Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Toni Amato
Scarlett and Trey invite me over for drinks on Friday with some of the players and the wives.
Piper: I’m coming for you with handcuffs if you don’t show up.
Me: Why are you all so violent?
Piper: I know you are overthinking it. Don’t worry, Max is babysitting so Chase and I can have the night off. He won’t be there.
Me: Why would I care?
Piper: Yeah, right?
This time I don’t let Elena pick out my dress. I’m feeling reckless after the trying day I’ve had, so I pick a red one.
Scarlett’s condo is on the forty-second floor and has a view of Lake Michigan that is aggressively unfair.
The city spreads out below in a sprawl of gold and white light, the lake a flat dark void beyond it, and I stand at the window for ten seconds before Piper presses a glass of wine into my hand and steers me toward the couch.
“You look like you’ve been reasoning with yourself for seventy-two hours,” she says.
“I’m fine.”
“You said that with the energy of someone who is extremely not fine.”
Sophie appears from the kitchen carrying a charcuterie board the size of a small country and sets it on the coffee table with the authority of someone who has strong opinions about cheese.
Harper is already tucked into the corner of the sectional with her knees drawn up, glass balanced on them, watching me the way she watches things — silently, completely, as if she’s already arrived at a conclusion and is waiting for me to catch up.
Scarlett tops off my wine like she’s legally responsible for everyone’s emotional support levels tonight.
“Okay,” she says, tucking one leg beneath herself on the enormous sectional.
“Now that Toni survived benching Max Stevens in public, and the fire alarm in a towel, we can finally discuss the important thing.”
I already distrust that tone. “Which is?”
“How long before you climb him?”
“Trey,” Sophie says without missing a beat, “your wife is harassing the guests again.”
From the kitchen island, Trey barely glances up from helping Knox open another beer. “As long as she’s hydrated while doing it, I support her hobbies.” Scarlett raises her glass in salute.
I stare at all of them. “Is everyone in this organization insane?”
“Yes,” Harper says calmly from the armchair. “You adjust surprisingly fast.”
Piper curls deeper into the couch beside me, grinning. “You should’ve seen Max at eighteen.”
“Oh my God,” Sophie says immediately. “The hair.”
Scarlett physically shudders. “Criminal.”
“It was hockey hair,” Piper defends.
“It was a misdemeanor,” Harper corrects.
Sophie nearly spits out her drink laughing. “He thought frosted tips were edgy,” she continues.
“No,” Piper says, already wheezing. “Tell her about the leather bracelet phase.”
“Oh, absolutely not,” Trey mutters from the kitchen.
“ABSOLUTELY yes,” Scarlett says. “He wore one for like eight months and kept calling everyone sweetheart.”
“That explains so much,” Harper says dryly. I laugh before I can stop myself. A dangerous mistake.
Because every female head in the room turns toward me simultaneously like wolves spotting weakness.
“There it is,” Scarlett says. “She likes him.”
“I do not.”
“She laughed,” Sophie informs the room.
“At Max,” I clarify, taking another sip of wine. “You’re all deeply annoying.”
“Still counts,” Piper says.
“And yet,” Harper says, “you came back after benching him.”
Fair point. I ignore it aggressively. Piper shifts toward me conspiratorially. “Okay, but genuinely? He’s ridiculous with the kids.” My ovaries might just explode.
Scarlett points at her. “Tell her the goldfish story.”
“No, if one more person hooks up through this organization, I’m requesting a trade.” Trey says, sounding exhausted now. “Leave the man some dignity.”
“He has none,” Sophie replies.
“What goldfish story?” I ask, wary. The women exchange looks that tell me I’m about to receive dangerous information. Piper wipes tears from her eyes. “Christopher had a goldfish.”
“That sounds harmless already,” I murmur.
“It died,” Harper says.
“And Max,” Sophie continues, already losing composure again, “held a funeral.”
I blink. “A funeral.”
“He wrote a speech,” Scarlett says.
“By candlelight,” Piper adds.
“With a slideshow,” Sophie finishes.
I stare at them. “No.”
From the kitchen, Trey calls, “Yes,” his defeated tone suggesting he saw it all unfolding.
“He put Sarah McLachlan’s music behind the slideshow.
” The room completely falls apart. Scarlett is crying.
Even Harper looks visibly affected, which I suspect, for her, is the emotional equivalent of hysteria.
“He wore a black tie,” Piper gasps.
“Christopher cried less than Max did,” Sophie says.
I press my lips together. I fail magnificently. The smile breaks loose anyway, and the worst part? The second it happens, every woman in the room notices again. Scarlett points at me triumphantly. “That face,” she says. “That’s the exact face women make right before Max Stevens ruins their lives.”
“I am not having a face.” I reach for my wine again because apparently that’s who I am tonight.
“Oh,” Harper says. “You’re absolutely having a face.”
Across the penthouse, Trey glances over at the laughter, shakes his head once, and mutters to Knox, “He’s done for.”
