One, two, three, four, five. I had this.
I raised my eyebrows and beamed over at him like nothing was wrong, even though I was pretty much seething on the inside, and wondering how to give him diarrhea.
“What the fuck is his deal?” Christian muttered under his breath as I settled the camera back into its case, and then into my bag. I couldn’t decide whether to leave as quickly as possible or stay where I was because he was out of his damn mind if he thought I was going to do his bidding when he talked like that to me.
The reminder that I didn’t need to take his crap anymore hit me right between the eyebrows, and my shoulder blades. I could take him being aloof and cold. I could handle him not giving a single crap about me personally, but embarrassing me in front of other people? There was only so much you could forgive and ignore.
One, two, three, four, five, six.
“Is he always like that?” Christian’s voice jump-started me out of my thoughts.
I shrugged a shoulder, conscious not to put my foot in my mouth in front of someone who was practically a stranger even though said man wasn’t exactly on my list of people I would pull out of a burning building at the minute. “He’s a good boss,” I let the bland, forced compliment out, getting to my feet. “I don’t take it personally.”
Usually.
“I need to get going anyway. See you,” I said as I slipped the strap of my bag over my shoulder and picked up the insulated bag with the big guy’s food inside.
“I’m sure I’ll see you soon,” he noted, his tone just a little too bright, too fake.
I nodded before noticing Aiden taking a knee on the turf, staring over with a perfectly impassive expression on his face. Fighting the uneasy feeling I got from him practically telling me to scram, I went to stand on the other side of the tire. He was sweaty, his T-shirt clinging to the muscles of his pectorals like a second, paler skin. His face was tight, almost bored—so basically the norm.
I tried to steady my words and heart. Confusion, anger, and, honestly, a little hurt soured my stomach as I watched him. “Is there something wrong?” I asked slowly, steadily as I tapped my fingers along the stitching of the bag with his camera and my things inside.
“No,” he answered sharply, like he would have if I’d asked him if he wanted something with fennel for dinner.
I cleared my throat and rubbed the side of my hand against the seam of my pants, warily, counting to three that time. “Are you sure?”
“Why would anything be wrong?”
Because you’re being a massive douche bag, I thought.
But before I could make up something else, he kept going. “I don’t pay you to sit around and talk.”
Oh no.
He leaned his entire upper body forward to rest against the length of his leg in a deep stretch. “Did you bring my breakfast?”
I tried to be patient. I really did. For the most part, I had patience on lockdown. There was no sense of “this is mine” when you had three older sisters who didn’t respect anyone’s boundaries, and one little brother. Needless to say, I didn’t get my feelings hurt particularly easily, and I didn’t hold 99 percent of things against my brothers or sisters when they said something they wouldn’t mean later on.
But that was the problem, Aiden wasn’t my brother. He wasn’t even my friend.
I could take a lot, but I wasn’t obligated to take anything from him.
In that moment, I realized how over this shit I was. I was done. Done.
Maybe I was scared as hell of quitting, but I would rather take a gamble on myself than stay there and get insulted by someone who wasn’t any better than me.
Calmly, calmly, calmly, despite the angry ringing in my ears, I made myself focus on his question and answered, my voice stony, “Yes.” I held up the bag he clearly would have seen when I walked up to him.
He grunted.
As much as I could respect Aiden for being so determined, focused, and logical, sometimes…
It grated on me just how blind he was to everything else in his life. In all the time I’d worked for him, he still couldn’t grace me with more than an occasional “thank you” or “good lunch.” Sure, I knew that you shouldn’t expect someone’s gratitude for doing things just because it was good manners, but still. I could count the number of times he’d smiled at me or asked me how I was doing on one hand. One freaking hand. I was a person who filled a role, but I could have been any person filling this role and it wouldn’t have mattered.
I did a good job, hardly ever complained, and always did what needed to be accomplished even if I didn’t want to do it. I tried to be nice to him, to mess with him even though he definitely didn’t care for it, because what was life if you took it too seriously?
But he’d pretty much just told me to “shoo” in front of other people.
“Is that all?” Aiden’s rough voice snapped me out of my thoughts. “I have a workout I need to finish.”
It was an oddly relieving sensation that pierced through my chest right then. I felt… like I could breathe. Standing there, I felt right. “Yeah, that’s all, boss.” I swallowed, forced a smile on my face, and walked out of there with my head held high, thinking, I’m done. I’m so done.
What was wrong with him?
I’d been around Aiden dozens of times when he was having a bad day. Bad days with Aiden Graves were nothing new or anything to particularly hold on to. Even practices with the Three Hundreds were serious business for him. Every mistake he made was like a strike against his soul that he dwelled on. He’d said so in interviews plenty of times in the past, how he lay in bed going over plays until he went to sleep.
He was cranky on days that the sun was out and he was cranky on cloudy days too. I could handle grouchy men who preferred their own company. Usually he just glared and maybe snarled a bit.
No big deal. He didn’t throw things or yell.
But acting like an asshole with me in public? Saying that kind of stuff? That was new even for him, and that was probably why I was handling it so badly. Sometimes the worst things you could ever hear were wrapped in sweet tones and calm voices.
I walked out of the facility distracted. I even drove my car muttering to myself under my breath. Twenty minutes later, I pulled into Aiden’s subdivision and parked on the street like usual. When I opened the front door, I realized something was wrong when the alarm system wasn’t beeping.
The alarm wasn’t beeping.
“Zac?” I yelled, reaching into my purse for my pepper spray at the same time I made my way through the kitchen, toward the door that led into the garage, to see if there was a car in there.
I didn’t make it that far.
Sitting on the onyx countertop right next to the refrigerator were dangling long legs stuffed into brown leather cowboy boots. I didn’t need to look at the upper body above them. I knew what I would see: a threadbare T-shirt, a narrow, handsome face, and light-brown hair hidden beneath that black Stetson he’d owned for years.
Zachary James Travis was draped across the counter with a bag of chips in his lap. At six foot three, Zac was the second string quarterback of the Dallas Three Hundreds. Plagued by one injury after another, Austin, Texas’s once-upon-a-time star had stumbled through the last six years of his career. Or so the sports analysts said.
But that wasn’t how I knew Zac. With a twang in his accent, clothes that told everyone the only thing he worried about was them being clean and comfortable, and a smile that made most women swoon, he was my buddy. My confidant where his roommate was not.
And I hadn’t seen him in almost three months since he’d left to go back home for part of the offseason.