I grasp the armrests of my chair and lean forward, pinning Jordan with a glare. “What—and I can’t stress this enough—the fuck?”
“Hear me out.” He pops a hand up, palm out.
I jerk my chin, but inside my head, a whirlwind of thoughts bangs against my skull, tangling with surprise, resentment, and hurt. Yes, hurt, because he’s playing matchmaker between me and his teammate. Okay, he doesn’t want me, so he’s throwing me at another man?
I’m keeping my mouth shut ... for now.
But inside? Inside, I’m fuming.
“Since you don’t follow sports, I’m going to assume you don’t know much about Daniel?” I shake my head, still keeping quiet. His eyes narrow on me, but he says, “Yeah, okay.” After rising from the chair, he stalks over to my smallish window, props a forearm on the wall,and stares out onto Welton Street. Several moments pass by in silence before he turns around, inked arms crossed over his chest. “When I first joined the team, I may’ve been a cocky shit on the outside, but inside? Scared as hell. Professional basketball is as different from high school and college ball as flag football is from the NFL.”
I stare at him.
“As the firstFast & Furiousmovie from the last fifty.”
I stare some more.
He sighs. “As different from old-schoolThunderCatsto new-schoolThunderCats.”
“Ohhh.” I shudder. “Got it.”
“Anyway,” he continues, “Daniel had already been on the team for four years and saw past the smart-ass mouth and that other bullshit to the terrified rookie beneath. He took me beneath his wing. Showed me how to be not just a better player but a professional and a good teammate.” He gives his head a small shake, and a low, short laugh escapes him. “There were times my mouth wrote a check my ass couldn’t cash, and he got me out of those tight situations. Didn’t berate me or make me feel like the asshole I was, just gave me advice and became that big-brother figure I never had but needed. Especially in this industry. When they turn you into a millionaire at twenty, they don’t exactly teach you how to be a morally and fiscally responsible man with it. If I’d been left to my own devices, my whole first check would’ve been spent on houses and cars I don’t have the time to live in or drive, clothes, watches, and all this other bullshit that don’t mean a damn thing. I definitely wouldn’t have investments, a financial portfolio, or a fucking future after basketball. Hell, he introduced me to Cyrus.”
“He sounds like a good guy.” He does. But ... “I still don’t see what this has to do with me or why I should go out with him.”You fucking date him if he’s so greatbounces on the tip of my tongue, but I swallow it down. There is a line of callousness even I hesitate to cross. Not often, mind you. But it does exist. “Besides, I don’t date athletes.”
But you fuck them.
The words, unspoken but deafening, vibrate in the abruptly dense silence.
Neither of us moves. At least, I can’t. Not with that electric stare like a physical hand pinning me to my seat. No, that’s a lie. It doesn’t trap me. Ittouchesme. Strokes over my face, feathers down my neck, glances over my collarbone.
Grazes the top of my breasts.
Dips lower ...
I inhale, the overly loud sound cracking the tension like a stone flung against a windshield. I uncurl my numb fingers from around the chair’s armrests and lower my hands to my lap, where I flatten them against my thighs. A small movement to that piercing scrutiny across the room, but only I am aware of the truth.
It’s either this or press my palms to the suddenly achy breasts that also felt that visual caress.
“I’m hoping you’ll make an exception. For me,” he murmurs. “You’ve never explained your rule to me.”
And I’m not about to now.
Maybe not ever.
“You were right.” I roll back and stand, pressing my palms to my desk. “I should’ve waited to see what you asked before agreeing to this favor. We’re friends, and I appreciate the new flow of clients your teammates have brought to BURNED, but I’m not dating one of them. That’s out of the question.”
“Miriam ...”
A match strikes, and anger flickers to life with a metallicwhoosh. It’s irrational to direct my hurt, my pain toward him—my head acknowledges this. But my heart? My heart sweeps me back to that moment when I was at my weakest, my most humiliated and helpless. When I was a victim of not just a mean, harmful, demeaning joke but of my own naivete. My own willful stupidity.
“No,” I say, perhaps more vehemently than the situation calls for. But the sticky wisps of the past cling to me like spiderwebs.
He shoves off the wall and crosses the room, stopping just short of my desk. “You promised to hear me out,” he gently reminds me.
Dammit. I did. And it’s not his fault that he doesn’t understand why I have a nearly decade-long moratorium on dating athletes. Especially when I won’t tell him.
Only Zora knows, and I told her years later. Not even Renae knows.
