Page 147 of Lucky Shot

“You okay?” Lennox asks softly from her seat on the couch behind me.

I tense, so wrapped up in my emotions, that I forgot she was here.

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

“I know you better than that,” she says.

I turn to look at her. My agent. My friend. The only other person I know who looks out for me and my best interests, other than myself.

“Open up negotiations.”

The way her head startles is comical. Her expression is pinched, and her eyes narrow at me in disbelief. “I have to advise you against that.”

“I need to keep my options open.”

“I still need to make it known for the record that I advise heavily against it.”

Heavily. Oh. Like that will scare me.

“Objection noted. I still want you to make some calls.”

“Hardy.” It’s that same tone that Whitney uses with me. Like she’s disappointed I’m not the man everyone expects me to be.

Maybe that’s a good thing.

Maybe it’s not.

Guess we’ll find out.

“Dreams change, Lennox. They shift. Sometimes you have to find a new one. Maybe now’s that time for me.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

Whitney

Fear owns me.

As I board the plane.

As I sit in the taxi cab, and am being driven through the city streets.

As I walk through the hotel lobby and receive greetings I don’t deserve.

And it’s not until my fist is raised and knocking on his hotel room door—the one that I had to beg Ari to give me—that I am in complete agreement with what I have to do.

But I know I have to do it.

“Yeah?” Hardy asks when he pulls the door open to his hotel suite, but it’s his quick gasp that tells me he’s just as shocked that I’m standing here as I am. “Whitney?” He looks down the hallway and then back at me. “What are you doing here?”

“May I come in?”

He takes a step back so that I can enter before shutting the door at my back. The suite is spacious and Hardy’s things are organized neatly about. His healthy snacks are stacked on the counters and a massage table has been set up in the far corner.

This is a life so very separate from the one that I lived while with him. I want to know more about it. I want to be a part of it.

He lets me walk about the room in silence, but the weight of his stare is heavy on my back as I do so.

“Did you need something, Barnes?” he asks.