Dream Girl Drama (Big Shots #3)

Chapter Twenty

Something was wrong.

The plane had landed five hours ago. They’d been transported to the hotel, eaten a team meal, and changed into business casual attire in which to arrive for the game.

During that time, Sig had called Chloe approximately fifteen times.

Without an answer.

As he sat in the eighth row of the charter bus, watching Detroit go by in the waning sunlight, he pulled nervously on the knot of his tie, leaving it skewed to the left. The organ in his chest was fluttering in a way that he hated. Not like it fluttered last night, in an I’m-so-crazily-in-love kind of way. This was anxiety. If Chloe wasn’t answering his calls, something was up. She always answered, immediately catching him up to speed on everything that had taken place in her life since the last time they spoke, be it her lunch order or an itch she couldn’t reach.

He lived for those details.

Had she lost her phone? Was she hurt? Kidnapped?

“You’re not going to believe this motherfucker,” Corrigan shouted, popping up a few rows ahead of Sig, holding up his phone. “He actually named a time and place for this game.”

“Who? What game?” Burgess groused. “The one game you should be talking about is the one we’re playing tonight.”

“I hear you loud and clear, Captain,” Mailer chimed in, stand ing up in the row across from Corrigan. “Normally, I would, anyway. But we’re being challenged by a baseball player. Named Elton. The significance can’t be ignored.”

“Elton from the dog park?” Sig’s attention had been caught. “Didn’t we scare this guy off? Why is he still a thing?”

“He hit on your sister,” Corrigan pointed out.

“She’s not my sister. And by the way, you’ve hit on her, too.”

Corrigan snorted, looked around for support. “Yeah, but I play hockey.”

Sig looked back down at his phone, willing a text from Chloe to appear. “I fail to see your logic.”

“The bottom line is,” Mailer started, “he named a time and a place for this baseball game. Us versus them. We have to show.”

“Have you ever played baseball?” Burgess asked the Rookies.

“How hard can it be?” Corrigan shrugged. “They don’t even wear mouthguards.”

Mailer was nodding along with his friend. “They wear hats, instead of helmets.”

“No pads. Just a little cup over their dicks.” Corrigan curved a hand over his junk to demonstrate, as if it was necessary. “It’s not even a sport.”

“Have fun embarrassing yourselves,” Sig said. “You won’t catch me out there learning a new sport on the spot. I need better odds.”

“If we start losing, we just incite a brawl,” Mailer said, as if that should be obvious.

“Something tells me the new GM won’t like us brawling in public,” commented someone in the back of the bus.

That gave Mailer pause. “So you don’t think I should invite her then?”

“We’re done with this conversation,” Sig called. “Sit down and shut up.”

“Next Saturday,” Corrigan said while collapsing back into his seat. “Nine in the morning. That field near the dog park.”

“Nope,” Sig barked, agitated. No text from Chloe. No call back. What was going on?

“Hey,” Burgess said from the row behind him. “What’s going on with you?”

Sig shook his head. Wasn’t going to answer, but the words just tumbled out, because he couldn’t carry the abundance of nerves alone at this point, especially before a game. He’d get himself killed out there. “Chloe isn’t answering her phone. It’s been too long and I’m getting worried,” he said, turning slightly in the seat. “I hate to ask, but do you think Tallulah could check on her?”

“Does she have a performance tonight?” asked Burgess, taking the phone out of his suit jacket pocket. “Something that might prevent her from answering?”

“No. She should be home.”

The captain grunted. Dialed. “Hey, gorgeous. Have you spoken to Chloe today?” He listened for a second. “She hasn’t talked to her since last week,” he said to Sig. Then to Tallulah, “Could you give her a call? Go see if she’s all right, if she doesn’t answer? Sig can’t get her on the phone...”

Sig had turned all the way around by now, a strange ripple passing through his chest on repeat. “She didn’t speak to her yesterday?” He lowered his voice. “Chloe said Tallulah sent her the article.”

Burgess raised an eyebrow, repeated the question to his fiancée—and shook his head. “Tallulah didn’t send her anything.”

Alarm pitched in Sig’s stomach. What the fuck was he missing here? He whipped back around in his seat and dialed again. Why would Chloe lie about who’d sent her the article? It didn’t make any sense. Yet. Something wasn’t clicking. He just needed to speak to her and clear everything up. There had to be an explanation.

“Hello. Clifford residence.”

Sig looked down at his phone to make sure he’d dialed the correct number. Chloe’s name was on the screen, but the woman’s voice on the other end belonged to someone else. “Who is this?”

“I need no introduction, but whatever. This is Grace.”

Grace? Grace. He searched his jumbled thoughts for that name and why it sounded so familiar. When the answer came to him, it did absolutely nothing to calm him down. Chloe’s mentor. “Where is Chloe? Why do you have her phone?”

