was pulling back into his massive driveway. Panicking, I realized that I had neglected to get dressed and had left my half-eaten sandwich on the counter downstairs. I ran to my room to solve the first problem, hoping I could be finished in time to dispose of the second before his teammates arrived.

  I almost made it. I stepped into the kitchen in fresh jeans and a professional pink blouse just as the front room exploded with noise. I hurried to my abandoned sandwich and tossed it in the trash with a twinge of regret. It had been a good sandwich. I stashed the dirty plate in the dishwasher as the kitchen was flooded with big, loud men.

  “Hey, Dawson! How’d you manage to get the reporter to do your housework for you?” one of them asked.

  “She’s a girl, moron! Cleaning is her natural state.”

  “Man, shut the hell up! Keep your troglodytic crap outside.”

  I recognized my defender as Chase, and shot him a smile. The one who had made the backwards comment was Levi, I thought. Honestly, all of their names had sort of run together with their faces, apart from Chase and Damian. The latter was skulking around the kitchen door with a suspicious look on his face.