Page 26 of Hard to Love

“Too?” Finn steps in to me with temper flaring in his eyes. “That would imply I’ve fucked someone in the thirteen hours I’ve had to fly to New York, collect my shit, and get back here to babysit one pissy prima donna. I assure you, to my dismay, that I haven’t. So watch what you say and who you say it to. Jealousy is a nasty bitch and it looks unbecoming on America’s sweetheart.” His eyes flicker over my shoulders where Kellen is slowly packing up our gear, definitely listening but pretending that he isn’t.

“I assure you,” I say using his words, “I’m nowhere near jealous.”

He snorts in arrogant disbelief and leans in so that I steel myself for everything about him. His cologne. The warmth of his breath. The rumble of his voice. “For the record, Stevie, who I fuck is none of your business. Got that?”

I grit my teeth and stare at him with tears in my eyes, hating these weird feelings—confusion, jealousy, anguish—that are owning me right now. Feelings that don’t make sense to me but that I feel nonetheless.

And I hate them.

I’m sick of feeling right now.

Sick of everything.

“Got it,” I say smugly and start to walk past him, ready to be out of here and away from him.

He puts his hand on my arm and I yank it back. “Where are you going? We have plans,” he says.

“I don’t have any plans with you.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” He lifts a hand to wave to Kellen. “Remember? I’m your babysitter. You go where I say you go. That’s the perks of being in charge.”

And when he takes my bag from my shoulder to carry it for me, he’s lucky I don’t take a swing at him with my other hand.

STEVIE

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN OUR hotel room?” I ask, looking dumbfounded as Finn makes himself comfortable on the couch in my hotel suite and props his feet up on the coffee table with a sigh.

“Today was a good start,” he says completely ignoring my question. “You squeezed in a good practice, you had some great PR with the tennis academy, and then maybe made some reparations with Nike after that dinner we just had.”

“Good. Great.” I cross my arms over my chest and glare at him, knowing there is no way I just heard him correctly. “Now can you kindly explain what you meant when you said this was our hotel room?”

“As in ours. Yours and mine.”

I shake my head as if to physically reject what he’s saying. “What are you talking about? I know damn well you had a hotel room. I paid you money for it. Go sleep there.”

He turns to me for the first time and that schmooze of charm he had all night with the Nike reps is now directed at me—albeit with condescension in it this time. “I can’t sleep there because I checked out yesterday before I left. The money you so kindly left on my pillow to pay for my services was donated to the program for teens we went to today. And this suite has three rooms. One for you, one for me, and one for that giant, frustrating ego of yours so you can let it have a rest from how much overtime it’s been working.”

“No. The answer is no.” I push his feet off my table and his chuckle in response only serves to anger me further.

“It’s more efficient this way. It’s only for a couple of days before your exhibition and then we move on to the next city, the next place, in our let’s repair Stevie’s image tour.”

“I never agreed to that.”

“You didn’t have to. Carson had already set it up. You spent five weeks in the public eye undoing and distancing yourself from the person you were. Now we need to spend that same amount of time to get you back there.”

But what if I don’t want to go back there?

What if . . . what if I don’t know what to want or how to feel or even where to look for that? I’ve spent my entire life under my dad’s thumb—missing so much of normal life for this incredible life that I have—is it so wrong to want a little bit of both?

But I don’t dare speak the words. I don’t dare say what every single person would look at me like I’m crazy for.

“And let me guess, you’re the one who is responsible to hold my hand during it all.”

“I’m as thrilled about it as you are.” He lowers his phone he was busy scrolling through and meets my eyes. “Are you always this irritable?”

“I’ve been called America’s Tennis Sweetheart before. I don’t exactly think that coincides with irritability.”

“And yet that’s all I’ve seen from you thus far.”