Visions of beeping machines and hospital gowns were flashing in his head. “She’s at my place. Well, physically she is here. Mentally, I’m not so sure.” There were some footsteps, followed by the ethereal flow of notes that he instantly recognized as harp music. Not just any harp music, but the kind that came from Chloe. His heart recognized when something belonged to her. “When she showed up here this afternoon, she said she’d play until her fingers bled and I think she meant it. I can’t get her to stop.”

Sig’s chest was trapped between two boulders. In one sense, he was relieved.

In another, he was more alarmed than he’d been ten minutes ago.

Until her fingers bled? That didn’t sound like his girl at all.

“I don’t understand.” Sig’s head started to pound. “Is she okay?”

“She’s... incredible, actually. I think we hit a breakthrough around two hours ago. Dropping her might have been the best move I could have made.”

“ Dropping her?” he repeated, throat dry.

“After reading about her in the gossip section? Like a sack of potatoes, my guy.” The woman sighed. “Then she showed up here with a speech that gave me chills—and I don’t get those easily. I’m pretty sure the last time I got chills, I was at the Magic Mike show in Vegas. But I digress. She begged me to take her back, promised to work her tail off... and here we are.”

Pieces of the story were locking into place. Tallulah hadn’t sent Chloe the article.

Grace had.

And she’d let her go as a mentee over it.

Why the hell didn’t Chloe tell him any of this?

Burgess smacked him on the shoulder. “What’s up? You find her?”

“Uh. Yeah.” Sweat was causing his dress shirt to cling and he couldn’t swallow to save his life. “Yeah, I found her. You can tell Tallulah not to worry.”

“What is a Tallulah?” Grace asked, followed by the sound of a martini shaker. “Listen, Sig. It is very apparent to me that you and Chloe are madly in love. The first time I met her, she called you ‘the most perfect human on earth.’ Which, barf.” Liquid was poured into a glass, but he could barely hear anything over the crashing waves in his head. “Unfortunately, the fact that you love each other is also obvious to a reporter at the Globe . And more will follow, I’m sure. She had to make a choice.”

“Put her on the phone,” he rasped, moving beyond panic into a place he’d never been before. His entire body had gone numb. Was he in shock?

“Do you hear the magic she’s making? I’m not interrupting that.”

As soon as he talked to her, everything would make sense. “Please.”

Grace let out a long breath. “Hold on.”

The bus had pulled up at the team entrance of the arena. Players were filing off the bus, shoving each other and shouting as they passed his row. Somehow he knew Burgess hadn’t budged. That he was still sitting behind him. But Sig couldn’t move, couldn’t turn around. Couldn’t breathe. Finally, the music stopped and his hand flexed involuntarily around the phone, listening for her voice. Her footsteps. Anything.

Finally, “Hi, Sig.”

That was all it took. Two words and he knew. She was ending things.

The regret in her voice told the whole story.

“Chloe,” he started thickly, leaning forward in his seat. Subtly rocking side to side. Restless. Helpless. Oh God, what the fuck was happening here? “You should have told me about Grace. I’m sorry that happened—it’s... this is all my fault—”

“No, it’s my fault. I spoke to that reporter during the last home game and... I don’t know, maybe by that point nothing I could have said to him would have made a difference. Even a denial. People can see what’s between us, you know? We don’t hide it very well.”

His chest was on fire, along with his head, his blood. “We’ll figure this out. Whatever you’re doing, whatever you’re going to say, don’t. Chloe. Don’t do this.”

“You’re the best player in the league, Sig,” she continued, though he could hear the effort it was costing her to get the words out. “I’ve told you this for so long. You’ve worked hard and you’ve earned that captain patch and I’m not going to let you give it up. I’m not going to let myself give up the possibility of first chair, either. I’ve been coasting my whole life, but... you make me want to have purpose.” Her voice wavered. “We both need to have purpose, because it can’t be each other. Especially at the cost of hurting our parents.”

“ Chloe. Don’t say anything else. I’ll come home right now. Right now.”

“No.”

“Please, I fucking love you. I love you so much. Don’t fuck me up like this.”

He could hear her on the other end, attempting to catch her breath and failing. He’d never surmount the pain and frustration of not being there to hold her, kiss her, talk her out of breaking his heart. “Will you do something for me?”

“I’ll do anything for you as long as I live.”

“Go play the game of your life. For me. Show them they’re nothing without you. Don’t let this be for nothing, okay? Please. ”

“Chloe—” he growled.

But she’d already hung up.

Sig sat on the bus with a smoking crater in his chest, staring into a void for an unknown length of time, begging himself to wake up from the nightmare of losing her. But daylight never came. The darkness stayed, sucking him in deeper by the second. In the end, it was Burgess who helped a devastated Sig off the bus, holding him up like a soldier from a battlefield. The only thing keeping him relatively sane was having a mission to complete. For her.

Go play the game of your life.

And even though doing as she asked would only drag them further apart, his heart gave him no choice but to fulfill her wishes. That’s what he’d been built to do.

So he did.