Chapter 9 #2
“Ah, you went to school with him?” Thea looked at him thoughtfully. “You know, I thought you looked familiar. I’ve seen your face somewhere.”
He doubted it.
“Aren’t you…”
“Mom, can we come in? We’re still standing in the entry.”
“Oh, right!” She stepped back. “So, take off your shoes and make yourselves comfortable on the couch. That lawyer’s letter is on the table. I’ll make some coffee in the meantime. Would you like some, Gareth?”
He nodded. “Gladly.”
“No.” Hazel looked at him, irritated. “You don’t like coffee.”
“But I still drink it.”
“Why would you drink something you don’t like?”
“Because it has caffeine.”
She sighed. “Well, if that’s the case, he’ll have Coke, Mom. Coffee for me. Because I’m a grown woman, not a teenager.”
Thea laughed and then disappeared behind a door to her right, into the kitchen.
“You can’t stand people knowing about your sweet tooth, can you?” Hazel asked, shaking her head as they took off their shoes. “Milky Way, Froot Loops, Coke… You love all that stuff.”
“It's what kept me alive through college.”
She grinned. “Not just through college. You still have a sweet tooth. But because it doesn’t fit your image, you keep it a secret.”
“No,” he snapped. “I don’t care what anyone thinks. But because it doesn’t fit my image, people assume I frown on sugar and take my coffee black. And I don’t want to explain that I’m more than my first impression. That isn’t my damn job.”
Until now, he’d believed Hazel was one of the few people he’d never have to explain it to.
He walked past her into the living room, where his gaze fell on an old secretary desk with dozens of photos on it.
There were some of Hazel’s late father, but mostly of Hazel at various ages: a toddler dressed as a pumpkin, a teenager sleeping in a hammock strung in a tiny living room, and in her gown, smiling broadly at the Harvard commencement ceremony, where she was honored as valedictorian.
“Wasn’t she cute?” came a voice from his side. Hazel’s mother bustled back into the living room armed with a plate of cookies.
Unable to suppress his grin, he glanced at Hazel. “Very cute. Such an angel.”
She rolled her eyes. “Mom, you’re not still clipping coupons, are you?” She gestured to the living room table, where dozens of scraps of paper lay next to the lawyer’s letter. “Seriously, you don’t need fifty cents off toilet paper.”
Thea placed the cookies on the coupons and shrugged. “Old habits die hard. I enjoy clipping them.”
“But you don’t have to…”
Thea sighed before turning to Gareth. “Excuse my daughter. She’s ashamed that we used to be as poor as church mice,” she replied angrily, clicking her tongue. “Gareth, what do you think: Do you think we should be ashamed of having had a harder road than everyone else?”
Again, his gaze slid to Hazel, who was biting her cheeks uncertainly. “No,” he said earnestly. “I don’t think so. Hazel should be proud.”
That made Thea beam again, and she gave his arm a warm squeeze. “I like you, Gareth. Hazel can bring you home more often.” She winked conspiratorially at her daughter before disappearing back into the kitchen.
Gareth strolled over to the couch but paused when he met Hazel’s dark gaze. “What?”
“New rule,” she muttered. “We can’t be unbearably nice to our parents.”
“I beg your pardon? You told me to be nice!” he replied incredulously.
“Yes, but not so nice that my mother likes you!”
“Jesus, Mary, and…” He shook his head at her. “Have you always been this complicated?”
She tilted her head. “I wouldn’t call it complicated, more like emotionally ambitious and personally challenging.”
For a few seconds, he stared at her, perplexed, and then he started to chuckle softly.
He couldn’t help it. Hazel was so incredibly good at twisting and turning words until they pleased her — and her eyes had been so incredibly serious when she’d said it.
“It’s not funny!” she said, annoyed. “I mean it.”
“Yeah, that’s what makes it funny,” he replied, laughing.
“Why are you so tense? Your mother hasn’t told me anything new.
I know you were poor, Hazel.” He looked at her, shaking his head.
“I know you had three scholarships and it still wasn’t enough.
Jesus, I had to pick you up from the hospital when you donated so much plasma for money that you fainted.
