“Did you come here to break things off?” he asks, and his tone is matter of fact, as though we could be discussing the weather.
“No!” I wrap my arms around his neck, and I kiss his cheek. “No,” I repeat, making eye contact. Physical closeness usually snaps him back into himself, and with him, it often recenters me too if I’ve been uneasy. “Unless something goes horribly wrong, we’ve got a deal to the end of season. I promised, and I keep those.”
“Okay,” he says slowly, and his hand sneaks up the back of my shirt for the skin-on-skin contact, and he buries his nose in the valley at my shoulder. “God, you smell good.” He pulls me tighter. “Why does it seem like I won’t want to hear what you have to tell me?”
“I’m just not sure how you’re going to react,” I admit.
“As long as I’ve still got you, you could tell me anything, and I’ll react just fine.”
“I should have called or texted you before I came, but there just wasn’t—”
“Spit it out, doc,” he says, drawing back and smoothing down my hair with his big hands.
“Tamiko says that the way our relationship is being framed is bad for business.”
“I could not fucking care less. I couldn’t. It’s literally impossible for me to care less about how other people feel about us. I have zero fucks. They’ll get nothing from me about you. I’m not feeding any negativity—that’s someone else’s problem.”
“Tamiko doesn’t like avoidance as a strategy.”
“Tamiko isn’t in this relationship. You and I are. What’s happening between you and me has nothing to do with the team.”
“That’s just not realistic, Logan. You’re a star player, and I’m… your physiotherapist, which is part of the team. And I come from a family of billionaires. People are going to talk.”
“She wants me to talk about us? About you?”
“After tonight, you might not have much of a choice?” I suggest, remembering the various ways he greeted me at the arena.
“I’vealwaysgot a choice.”
“Okay, yes, but there was nothing low-key about what happened at the game tonight.”
“What are you getting at?” He steps back and rubs his thumb and forefinger between his eyes. “You were beingstrategicat the game, and I was just being me?”
“No,” I say, and I can’t help the hint of annoyance in my voice. “I was being me too. That was all me.”
He scans me for a beat, as though he’s trying to determine what’s accurate and what’s spin, which also raises my hackles. Part of his reaction is also my fault because I haven’t explained anything well.
“But you came because Tamiko asked you to?”
He’s got me there, and I can tell from his expression that admitting that is going to slice open something I don’t want to cut.
“The tabloids saw you and Dalton arguing. They’ve turned us into a scandalous love triangle. The whole thing is ridiculous, but Tamiko thinks we can put Dalton more on the outside of that by makingusmore outside. On top of that, she said the negative reaction to our relationship is devaluing the Bellerive Bullets brandandyour personal brand.”
He goes over to the bed and sits on it, rubbing his hands up and down his face like he does during a workout when he’s tired and is trying to force his body to focus on the right place again.
“There’s a chance Dalton is going to replace Alex as the Advisory Council liaison for the team, which would just create more artificial drama.”
“There’s no drama,” Logan says, pinning me with his gaze. “But if he fucking touches you again, I’ll go to jail. That’s not drama. It’s a fact.”
The worst part is that Logan doesn’t evenknowany of it. A sliver is all he’s seen. One tiny bruise.
“Tamiko thinks that if we present a united front, it’ll be what’s best for the organization, you, and me.”
“How is it best for you?”
“Maybe people will stop saying I’m robbing the cradle.”
A slow smile spreads across his face for the first time since I told him we needed to talk. “They thinkyou’retaking advantage ofme? For what purpose?”