And somehow, terrifyingly, I’m thinking they might mean me too.
Group Text: Toni: I’m apparently indoctrinated now.
Piper: WHO TAUGHT FUZE HOW TO USE POLLS
Scarlett: Why is he asking people to rank the team emotionally
Harper: I got “feral but trainable”
Sophie: Anthony got “golden retriever with WiFi”
Toni: Why am I in this chat
Piper: Too late to escape now
I don’t recall the drive or deciding to come.
I remember my hands on the steering wheel and stopping at a red light, then not registering the color change until someone honked behind me.
Sitting in the car in front of his home, I think about the city outside my window doing its thing, the brick structure, and insulation between us.
And none of it is helping because the problem is not outside.
The problem is the specific phrase I’m not going anywhere and the way it landed in my heart.
I didn’t have a compartment for it, and I’ve been trying to build one for the last two hours, and it’s just not coming together.
The team and the women at the party didn’t help either because they reinforced the belief I’ve been denying all along vehemently.
He's a client. Same organization. Same optics.
The kind of situation that ends badly and takes everything with it.
This is all known to me. Since the season began, I’ve made this exact case to myself about forty times, and it has always worked until now, which is inconvenient.
I let my hair down because suddenly it’s too tight.
The way he clocked the coffee order being wrong and said nothing — just watched me fix it.
The way he sat with the silence at practice, like he’d decided it was mine to fill or not, and if I didn’t, that was fine too.
Eight weeks of that. Eight weeks of him making space I wasn’t asking for and not asking for anything back, and I am completely drained of pretending I don’t notice.
This is the dock talking. Elevated emotion.
The lateness of the hour. The particular damage to someone sitting in the dark and telling you the truth when you’re not braced for it.
I know what this is. I can name it and I can manage it.
The thing is I have been the most careful person in every room I've ever been in.
I am twenty-four years old. Sitting in a parking spot in Chicago, talking myself out of a man three floors above who is almost certainly awake.
At some point careful stops being a virtue and starts being a habit you hide behind.
I don’t hide. That’s the other thing. I make deliberate choices and I live with them, and this is a choice.
It’s a bad one. I know it’s a bad one. I get out anyway and click the locks.
Once inside, the hallway is secluded, the carpet absorbs the sound of my heels.
It’s approximately twenty-nine steps from the elevator.
I count every step. My brain runs its arguments the whole way.
But I’m standing in front of his door. So.
Decision made. My pulse is still wrong. Too fast. Too loud.
Like I never actually left the dock. Like I’m still sitting on that plastic armrest with his hand wrapped around mine, hearing him say I’ve got you now like it meant something.
It didn’t. That’s the second problem. I lift my hand. Knock. Three times. I almost walk away before the sound finishes echoing. The door opens.
And there he is.
Max, dressed and composed in that loose way that isn’t careless at all. His eyes land on me—and the air shifts. Recognition. No surprise. Like he expected me. That bothers me more than it should.
I’m mute. Because if I say anything, it will be irretrievable. The door shuts. There's a second, one fragile second, where I could still stop this. Turn around. Say I made a mistake. Rebuild the wall before it collapses completely.
I don’t. I reach for him. Not graceful. Just decided. My hands find his shirt, grip, pull, and his body moves with mine like he’s been waiting for the direction. My mouth meets his. Hard. Decisive. No room for interpretation or thought. If I stop to think, I will stop.
And I don’t want to stop. That realization cuts sharp, and I shove it down.
This is not about want. This is about control. Taking it back. His hands find my waist, and heat spreads too fast, too easily. That’s the third problem. I make a sound I didn’t authorize. His grip tightens. He reacts. Of course he does.
Max reacts to everything. I push him back a step, needing movement, needing friction, needing anything that keeps this from becoming still enough to examine. He lets me. Always lets me lead first. I hate how much I notice that.
So I change it, placing my hand on his chest and pushing him. He changes with it, more focused. Like he’s paying attention now. He understands this isn’t casual. That this means more than I am actively trying to deny.
That’s the fourth problem.
My breath catches. I hate that he hears it. I meet his eyes.
If I say anything or let him talk, this shifts into a situation I can’t control. Rules established. Temporary. Fragile but necessary. He gives me one last second. I feel it. The pause. The choice. I don’t take it.
Everything after that fractures. Overwhelming in a way I don't have a category for. I am used to structure and intention. To understanding why I do things before I do them.
This? This is reaction. Impulse. The exact thing I have spent two years training myself out of. And yet. My hands don't stop. My body doesn’t hesitate. I respond to him like I remember him. The memory of that night in Rockford never dimmed. That realization hits mid-breath. Terrifying.
I push closer instead of away. Because distance would mean thinking. And that would end this. I don’t want it to end. So I don’t. I stay in the heat, the noise. In the way he whispers my full name once. Rough, like it matters. I pretend I didn’t hear it.