You can say you don’t know me, but shit, I know you. ”
She crossed her arms. “It’s just more than an anecdote, the way my mother sells it. She shouldn’t be telling it all the time. I want the days where people thought I was pathetic to be over. Is that so weird?”
“I’ve never believed you were pathetic for a second of my life.”
“Then you were the only one at Harvard, Gareth.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Hazel didn’t get a chance to answer, and he doubted she would have, but at that moment, her mother returned with a cup of coffee and a glass of Coke, which, for Hazel, apparently meant their conversation was over.
Fine. If that was what she wanted, so be it.
Gareth took a deep breath, sank into the empty chair, and got to work. He tried to calm his mind, to ignore the tightness in his midriff…
How the hell could she even think for a second that he had once judged her for her background?
It bothered him. It shouldn’t have bothered him, but it did. Even an hour and a half later, when they were back in the car, on the way back to the arena, it bothered him. And unfortunately, his expression was betraying him.
“Are you okay?” Hazel asked as they entered the Hawks’ underground parking garage.
“Everything’s fine,” he replied tensely.
“Are you sure? If you grip the steering wheel any tighter, you’ll rip it right off.”
He remained silent because he didn’t want to open that can of worms. He was afraid of what would happen if he did.
So he just parked, ignoring Hazel’s overly intense stare and the burning feeling in his chest, which was a mixture of anger, confusion, and something else he couldn’t identify…or didn’t want to.
Hazel sighed and unbuckled her seatbelt. “Thanks, Gareth. For helping my mom. You did a good job of calming her down.”
He nodded curtly and turned off the engine while avoiding her gaze.
“Okay, come on,” Hazel said, suddenly annoyed. “What’s wrong? Why is there steam coming out of your ears?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter! I said something nice to you, even though I’m not contractually obligated to when we’re alone. You should appreciate that.”
He laughed bitterly and looked up abruptly. “So a kind thank you makes up for what you said earlier, huh?”
Hazel blinked, perplexed. “What did I say?”
“That you’re not sure I’m judging you? That you’d rather assume you don’t know me?” he echoed her words coldly.
“What about it?” She frowned.
“Were you serious?”
He could tell by Hazel’s shoulders that she was breathing deeply. And from the way she sucked her lower lip between her teeth, he knew she wasn’t certain if she should answer. “We wanted to be honest, right?” she whispered.
He nodded, and the car keys dug into his hand because he was gripping them so tightly.
“Okay. Gareth, I’ve been judged by hundreds of people my entire life for not fitting into their world. As trailer trash at Harvard. As a woman in the sports industry…”
“I know, Hazel. I’ve been there. Have I ever made you feel like you didn’t fit in?”
“Not then. But…”
“But what?”
“But then you made sure I didn’t get the job with the Hawks or the best law firm in LA!
” she snapped, anger flashing in her eyes.
“Back then, you told your father and your boss at the firm not to hire me! Then you ignored my calls when I wanted to talk about it. The Gareth I knew would never have done that.”
Gareth closed his eyes and let go of the car keys before he pierced his hand.
Hazel was wrong. It had been the old Gareth who had no choice but to make certain she didn’t get anywhere near the Hawks.
“You’ve gotten your revenge, Hazel,” he said quietly.
“You think I don’t know that? You’ve ruined more than one of my negotiations by giving opposing lawyers tips on how to beat me.
You’ve blocked more than one trade by deliberately signing the players we wanted and getting them a better deal from the competition!
You know I hate losing as much as you do — so you made sure I couldn’t win. ”
“But that’s only because you started it!
Because you were no longer who I thought you were.
The Gareth I was with would never have made me feel like I wasn’t good enough for the Hawks.
The Gareth I was with wouldn’t have been bitter about me beating him for top honors.
He would have laughed about it and congratulated me instead of ruining my job search out of revenge.
That Gareth might have forgotten about it because it had been three years since we last saw each other! ”
“Out of revenge?” His eyes shot open. “You think I told my dad to reject you because I wanted you to know you weren’t good enough?”
“Why else would you do it?” she retorted heatedly. He swore he saw flames flare in her eyes.
“Because we don’t work well together, for fuck’s sake! Haven’t you noticed?” he snapped.
