Chapter Three
Emily
By the time I pushed through the doors of the stadium and out into the cool, crisp Seattle air, I was beat.
It had quite possibly been the longest day of my life.
Between getting up at the ass crack of dawn to put on stage-level makeup worthy of a Vegas headliner, arriving hours before auditions to warm up and practice, the auditions themselves, and then the hours of agonizing while we all waited to hear our fate — I had never yearned for my bed so badly in my life.
Of course, what I yearned for even more was a little jazz cabbage.
“Please tell me that’s a joint,” Marcus said, quickly making a detour from where he’d been headed toward the train. We were the last two out of the locker room, and we’d already said goodnight to each other at the door.
Apparently my little surprise had changed his course.
“That depends on whether you’re going to rat me out or smoke it with me.”
I headed for a super attractive and not at all smelly alcove by the dumpsters, one around the corner and out of view from anyone who might be leaving after us.
There weren’t many people left, and I was fairly certain the staff would stay long enough for me to be gone when they made their exit, but still.
Marcus dropped his duffle bag by his feet before leaning against the wall next to me, and he held out his hand with an impatient give me wave of his fingers. “Not me you have to worry about with that. Now, our sweet Darcy on the other hand…”
I chuckled, lighting the small joint and taking a couple of hits before I passed it to him. “I adore that girl. She’s so…”
“Innocent?”
“Moldable.”
We shared a knowing look.
“I think I’m going to see if she wants to bunk up and be roommates,” I said, watching Marcus inhale and release a cloud of smoke. “She seems like she’d be clean. And responsible.”
“I love this for me. Because I do not have the patience to room with anyone, but always have the desire to hang out at someone’s house like I am a roommate. Looks like I found my victims.”
“Willing as we are,” I added with a smirk.
Darcy, Marcus, and I had all become fast friends through the audition process.
Where Marcus and I grew close, especially after a night out with some of the other rookie candidates where we bonded over our uniquely messed-up relationships with our parents, Darcy fit in with us because she didn’t fit in at all.
Where we were cynical, she was all sunshine. Where we were rough around the edges, she was perfectly polished. But what intrigued me most about her was that I smelled the rebellion stirring, her need for something more in life awakening now that she was out on her own for the first time.
And Marcus and I were the perfect ones to give her life experience.
With Marcus, I felt a brotherly bond after talking about our parents.
His had been a tired cliché and disowned him when he told them he was gay, and mine were disgustingly successful and wealthy.
They were also really, really terrible at hiding their disappointment that I didn’t also turn out to be some genius or badass entrepreneur who could add to the family empire.
Nothing like a good ol’ trauma bond.
After his first hit, Marcus exhaled long and slow with a heavy, sated sigh of smoke leaving his perfect lips. He zipped up his lavender puffy coat against the crisp spring air.
“What a fucking day.”
“You mean you don’t have marathon hours of dancing and screaming your head off regularly?”
The corner of his mouth curled. “Actually, yes — but usually, the dancing is horizontal and the screaming is a little less go team and a little more yes, just like that!”
He handed the joint back to me, but not before twirling in place and doing a dramatic curtsy with his innuendo.
“I’m really glad you made it,” I said, taking a small pull. My head already felt a bit swimmy, my sore muscles tingling.
“You only say that because you made it, too. You know damn well you would have been cursing me with a Voodoo doll if I’d made it and you hadn’t.”
“Only a few pricks! And just the body — I’d spare that beautiful face of yours.”
“It is my money maker,” he said, running his hand over his jaw with a longing sigh.
He took one more hit of the joint, then picked up his bag and heaved the strap over his shoulder.
“Don’t get caught out here. I’d hate to have to suffer through this season without the one person more likely to get the pursed-lip warning glare from Claire. ”
I pinched his butt as he skipped away, to which he responded by blowing me a kiss over his shoulder. Then, it was just me and the distant sound of traffic.
I closed my eyes, letting my head rest against the wall behind me as I held the joint to my lips for another drag.
I didn’t smoke very often — not unless I just wanted a cozy, lazy night on the couch with a bunch of snacks and a good nature documentary to blow my mind — but this was cause for celebration.
I’d made the team.
