Chapter 7
chapter seven
Ryan
Today’s Learning Objective:
Students will play dangerous games.
I was so fucked it wasn’t even funny.
The elevator doors opened onto the forty-ninth floor of the Prudential Center as I exhaled like I was white-knuckling my way out of vomiting. That wasn’t so far from the truth.
Fucked fucked fucked .
I waved to the receptionist and headed straight for the small conference room in the back, the one with the views toward Fenway Park. I kept the lid of my baseball cap low and my gaze on the destination. While I’d mastered the do not talk to me vibes at an early age, some people were immune.
Most notably, Emmeline Ahlborg. The source of all fuckery in my life and the sole reason I was so fucking fucked right now.
I flung open the conference room’s glass door and paced in front of the windows. I needed somewhere to put all this goddamn energy. Instead of resting my shoulder as advised by literally everyone who had something riding on my arm, I’d spent the past two weeks lifting like I still had the recovery time of a twenty-year-old. Supposed to be going easy on my hip too, but that didn’t stop me from running six, seven, eight miles a day. Just to get out of my fucking head.
I never should’ve touched her hair. Not the first time, definitely not the second.
What the actual fuck was I going to do?
For once in my life, I didn’t know the right move and it scared the shit out of me.
The door whooshed open at my back, but I didn’t stop pacing. I heard the slide of Jakobi Jones’s custom-made loafers against the carpet, followed by a rueful chuckle that scraped at my gray matter. My manager dropped into a seat while I stared out at the blindingly bright spring day, clear skies of endless blue.
I wanted to launch myself straight into the sun.
“I thought you said it went well.” He paused and I had to assume it was to roll his eyes at me. “Even for you, this mood doesn’t paint a positive picture.”
As I saw it, there were two options available to me here.
On the one hand, I could put a stop to this right now. Blow up the tracks before the train could run away. Would it screw with our bid for those soccer franchises? Yeah, probably. And would it leave a weird dent in my relationship with Emme? Most likely. Even if she shrugged it off and made a joke out of it the same way she did with everything she pretended not to care about, the damage was already done.
On the other, stopping this meant we could never come back here again. We’d consider that pact from high school—one she’d proposed when we had no idea what the world had waiting for us and when thirty seemed like a distant future—void and fully forgotten if I walked away now.
But if we did this, I’d get everything I’d ever wanted. And I’d ruin my entire life in the process.
My gut churned as I laced my fingers together at the back of my neck. Two options, but the outcomes, they weren’t so different.
I didn’t recognize my voice as I said to Jakobi, “She’s on board.”
He cleared his throat. “Then you told her everything.”
The city nearly glittered in this light. The Charles River snaked off into the distance like a deep blue artery. The lush green of new growth filled the trees and even the long strings of brownstones seemed sun-warmed and stately today.
I’d resented this city for so long. Resented Boston’s position in the draft the year I turned pro. Resented that I was here, so close to home it was like I’d never fucking left, when I could’ve had the thousands of miles of distance that I required to take a deep breath without feeling every old ache and never-healed wound.
But in this moment right now, there was nowhere in the world I’d rather be.
I glanced over my shoulder but didn’t meet Jakobi’s eyes. “Not quite.”
The tension headache that had haunted me since leaving Emme and her wide, hazel eyes at her door last night clanged around the base of my skull.
He huffed out a laugh. “What happened to the plan?”
The plan went up in flames the minute I saw her. It turned to ash when I touched her. And now, with our calendars organized like this was some kind of group project, there was a blacked-out burn hole in my memory where the plan should’ve been.
“Called an audible,” I said, still chasing my gaze down Huntington Street.
“Care to fill me in, or do you intend to be a cryptic motherfucker all day?”
I shoved my hands in my pockets and ignored the question. “She has some requirements.”
“Consider them met.”
I turned away from the window and stalked to the table. Hands braced on the chair in front of me, I said, “Bold of you to assume you’ll be able to get this done without finding out what she wants first.”
He motioned to the belly of the office behind him and the nonstop hustle of associates, coordinators, and assistants as they managed the biggest names in sports. All under his command. “I always get it done.”
“If that were true, the Wallace deal would’ve been closed months ago and I wouldn’t be turning my life upside down to hold it together.”
“If you had smiled for the cameras even once while you were dating Poppy Hemphill, the world wouldn’t think you’re as cold and arrogant as you look, and I wouldn’t need the entirety of Stella Allesandro’s public relations team to make nice after you.”
The problem with partnering Jakobi on this franchise deal—hell, on anything—was that neither of us knew how to lose. We didn’t know how to back down. We lived with the singular goal of plowing our opponents into the turf so hard they limped away with yard markings staining their faces. The number of times we’d holed up in this conference room and fought each other over every last stupid thing was greater than I cared to admit.
It was a damn good thing that, for the brief time our pro careers overlapped, we played for the same team. And that was why, despite the verbal beatdowns, he was among the best people in all of pro sports. Jakobi Jones was the only one I trusted enough to go after these soccer clubs with me. He was a stubborn son of a bitch and my closest friend.
