Page 33 of Hard to Handle

“But there was when you walked away from him last time.” Her voice softens and she speaks before I can interrupt her. “You can interrupt me all you want, you can tell me you didn’t have feelings for him, but I was staying at your place that night when you came home. I know that look you had, and I know you were hurting and maybe, just maybe, it’s because you were too chicken to tell him how you felt. You were too scared that if he said he had feelings for you too you’d have to face your fears. That you’d have to let someone in.”

I forgot about that. That she was there at my place when I got home. The twenty questions she peppered me with asking what was wrong. The twenty shrugs I gave, telling her I was perfectly fine. The scrutiny of her stare and how irritated I got when her voice turned compassionate, because it only made the tears I was fighting burn brighter.

Damn my father for giving me him to recruit.

Old feelings are better left dead and buried.

“Len—”

“All I’m saying is if you choose to sleep with him—if you choose to risk him as a client and what Dad’s asked of us because of it—that it better be for more than just sex. It better be because you’re going to put yourself out there and tell him how you feel this time.”

“I have to go.”

“I’m sure you do,” she says quietly but doesn’t argue.

I end the call.

I sit back in my seat but don’t see a minute of the game before me.

It better be because you’re going to put yourself out there and tell him how you feel this time.

I’m used to the panic that comes with the thought, but I’m not used to someone else seeing it or knowing it . . . and I’m not sure how I feel about that.

What I do know is that what started out feeling like a wild goose chase to acquire Hunter has turned into so much more.

I knew that the minute I laid eyes on him.

I knew that there was going to be a casualty in all of this.

And most likely, it was going to be my heart. Shit.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

HUNTER

“WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT, Cap?” Frankie asks and deliberately bumps my shoulder as I stride past him in the locker room.

I keep walking and ignore the inferno raging within me to take a swing at any of these fuckers. Guys that were friends—teammates—and now calling me out. I did exactly what they fucking wanted—became a pansy-assed passer instead of myself—and of course, it’s not fucking good enough.

“You not feeling good?” Katz asks.

“Your ankle bugging you again?” Callum questions. “Your knee?”

But I keep my focus on my locker, because it’s so much easier than facing the bullshit in here and their subtle digs at how I played.

Maysen’s shoulder hits mine and I refuse to respond to the look in his eyes that says, this is how you let us down.

“You trying to throw the game?” another voice yells from the back just as I hit my locker. “How much money’d you bet against us?” There’s laughter that follows the joke, but I know it wouldn’t have been said if it wasn’t thought of first.

Do they really think I’d bet against my team?

Screw this.

Like fucking clockwork I don’t want to acknowledge, I open my locker and the first thing I see is the screen of my cellphone lit up like a goddamn Christmas tree. Text after text after text telling me what a disappointment I am to the Maddox name, no doubt. How Jonah would have never played this poorly. One after another hit the screen and goad me like the eyes of my teammates at my back.

I don’t pay any attention to them. I never do.

At least that’s what I tell myself.