Well, I paid fifty grand for you.I pointed out with a huff. Mia was not happy as my PR person and my lawyer.
We can discuss that on Monday.
During my therapy session? Isn’t that breaking the rules again, mixing business and pleasure?I replied, hitting send.
I think those waters are already well and truly muddied, Reed. And besides. We need to treat both as business.
I pushed back onto the bed and stretched my legs out on the mattress. It felt good to be talking, even if it was via text message.
I grinned. Storm was protesting far too much to mean it. Who was she trying to convince?If you say so.
She didn’t rise to the bait.See you at nine sharp on Monday.
Curiosity got the better of me.Will do. Where are you now?
In bed. A place you should be. You’re training tomorrow.A picture of Storm curled up on her bed in the nightie she used to wear hit me. I remembered there were a couple of occasions where she’d smuggled me into her bedroom. Did she still sleep in the same bed where I’d nailed her that first time, or had she switched rooms to be with dick breath?
So, are you back at the hotel or not?They say you cannot get a tone from a text, but I felt one from that message.
Did she think I was out partying or something? Those days were long gone.I’m just about to hit the sack, actually.
Good.I could imagine the look on her snooty face as she messaged that.
Clearing my throat, I looked up at the ceiling before typing in my reply.Can I ask you something?
The buffering icon appeared to say she was messaging back.No, but you will anyway.
What are you wearing?
I added a winking face emoji and waited for a reply. I got nothing back. No shock there then.
Grinning, I thought about the motorcycle Storm had won and how good it would feel to teach her to ride. Riding a bike was uplifting and as addictive as fuck, and I knew she would take to it like a duck to water. It was at that point that I hatched the idea for our perfect date.
Firing off a few messages to my brother Micah, I explained that I’d call him after practice the following day. I then reread my text thread with Storm.
My darling not-so-sweet Teacup could dance around the situation between us all she liked, but it would end only one way.
And how was that, you may ask: with Storm Summers back in my bed and, most importantly, as a permanent part of my future. The love I felt for her was boundless, insane, and unapologetic: the forever kind. She didn’t realize that yet, but she would.
But first, I had to get that piece of shit out of her life, and I knew I’d need help from my boys. I remember Phoenix said we needed to remove him from her life. But how?
Sighing, I pressed my fingers against my closed eyes and tried to steer away the headache growing behind them.
As I leaned my head against the headboard of the bed, my cell vibrated again, and I dropped my hand and glanced down to look at it.
Speaking of the fucking devil, literally. It was from Phoenix. So, Storm had grassed me up to the big man. I asked for her number like a normal person, and he didn’t give it to me, so I had to take it myself.
I have a bone to pick with you.
Oh dear.
STORM
When Reed arrived for his first official session on Monday morning, I was more than ready to hear his story.
I had my game face on and would not discuss what had happened at the Gala. There was no point, as more behavior like that would only end in complications. Complications fucked with your best laid plans: believe me, I knew that in spades; Ihad experienced that through my father’s eyes when the mindfuck that he fathered Phoenix got out.
I’d smoothed things over with Jasper by booking our honeymoon, something I had been avoiding like COVID. We would continue our marital façade for three weeks in the Bahamas, and I had purposefully chosen somewhere that was clichéd for newlyweds. It wasn’t a place I particularly wanted to go back to. I had been there many times with my parents, during those days when my mother and father were in love. I didn’t particularly want memories of those better times, but I’d had to choose somewhere tried and tested.