“We worked great together at the university!”
He laughed mirthlessly. “I know! But that was before…everything.”
“You mean, before you became so damn tough? So ridiculously ruthless?”
“Oh please. I’ve always been tough and ruthless!”
“No. That’s not true,” she snapped, as if his statement was a deeply personal attack.
“I know people like to say you have no feelings and no empathy, but that’s not true.
At least, it wasn’t true before. You were gentle and understanding and laughed more than you frowned.
You don’t want to hear this, I know, but…
you’ve become too rigorous. On yourself, your staff, and your damn schedule!
You’re still not an asshole — you’ve just stopped trying to please people.
To be more. Probably because it was never enough for your father anyway and you got tired of it.
But…you have to try. Not just with work, where you can see your successes, but also with things where those successes remain invisible. ”
“God, you sound like my sister.”
“Yeah, maybe you should listen to Penny. Maybe it should bother you that people think you’re an asshole, and that you’re so damn intimidating that most people don’t dare be honest with you. God, you don’t have to take every tip and criticism people give you, but you can’t just stop listening.”
“If I listened to everyone who told me what I was doing wrong…”
“Not everyone, Gareth. But what about Penny, Cian, and Connor? Do you listen when they tell you you’re acting like a shit? That you should stop working when you're supposed to be spending time with them? Have you considered that Penny might be right to worry about you? And, yes, I know she is!.”
He opened his mouth, but didn’t know what to say.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she replied dryly. “I can’t believe you seriously force your players to call you Mr. Clark!”
“It’s a business relationship,” he growled.
“You don’t call me by my last name!”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t sleep with Fox, Alvarez, or Moreau either.”
“Oh, so that makes a difference to you?”
“Fuck, yeah!” The car interior seemed to grow smaller by the second as he looked at her intently.
“If I knew what they sounded like when they came, maybe I’d feel weird calling them only by their last names.
If I knew where to touch them to drive them crazy.
And if for seven years, I couldn’t forget how they wrapped their legs around me and whispered…
is that all? when I took them deeper and harder, I’d probably remember all their first names without any problem! ”
Hazel flinched as if he’d slapped her across the face. She pressed her lips together, her chest rising and falling rapidly.
“We should have stipulated in the contract that you’re never to say anything like that again,” she whispered, and he saw her press her hands between her legs.
“And that you…that you’re not to tell Cian and Connor any intimate details that I entrusted you with.
Or that I’m trusting you with now. Nothing about my parents or the nights we… that we…”
“I haven’t and I won’t. I don't need a damn contract for that,” he said, dangerously calm. “Stop making me angry!”
“Why are you getting angry now?”
“Because I can be an asshole sometimes, but you should fucking know better, Hazel!” Control slipped from his fingertips, lying in shards at his feet, and his voice rose with every word.
“Because I’ve never shared more with anyone in this world than I have with you, Hazel — and now, you act like it’s worthless!
Like I’m a new person who’s become not only hard and ruthless, but also a fucking bastard who takes pleasure in deliberately hurting you!
But it was you who hurt me, not the other way around, for fuck’s sake.
You know me. You know more about me than the whole fucking world.
I also realize you wish you didn’t, that it’s easier for you to make me out to be the villain, but don’t fucking lie to yourself. ”
Hazel’s eyes widened and her full lips parted… If she’d objected now, he wouldn’t be able to guarantee anything. So he beat her to it.
“Get out,” he whispered. He gritted his teeth, battling the burning, sharp feeling in his chest. He’d said too much, so he stared at the key in his lap. He needed something to look at instead of her. Before he did something stupid. Like proving to her that not everything had changed.
“Gareth…” she whispered, her voice oddly thin.
“No.” He shook his head. “Get out. See you Wednesday at Fox’s negotiations. Freddie will give the details to your assistant — I want the revised contract by tomorrow.”
Hazel said nothing more. Maybe she was nodding. He didn’t know. He didn’t see it. He only heard her open the door and quietly slide off her seat. When the door closed, he exhaled shakily and buried his face in one hand.
Fuck. He should have written a clause into the contract prohibiting them from being alone in a room for more than ten minutes at a time.
But it was probably too late for that now.