A smile split my face even as I thought it. Hundreds of women and men tried out — all of them younger than me, many of them arguably more fit than me — and I’d fucking made it.
It was the sweetest validation.
I was a good dancer. I did still have it, whether my thirtieth birthday was looming or not.
For a split second, I thought about calling Mom and Dad. Of course, I didn’t — partly because it was almost one in the morning in New York, and partly because I wasn’t sure I could handle it if their response was a Huxley Pause.
The Huxley Pause was their signature reaction when it came to me. This long, drawn-out, heavy with hesitation thing that almost always happened when I had something to tell them that was exciting to me, but not so much to them.
When I told them about a new tattoo.
When I brought home a new boyfriend who wasn’t from a well-off family.
When I broke the news that I wasn’t going to Oxford, but rather was going to take a gap year to travel the States, instead.
When I ended up going to college at a small private school in Arizona.
It was even worse in person, when I had to watch them give one another this not-so-subtle look that asked how should we respond to this?
What should we say? It was usually followed by one of them forcing a smile, which prompted the other, and whoever had the biggest balls that day would say something along the lines of, “That’s wonderful, sweetie. ”
I was their only child, and I knew without them ever saying it that I was a big fat disappointment to them.
I’d never forget that first pause. Or maybe it had happened before, but this was the first time it really stuck. When my parents found out I was majoring in dance.
“That’s interesting,” he’d said, nodding his head as he chewed it over. We’d been driving my belongings from New York to Arizona, one last family road trip before I locked into my studies. “Where do you see that going long term?”
“That’s just it. The doors are wide open. It could take me to New York, or to London, or even on a cross-country tour with a pop star!”
He’d looked at my mother then, the two of them sharing this… look.
Eyes a bit watery. Smiles not fully materializing.
“That’s lovely, darling,” Mom had said then, turning to squeeze my knee from where she sat in the passenger seat. “I wonder if you might consider a second major in something more business-like, just as a backup?”
It was the first time I realized they were ashamed by my choices, that they didn’t have faith in me figuring life out.
I’d never forgotten it. And that sentiment had only grown louder over time.
What made it worse was that they never would say it.
In fact, they loved me so much, so fiercely, that to anyone on the outside, it looked like I was their pride and joy.
After all, they supported me financially and always had.
They assured me I never had to work a day in my life if I didn’t want to.
Between my father’s rich ass family in London, and his successful career as a hedge fund advisor, plus my mother’s legacy in the law firm of high-profile clients, the one she became partner at when she was just twenty-eight, well, I was set.
Instead of that fact feeling like freedom, it felt like a weighted chain of expectation.
I could do anything I wanted with my life. I could go anywhere, be anything.
I just had no idea where to go, what to do, or who to be.
The only thing that filled me with passion was dance — and that was far from what they had in mind when they told me I could do anything.
Dance wasn’t going to lead me to a career — at least, not one where I made the kind of cash my father aligned with success.
It also wasn’t something that sparked pride in their hearts.
I wasn’t a ballerina trained at Juilliard or a backup dancer for a sold-out show on Broadway.
I was great, but not incredible. I had talent, but not quite enough.
I was a dancer, but I’d never make a comfortable living off it.
Which was why I rarely visited my parents’ bougie condo on the Upper East Side; why I always had excuses not to fly to London for the half of the year they lived there; why I usually kept our phone calls to ten minutes or less; and why I was content to live thousands of miles from them where I couldn’t feel them silently judging my every move.
They were waiting for me to figure it out, to have this big breakthrough.
And I knew, yet again, that I’d disappoint them.
I closed my eyes on another drag of the joint, making the decision to let all those negative thoughts go when I exhaled. It didn’t matter what they thought, because tonight, I was happy.
I was officially a Seattle Seahawks cheerleader.
“Are you fucking crazy?”
My eyes popped open just in time for a hand to jut out for what little bit of the joint I had left. In the next instant, said joint had been squashed between the fingers of Mr. Hot & Bashful Wide Receiver.
I smirked at Braden Lock as he looked over his shoulder with a panic-stricken face before hastily tossing the dead joint into the dumpster we were hiding behind.
