Page 4

"Tell me it was dramatic."

He folds into my guest chair without an invitation, all long legs and easy sprawl, taking up a space that was not designed for a man his size.

Players don't visit this office, but Jax does all the time, and sits straight into a chair. Making himself comfortable.

He's driving me crazy in a bad way. Wearing down my resistance.

No uniform this early, just team-issue sweats and a practice tee gone soft from tons of washes, and a ball cap turned backward over his hair.

His tee pulls across his shoulders in a way that should be flagged by HR for making girls swoon. Under the collar I spot a bruise going yellow at the edges, and I want to lean in and touch him. Margot, you have a plan. Stick to it.

He looks like a lazy Sunday sitting in my chair but he always gets into fights… which is why he’s always in my office. He's a walking contradiction.

My eyes land on his hands. The knuckles on his right hand are split and taped, fresh off whatever he said with his fists last night.

I have a whole speech about professionalism. He's heard it many times.

I've handled his messes for weeks and I built a binder around how to problem solve Jax.

I don’t have a defense for the way he watches me like I'm the only channel worth the subscription. Like I'm the Stanley Cup.

I’m sure he looks at all women this way, too. Part of his charm. I guess.

"Walk me through it." I pull up the incident report. "Pretend I'm the league office, because in an hour I'm writing to them as you."

"He said something about Torres's kid." The humor drops clean out of his voice. This version of Jax Hunter is the version I have never known what to do with. "So I explained decency to him with my hands."

"Heroic. Also a fine, a hearing, and a nightmare for a man whose sponsors are already halfway out the door."

"That's what I've got you for." His grin reloads. "You're my partner in crime, the fixer. That's the whole point."

The whole point is… me. Sure it is.

He doesn't know, when Denise dropped his file on my desk, I went down to my car in the parking garage and laughed until my eyes stung, because the universe has a sense of humor and the punchline is reliably me.

A degree, a move across the country, a title I earned, and the first man they hand me is the one I built a plan to win.

But now being here my plan is to survive him.

I'm a professional. I have a lanyard that says so in laminate. I tell myself that counts, that It's true… but I’m also, still nineteen. Still wanting him.

My phone lights up on the desk between us. A push alert from one of those gossip apps I keep swearing I'll delete the day I grow willpower.

A photo, grainy and backlit, Jax outside a club at one in the morning, collar up against the cold, a woman poured down his side who’s all legs. HUNTER'S LATEST, the headline brags.

Something small and stupid twists behind my ribs and has the gall to call itself surprise. With him sitting beside me, I keep thinking I mean something more than his best friend's little sister.

Of course. Last night, while I reorganized my shelves, Jax was walking out of a club with a woman. He took her home. He put those hands all over her.

He did with a stranger the exact thing my nineteen-year-old self swore she'd earn from the sober, grown, mean-every-word version of him.

The morning after that party I woke up at six and checked my phone.

Nothing. No text. No how are you, no about last night, no we should talk. Just the group chat losing its mind over the championship, and a photo of Jax with the trophy hoisted over his head, with a girl I didn't know laughing against his side.

There was my answer, in case the little salute hadn't been clear enough the night before. Drunk Jax kissed me, and sober Jax forgot by breakfast, exactly the way I'd promised myself he would. I was right. But being right felt like swallowing glass.

So I got up. I didn’t cry. I was all out of tears. I'd stayed in my parents driveway crying a river of tears. Nothing’s left.