“I can take you home. Let’s just get out of here,” August pleads with me.
“Iam going to get out of here. You stay.”
“No, I want to come with you,” August says, reaching for my hand. But I pull it back.
“You don’t get it, do you? I am leaving here because I don’t want to be with you anymore. You can stay here all you want, but I would never let anyone talk to you the way you just let him talk to me. That was shameful,” I spit at him. “I wouldn’t have letanyone,family or not, make you feel that way.”
“Ash,” he replies.
“Yeah, Ash may have had some things to say to you, but he never called you “the help!” I remind him. I look away and shake my head. “Just stay here, August. You belong here and I do not. We were only kidding ourselves thinking that this night was a good idea or that we would ever work.”
The last thing I see before the tears start falling is the expression on August’s face. It’s something I will never forget.
Chapter Thirty
~AUGUST~
Last night was one of the worst nights of my life. Hendrix ended up leaving me there and I was forced to stay with Drew and my father, who refused to leave us alone after she left. I kept hearing him call her “the help” in my mind and, fuck, that pisses me off!
So much that it has me making my way to his office on a Sunday morning. Because where else would my father be but at his own office, building his empire.
Maxwell’s office is exactly the same as it always was.
Cold.
Expensive.
Created to impress everyone that I couldn’t care less about.
The floor-to-ceiling windows, the glass desk, the framed awards that mean nothing outside this room.
I stand in the doorway, jaw tight.
Maxwell doesn’t look up from the laptop that he’s typing away on. “If this is about the WNBA team, I already told you?—”
“It’s not about the team right now,” I reply.
That gets his attention. He looks up at me and leans back in his large black leather chair. “Then what is it?”
“Hendrix,” I say simply, like he should know that already.
A flicker, maybe it’s annoyance, crosses his face. “August, we’ve discussed this. She was a distraction and you need to focus.”
“No,” I say gripping the doorframe before stepping fully into the room. “You just don’t like her for whatever reason.”
Dad just shakes this head. “She’s not right for you.”
“She was young back then and now she’s a professional soccer player, Dad. I think that makes her good enough for me,” I say, defending her.
His expression doesn’t change, though. “She’s beneath you.”
My hands curl into fists. “Say that again.”
He sighs at me, like he’s annoyed that I even think this is a conversation that we should be having. “You have a hell of a career ahead of you, son. The same way that you did back in college. You need someone who understands our world. Clearly she does not.”
“Sheismy world,” I argue.
Silence, heavy and sharp, fills the room.
