“No, you just let the silence speak for you, and it didn’t say anything flattering.” She picks up her negroni, takes a calm sip like we’re having a perfectly pleasant conversation and not ripping into each other. “You had a chance to go on record and you chose to tell me to go fuck myself instead. That’s not my fault.”
“You really expected me to trust you with my side of the story? You, of all people?”
“Your fighter was dirty, Dom. That’s a fact. Whatever happened between us in high school doesn’t change the test results.”
“My fighter was dirty. I wasn’t.” My grip tightens around the glass. “But you didn’t bother making that distinction, did you.You let the implication do the work and you walked away with a big shiny job offer while I was here watching everything I’d built fall apart. Every door I’d spent my twenties kicking open slammed shut, and all because your article implied I was in on it without ever actually saying it outright. Which was clever, I’ll give you that. Really fucking clever.”
She sets her drink down, and there’s fury in her eyes now. “Oh, you want to talk about things falling apart? Let’s talk about what you did to me first. Because after you went to that scholarship committee with your bullshit, I lost the money I needed for school. I spent years drowning in debt, working doubles until two in the morning. I missed internships I couldn’t afford to take. So you’ll have to forgive me if I’m not exactly weeping over your networking problems.”
“Networkingproblems.” I stare at her. “That’s what you’re calling it.”
“I’m calling it the natural consequence of what happens when you help your fighter juice and then get caught.” She doesn’t flinch. “Somebody was going to break that story. It just happened to be me.”
“Right. Just happened to be the girl from high school who already wanted me dead. What a coincidence.”
“I did my job,” she says, holding my stare without a flinch. “You didn’t like the result. That’s not the same thing as me being wrong.”
We stare at each other across six inches of charged air, and I realize with a grim certainty that we are never going to agree on this. I had no idea what Miles was doing, and I’ve spent years living with the consequences of something I didn’t do while the woman who pinned it on me built a career off the wreckage. But trying to tell her that is like talking to a brick wall.
“Whatever, Brooke.” I push my glass away. “There’s no point arguing with you. You decided what you think of me a long time ago and nothing I say is going to change that.”
“We’ve always been a disaster,” she says. “Let’s just get through this fucking story so I can get back to my life and you can get back to yours.”
She looks away, and in that unguarded second the memory hits me before I can block it. Her mouth on mine in the back of my truck, her fingers twisted in my shirt, and the terrifying realization that I was in way over my head with a girl who was supposed to be nothing more than a bad idea. I finish my drink in one long swallow and set the glass down.
“Sounds good to me,” I manage, my voice tight. “Can’t happen soon enough.”
She turns back to the bar without another word, settling onto her stool. And like a moth to a goddamn flame her admirer materializes out of nowhere, sliding back into the seat next to her with a fresh drink and a hopeful smile.
She laughs at something he says, easy and light, and my blood runs hot and I turn away. I need her to go back to New York and stay there. I need her to finish this story and get out of my gym and out of my town and out of my fucking head.
I force my attention back to the booth where Calvin, Maren, and Mateo are talking quietly. That’s what matters right now. The stuff that’s actually important. Not Brooke Bennett and whatever twisted game she’s playing by coming back here.
CHAPTER 6
Brooke
My mother makes pot roast low and slow with red wine and fresh herbs and enough garlic to ward off every vampire in the Pacific Northwest. And tonight, sitting at the small table in my parents’ cottage with a glass of Cabernet and the windows cracked to the summer evening air coming off the water, it’s exactly what I need.
I take a sip of wine and stare at the half written story on my computer. I’ve spent the past several days building the story the way I always do, layer by layer.
Mom hums to herself at the stove, the way she has since I was small enough to sit on the counter and watch her cook. I glance up from my laptop and smile at the sight of her, reading glasses pushed up on her head, wooden spoon in hand, completely in her element. For a second I’m eight years old again, doing homework while she made dinner and quizzed me on state capitals. From the next room, Dad calls out Mariners scores while he peels potatoes over a colander.
“Two-nothing, top of the sixth,” he announces. “Julio’s up.”
“About time,” Mom says without looking up from the roast. “He’s been cold all week.”
“He’s pressing,” Dad says. “You can see it in his stance. Trying to do too much instead of letting the ball come to him.”
“That’s what happens when you’re chasing a slump.” Mom adjusts the oven temperature and glances back at me. “Sweetie, did you catch that game last week against the Astros?”
“Caught it?” I close my laptop halfway and lean back in my chair. “I was screaming at my TV like a crazy person. Also, the replay clearly showed he was safe, and the umpire just stood there like he hadn’t seen the same footage as the rest of us.”
“That’s my girl.” She points her spatula at me, grinning. “We didn’t raise any fair-weather fans in this house.”
“Damn right we didn’t,” Dad hollers from the other room, and I laugh, shaking my head.
Baseball is the one language all three of us speak fluently. Dad grew up in Brooklyn going to Mets games with his grandfather, growing comfortable with the heartbreak of loving a team that disappoints more often than not.