With a grunt that had more to do with overworking my hip this morning than the tension between us, I took a seat at the table. Jakobi ran a mahogany hand down the length of his silk tie and arched a dark brow, silently screaming at me to get the fuck on with business.
“I need to attend a friend’s wedding with her. With Emme,” I amended. She had a name, and soon everyone would know it. “And a few other parties over the next few months. I don’t care what we have to reschedule to make it happen. It’s important that I’m there.”
It was also important that I find an opportunity to push Emme’s ex down a flight of stairs.
Jakobi pulled a silver pen from inside the breast of his suit jacket and made a note on his pad. “Do you have these dates or will I be assigning someone to dig this information up?”
“Yeah, I’ll forward them to you. Marcie might’ve already sent them.”
My assistant made her own schedule and I didn’t ask questions because she was fantastic and, on the rare occasion that I did mention her middle-of-the-night emails, she’d say something like “The menopause wakes me up at three thirty, there’s no helping it.”
He ran a broad palm over his bald head. “Excellent. What else?”
“There’s a sister. Stepsister. She needs a summer job.”
He nodded toward the bullpen. “I can always use another intern.”
“No, she’s an engineer. MIT student. Smart kid, bad at interviews. She needs a job in engineering.”
He glanced up from his pad with a slow blink. “That will take a minute but all right. What else?”
“I need to clear my schedule next week to do a visit at Emme’s school,” I said.
“Stella must be thrilled,” he said under his breath. He was right about that. My publicist was over the moon. “Hopefully she’s generating some talking points for you because you’re going to do more harm than good if you walk into a classroom and glare at the children.”
“I will not glare at the children,” I replied. “Stella said I could read a story about sports and perseverance, or some other bullshit.”
He set his pen down and exhaled loudly. “As you’re aware, there’s not a lot you could do to make the people of this town turn against you. They don’t mind that you have the personality of a moss-covered rock because your passing stats are superhuman. They don’t care nearly as much about Poppy’s songs as they do about winning championships. However, if their kids come home from school crying about the mean man who growled a story at them, we’re going to have a real problem on our hands.”
“First of all, I will not be mean or growl at them,” I growled. “And second, Emme would never let that fly. She’d take over before anyone started crying and then slap me upside the head.”
He peered at me, his head cocked. He was silent for a long moment, a smile gradually splitting his face. He ran his fingers over his mustache. “I’m going to like her, aren’t I?”
“So much.” I’d wondered about her classroom last night. What it would look like, what it would feel like to be in Miss Ahlborg’s class. Every time I thought about second grade, I was reminded of how simple life was back then. But second grade wasn’t simple for Emme, not this year. I was going to fix that. I was going to fix a lot of things.
While I could.
Jakobi cleared his throat. “You’re smiling.”
“Unlikely.” I snapped my fingers. “I need to make a donation too,” I added. “What’s the right number for that? Half a million? More? I don’t want to lowball this.”
Jakobi closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. “A donation for what purpose?”
“For—for whatever. I don’t care. Schools always need money and there’s nothing cold or arrogant about hanging around with some kids and leaving a pile of cash.”
Jakobi made a note, muttering to himself and shaking his head. “Let’s do some research. I’ll send someone down there to put eyes on the playground and athletic fields. Get a sense of what they need so we can make something up about your charitable vision. That way, it at least looks like we have a reason to throw money at your girl’s school.”
My girl.
Liquid heat spread through my chest. It felt good for a minute, but then the truth of it seared straight through my skin and all the way down to my bones. It fucking hurt.
Just like it always had.
“There’s one more thing.” I tapped my phone and turned it toward Jakobi. “We might need to buy this building.”
Another slow blink, a slight pinch of his brows. “She’s requesting real estate?”
“No,” I said carefully, “and she can’t know that I’m looking into this.”
“Oh, Jesus,” he muttered.
“Her apartment should be condemned. The windows are literally falling apart. I’m pretty sure someone died on the kitchen floor. If we get so much as a sprinkle of rain, the ceiling is going to disintegrate like a paper towel.”
He copied down the address. “Then why is it you want to buy the place?”
“Because then I can repair the roof and windows and whatever else the fuck is wrong with it. I offered up my condo, but she blew that off like a multimillion-dollar penthouse had nothing on her quirky corner of the North End. So what am I supposed to do? Sit on my fucking hands?”
With a thoughtful nod, Jakobi closed his folio and returned his pen to his suit coat. He draped an arm over the back of the chair beside him and studied me with an expression I couldn’t decipher. It was like curiosity—yet smug about it. “I’ll be damned.”
“What?” I snarled.
He smiled at me then, wide and toothy and definitely smug. “Ryan Ralston has a heart,” he said. “I haven’t seen it until now because you left it with her.”
I stared down at the table. My hip ached and my skull was full of iron spikes and I couldn’t stop thinking about the way Emme’s eyes went soft and dreamy when I told her how I imagined our wedding. Like there was a slim chance that she’d want that, and not for a business deal or to get back at a shitty ex.
Jakobi pushed to his feet. “Does she have any idea?”
I raked my teeth over my bottom lip. “No, and we’re going to keep it that way.”