5. Zak
Why the fuck did I have to look? Goddamn glass windows. I can’t unsee his lips on Anna’s, his hand on her ass. The blood in my veins turns to molten hot lava, engulfing my insides with all the emotions that were dredged up tonight when I saw Matt Harrison at that fundraiser we both attended.
I needed to get the hell away from him and here I am, sitting in the backseat of his truck.
He thinks he saved me tonight. I bet he thinks it’ll make up for every wrong he committed against me.
Covering my face with my hand, a strangled yell knots in my throat.
I want to hate the bastard. I want him to feel pain and anger and rejection. I want to torch his fucking charmed life.
But the only thing I want more than any of that right now is to strip him down and feel his hard, muscled body flush against mine. A sharp pain lances my heart. What the hell is he really doing with Anna Taylor?
He’s a fucking liar. How has he been able to fool the whole goddamn world for so long?
Matt thinks I have everything.
But I don’t have the one thing I desperately want but can’t buy.
Freedom.
I want to be free to live.
He, on the other hand, wants to be free to lie.
Fuck him for taking away my choice. Being forced out doesn’t equate to freedom.
He thrust me into this life, one where I have to constantly watch my back for people like those bigots who probably destroyed my car after Matt practically threw me into his truck.
How fucking dare he try to step in and save me all this time later?
“You think that little stunt back there was redemption?” I growl when he opens the driver’s side door and jumps into the leather seat. “Because it wasn’t. I don’t need anyone to fight my battles. Because of you, I’ve had to deal with plenty of them in my life.”
Matt is quiet for a long minute as he accelerates into traffic so I keep up with my rant.
“You’re pathetic. How the hell doesn’t she see it? All the women you run around with, the ones you fuck,” I spew the words even though they make my stomach clench with revulsion. The thought of him with a woman, doing things to her, loving her…
I grab the sides of my hair, trying to rid my brain of the way-too-disturbing images now wallpapering my mind.
When he finally turns, his blue eyes spark with anger. “Look, I care about Anna, okay?”
“Care about her how?”
A sharp sigh slips from his lips. “She’s a good person. I enjoy her company. We connect.”
“Does she turn you on, Matt?” I slide to the edge of the seat so my lips are right next to his ear. “Does she know just how to suck your cock? Does she know how you lose complete control when you’re being pegged? How you love to be jerked and fucked at the same time? Have you connected on that level yet, the level where you tell her the truth about what you really want and need?”
His jaw tightens and I smile. He’s so fucking close to breaking.
“My relationship with her is none of your business.”
“You’re right.” I settle back against the seat. “I don’t need to know what you two do to each other. Or not do, as I suspect is the case.”
His fingers wrap tighter around the steering wheel, knuckles turning white from the pressure.
“I had no choice but to deal with the haters after you guys blew open my closet door. But once I was out, I realized how much better it was than hiding. It meant I could take chances and be myself. I wasn’t sure who I really was until I met you. It scared me, but it was a risk I took because I thought the reward would be so much greater.” I glower at him in the rearview mirror. “You obviously didn’t feel the same way.”
“Look, just because I date women doesn’t mean that I ever stopped?—”
Matt snaps his lips shut before the words can hit the air.
I snort. He can’t even admit to it. Won’t even let the words hit the air. “I’m glad you stopped yourself from saying what we both know you were about to say. You think that will make everything better between us? As if feeding me that line of bullshit would make me forget about your questionable value to the team?” I pound my fist against the leather cushion.
His contract. It all comes down to that. It’s the only thing he cares about.
“You’re all about you, Harrison. Always have been. You’ll say anything to get what you want. I should know. Your fucking game worked great on me.”
“It wasn’t a game,” he mutters.
“You could have fooled me. I was the pawn. You got to scratch the itch without jeopardizing your future.”
“I love how you throw that word around. Your future was set in platinum the second you were born. Don’t you get that?”
He slams his foot on the brake at a red light and raises his fiery eyes to meet mine in the rearview mirror.
“You were born into money. A shit ton of it. Financially, your life was fucking Easy Street. There was always food, clothes, cars, houses, every fucking thing you could ever possibly need. And the icing on the cake was that you just happened to be an insanely talented football player, too. Talk about hitting the goddamn life jackpot.”
He pauses for a second. I don’t say a word. I’m too stunned to even figure out how to string together a response.
“Not everyone has that kind of guarantee, the one where you’ll always have a safety net, no matter what happens. I’m not saying coming out the way you did was easy but shit. You never had to worry about anything a day in your life. That was your biggest challenge. You thought you were untouchable. Protected. And that made you comfortable taking risks. You never thought you could fall out of your tower. Nobody could ever knock you out of it.”
He lets out a sharp laugh. “I’m no psychologist, but maybe that’s why you went so far off the rails afterward. You didn’t know how to handle a curve ball because you’d never been conditioned to hit them. Curve balls were the only pitches I ever saw. I had to learn how to hit them, or I wouldn’t have survived.”
“I thought you were all football.” I finally find my voice after the shock of his words settles in. “What’s with the baseball metaphors?”
He shrugs. “I was really good at baseball when I was young. Maybe I should’ve stuck with it, but I needed a scholarship, and football brings in way more money than baseball.”
The dead silence that follows deafens me. But he’s right. About most of it, anyway. One day, I thought I had everything. Then when I was faced with my biggest challenge, I crumbled instead of dealing with it. I let the hatred poison me and leak into every other part of my life that was good.
I grit my teeth.
It doesn’t matter. Betrayal is betrayal. I may not have handled things well when I was outed, but it happened because I put all of my trust and faith into someone who didn’t deserve it. That was the most jagged fucking pill to swallow. And it’s one that still catches in my throat every time I look at Matt.
Because I’ll never forget the way he so easily turned his back on me after what we shared.
So, fuck him and his hopes for redemption. That ship sailed a long goddamn time ago.
“Did you hold onto the team because of me?” He swerves into the right lane and horns blare out in the night air. His jaw tenses and he stomps the brake next to the curb while cars whizz past us. “You could have re-sold it once your father died. But you didn’t. Is it because you wanted, I don’t know, revenge or something? To punish me? Because you think that driving me out of a sport I love will somehow make up for what happened back in college?”
“Don’t flatter yourself. I kept the team because it meant something to my dad.”
But now I have to live with the elusive “why” since I walked out on him before he could tell me. His tone, his posture, his worried expression that day at the restaurant…all of it pointed to something more than just “hey, I bought a team because I love the sport.”
I felt like I was under attack, so I got defensive and ended the conversation.
I did the same thing to Matt years ago. Shut him down when he tried to explain because he shattered my heart and soul when he turned his back on me. His explanation couldn’t ever fix what he’d broken.
Now, my dad’s gone, and I’ll never know his truth, which breaks me even more.
So, out of guilt and obligation, I kept the goddamn team.
And now I own all of the heartache that comes with it.