“Hey, I wasn’t done with that,” I pouted, but I was still smiling, leaning back against the wall and letting my eyes rake over this man who piqued my curiosity so. I was definitely feeling the high now, and I was glad I had company.
Especially of the golden-eyed, dark-haired, muscle-lined variety.
“I could smell that shit as soon as I walked out,” he chastised, his thick brows furrowing. Why was it so hot when this man scowled at me? “Are you trying to get kicked off the team you just busted your ass to make, or are you just stupid?”
“How do you know I busted my ass?”
He flattened his lips. “Call it a hunch.”
“It’s just a little Mary Jane,” I said, my eyelids heavy as I met his gaze. “Which is perfectly legal in the state of Washington, by the way.”
“That may be, but it’s not permitted on the grounds, and I’m pretty sure you already know it’s in your contract that we’re a drug-free organization.”
“Haven’t signed that contract yet,” I said matter-of-factly, and then I pushed off the wall I was leaning on and into his space.
“Which means there’s another rule I haven’t sworn to follow just yet.
” I pressed my index and middle finger into his chest, and then walked them slowly up the buttons of his dress shirt until I just barely grazed the skin of his neck.
“Think you can guess which one I’m referring to? ”
His eyes heated, like molten golden pools. He couldn’t hide the way his Adam’s apple bobbed hard in his throat, the way his nostrils flared, his fingers curling into fists at his sides like he was restraining himself.
God, I loved the thought of that — the possibility that this man might be having a hard time keeping his hands off me right now.
Braden took a moment to compose himself before he let out a laugh through his nose, wrapping his hand around my wrist and peeling my touch from him.
I swore I felt a little jolt of electricity right between my legs with that grip, with his skin on mine, but he released me so fast I couldn’t be sure.
“You’re trouble,” he said, shaking his head as he took a step back to put space between us.
“Who, me?” I drew a halo over my head.
“Go home,” he said, digging his keys out of his pocket. “And don’t fucking smoke behind the stadium.”
“Mmm, I love when you play the role of Daddy. Or should I call you Boss?”
He shook his head. “You’re almost thirty, right? Shouldn’t you be more responsible?”
“You’re twenty-four. Shouldn’t you be more fun?”
I knew I’d caught him off guard with that one. What? He thought he was cute because he paid attention when Claire was reading off my stats and proudly boasting about me being the oldest cheerleader Seattle had ever had? Well, two could play that game, buddy.
I studied up on you, too.
And though he was five years younger than I was, there was something about the way he carried himself, the shadows in his eyes that told me he’d lived more than his fair share of life.
Again, I felt that gaze of his boil as he stared at me for a long moment. Finally, he frowned, looking toward the parking lot and then back at me.
“Wait, you’re not driving, are you?” he asked.
“You really do think I’m stupid.”
“How are you getting home?”
“The train, Boss.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“Then stop policing me.”
“Let me give you a ride.”
“Oh, with pleasure,” I said, pushing into his space once more. I reached up to toy with the hair at the back of his neck, reveling in the fact that I elicited a wave of chills over his skin when I did. “Should we go somewhere more private, or should I mount you right here?”
He groaned a bit when those words left my mouth, all breathy and inviting, but once again, his hand wrapped around my wrist and gently removed my touch.
I was smirking when he took another step backward, pointing his finger at me and shaking his head.
But he was smiling, too.
“Trouble,” he repeated, backing farther away. “With a capital fucking T.”
“Guess that means we’re saving that ride for training camp?”
“No rides.”
“Ah, you want to be on top, then. Fine by me. I like it from behind. But trust me when I say you’re missing out on a glorious view of me bouncing on your lap with these tits.”
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
I broke character and laughed out loud when he turned, likely to hide the fact that he was adjusting himself. But I saw it, along with the subtle shake of his head.
“Goodnight, Mr. Serious!” I called after him in a sing-song voice.
“Go home,” he replied.
I was still laughing to myself as I walked to the International District Link stop.
And I didn’t miss that Braden followed behind me.
Not in a creepy way, but in the way a big brother or good friend would — to make sure I made it okay, to ensure I was safe.
I debated waving at him through the window when I boarded, but decided to let him think I didn’t notice.
Braden Lock.
What a gentleman.
I wanted to lick him like the inside of an Oreo.