Page 14 of Dirty Player
With the Arts Festival opening next week, I’d been desperate to start creating. I wanted the store ready to go by then, but there were a million things I still had left to do scribbled on a ripped piece of notebook paper…somewhere in my office.
Amazing how I could make such a huge mess when I had so little.
“What did the loser want now?”
I turned to Beaux to see his arms across his chest, shoulder leaning against the door to my office. He was freshly showered, telling me he’d come straight from his late workout.
I groaned and tossed the pen to the tabletop. “Same old crap. Apologies, refusing to let me go.”
I hated that there was a small part of me that was glad. Because if he didn’t want to let me go, maybe everything we’d shared, everything I thought I’d once loved hadn’t been a lie.
A month had given me a lot of perspective. Melissa and Beaux’s persistent cataloging his faults and the things they’d always hated about him had given me greater insights into things I hadn’t seen, or had refused to admit earlier.
I was angry and hurt, but beneath it there was still the love I’d thought I had for him for years, simmering. I couldn’t dig deep enough to scrape it out.
“When are you moving your stuff out here?”
“Whenever Patrick tells me when I can get the movers into the apartment. He wants to see me first, though.”
“Fuck that, Shannon. Melissa has a key. She can meet movers any time of the day. Stop fucking bending to his will.”
“I know.” I scrubbed my hands down my face and wrapped them around the back of my neck, popping my knuckles. “I know that. I was hoping—”
“You were hoping he’d be a decent human being for once.”
Ugh. I hated my baby brother. Such a pain in the ass. His words were still truthful.
“Yeah.” A breath fell from my puffed out cheeks. “I guess I was.” I spun in my chair, my design tables between us. “How was practice? Ready for the upcoming game?”
He pushed off the doorway and walked to the tables, his fingers brushing against bracelets I’d pounded and shaped earlier.
“Won’t play much the first couple games. Can’t have their new stars getting injured before the season really begins.”
He seemed to avoid meeting my gaze. I didn’t often see him uncertain or worried, unless it came to me and my life. This was football.
His dream. His goal since he was five.
“How was practice?”
“Powell’s still being an asshole. Jesus, he’s not letting me get away with shit. Every play he’s on my ass, screaming in my face.”
The name alone sent a spark of awareness to places it shouldn’t have—deep in my belly, the apex of my thighs.
I cleared my throat. “Yeah? Is he right?”
Beaux huffed and looked at a spot on the far wall. “I’m good. I know that. I’m good enough to be a starter, but every damn time I make a mistake—or when I don’t, for that matter—he’s right there, telling me what to do different. I’m not Mason, and I don’t want to be. They got rid of him for a reason, but he and Powell were friends. I don’t know if it’s something he has against me, against my playing, or because I took his friend’s spot.” He looked at me then, a gleam in his eye. “Or if he just really wants to fuck my sister and is pissed I’ve cock-blocked him.”
He choked over the word. I wanted to laugh at his grossed-out expression, but I couldn’t. That heat in my belly unfurled into something larger.
I swallowed a lump in my throat. “Really?”
I squeezed my eyes closed immediately. How desperate would I have to be for that to happen? He was worse than Patrick. Just as big of a player but didn’t feel the need to hide it.
“While this whole discussion is making me want to puke up my protein shake—”
“That’s probably just the protein.” I pulled a face. Those things smelled gross and tasted nastier. Add the kale, chia seeds, and spinach and it was shit in a cup.
“Shut up.” He smirked and went back to looking at my jewelry. “You know he was married once, right?”
