Twenty-Three #2
“Yeah, hi,” Miles said, barely suppressing a grin. And heedless of his sister’s presence, he added, “I missed you,” and held out his arms. A tiny part of me had worried that the Miles who loved me only existed in San Diego, and it was a huge relief to be wrong.
“I missed you too,” I said and went to him, his arms closing possessively around me something I would never tire of.
As Miles kissed my forehead, Tina said, “Don’t forget I’m here! Or that we hadn’t finished your schedule.”
“Just send it to me, Tee,” he laughed. “We aren’t going to get a lot of time together with all the media shit, so I would rather not waste what little we have going through a schedule I’m just going to forget.
Oh, and you should probably know,” he added, squeezing me tighter, “Mat and I are together now.”
Tina’s eyes widened and she looked from Miles to me and back. “What do you mean now? I assumed that when you introduced him to me! Were you not . . .?”
“Oh, we were together, but I mean he’s my boyfriend now.”
“That’s what I meant too!” She threw up her arms in defeat. “If that’s what you were like when you weren’t dating then we’re in trouble.”
A knock sounded on the door and Miles went to open it for a middle-aged man with long hair pulled back into a tidy ponytail.
He entered carrying a folded massage table in its carry bag, with another bag slung over his shoulder.
“Ah, yeah you can just set them down through there,” Miles said, “but first let me introduce you to Matteo Russo.” He gestured to me, the smile he threw me one that spoke of shared strangeness and delight.
“My boyfriend. Mat, this is Cam Michaels, my new physio and for now the entirety of my team.”
Michaels held out a hand with a little difficulty, balancing his bags. “Hey, great to meet you.”
“You too,” I said. “My physio says he’s the most important member of the team anyway – more important even than me.”
The man grinned. “We are the oil that keeps the machine running, but we aren’t very useful without the machine.”
“I don’t know,” Miles said. “I bet you could do a pretty good job out there. Better than Macca at least. I’ve seen the way he holds a racquet and it’s not good.”
“He started as a football physio, okay?” I laughed.
“No excuse.”
When Michaels went to set down the bags, Miles slid his arm around my waist and pulled me close again. “Football,” he scoffed. “You don’t even mean the real sport, do you?”
“You take that back. Aussie Rules deserves the name far more than your weird American shit where you pass it around with your hands.”
Tina sighed. “Right, I’ll leave you two to your flirting. Just remember, I need you downstairs at seven, yes?”
“Yes,” Miles said in a voice of long suffering, but before she could even roll her eyes, his phone rang. Loosening his hold on me, he glanced at the screen. “Damn, I have to take this.” With an apologetic grimace my way, he ambled off across the room lifting the phone to his ear.
“Catch you later, Matteo,” Tina said, heading for the door.
With Miles occupied, I took the opportunity and hurried after her as she reached the hallway. “Hey, can I have a word?”
Tina’s fine brows made an arch of surprise and she glanced around to be sure we were alone. “All right. How serious? Do I need a chair? Pen and paper? A stiff drink?”
“Hopefully not, though I could be wrong.”
“That’s ominous.” She gestured along the stretch of plush carpet. “Here, let’s walk so we look like we just happen to be going the same way.”
Letting Miles’s door close behind me, I fell in beside her, strolling toward the lifts. “It’s about Emily.”
Tina’s expression slid from surprise to sympathy. “I know that whole situation must be hard for you, Matteo, but surely you went into this understanding he’s not out. Most of the time it doesn’t matter, but sometimes we have to employ a little—”
“It’s not that.” It was, but not entirely, so I wasn’t going to admit it. “Is she in love with him?”
“Oh. Um, no?” Her brows knitted. “At least not that she’s ever said or that I’ve noticed beyond what’s naturally part of the job.
Are you thinking she was clingy in Cincinnati?
That’s just how she is when she’s playing for the cameras.
And since anyone can snap a pic with their phone at any time, there are always cameras. ”
“I hope you’re right, but I still think you need to talk to her.”
Tina stopped and shot me a cautionary look. “I like you, Matteo, and I like how happy you make Miles, but I hope you aren’t going to make a habit of telling me how to do my job. I’m his agent and social media manager, not yours, which means I only take orders from him. If he wants me to—”
“I’m not trying to throw my weight around, I just—” I broke off, heaving a sigh.
“He’s already dealing with enough shit with the team thing, and I know there’s stuff going on with your parents that he isn’t telling me.
And the pressure for him to win the tournament is huge, not helped by the fact that he might have to fight through me to get there.
So, I thought this was one thing I could handle without having to worry him about it. ”
“And this thing is that you think Emily is in love with him? I admit it could prove troublesome if she is, though I assure you she’s well aware he’s—” She paused, and seeming to recall where we were, lowered her voice to go on.
“Gay and he’s never done anything to encourage her to think there was anything in it. ”
He wouldn’t have to. That was the problem. Miles leaked charm, and beneath the occasionally bratty persona, he had a natural instinct for being kind and generous and what more could anyone want? My belief that I disliked him immensely had lasted barely hours beneath the strength of that magnetism.
“Have you seen the pictures she posts of him?”
Tina frowned, glancing down at her phone as though passing on the question. “Yes? I mean, I don’t look through every photo, but it’s almost always the three of us hanging out when we go places, so I figure I’ve seen it all.”
“Perhaps you should look a bit closer. Swipe beyond the first few and they are . . . uncomfortably intimate. I thought so even when I wasn’t his boyfriend.”
“Oh.” For the first time she looked troubled. “All right, I’ll do that. Thanks for letting me know. Just so long as you understand this is how it has to be.”
I swallowed the urge to argue, because for all I had been let in, for all Miles smiled and slid his arm around my waist and introduced me as his boyfriend to his new physio, I was the newcomer here and still had no sense of just how much control his parents really had.
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “And so long as you understand that while I’m not trying to change anything, I am going to fight for him. For what he needs and what he wants, not what other people think he should do.”
“A warning?”
That hadn’t been my plan when I’d followed her out, though it was best she knew. “I guess, but more for you rather than to you. I won’t make trouble, but I won’t hold my tongue either.”
Tina nodded, no smile on her face. “I appreciate it. I wish I could say I appreciate you, too, but . . . I worry. The older sister thing, you know.”
“I know.”
She patted my arm and called the elevator, just as Michaels arrived sans bags.
“Going up or down?” she asked brightly, and I was glad to hear him thank her and ask how she was doing as I walked away.
It seemed like a good sign, since Miles had said the old team had humoured her more than respected her.
When Miles let me back in, he was still on the phone. “Yeah, that’s why I want to do it,” he said, holding the door open for me. “I just need options.”
Once the door swung closed, he turned the phone away from his mouth and leaned in, planting a soft kiss on my lips, while on the other end of the line a woman’s tinny voice said, “and once I’ve reviewed all the paperwork, we can organise a call to discuss different directions.”
“Thank you,” Miles said, and having exchanged farewells, he ended the call and dropped the phone unceremoniously onto the couch.
“Finally,” he murmured and slid his hands into my hair, kissing me hungrily.
“That was not the welcome I had planned for you, but once again I failed to take your unpredictability into account.”
“What? You sent me your room number, so I came.”
“Straight away! Most people would play it cool, take their time, keep me waiting a little, you know? Not you.”
I shrugged. “Why wait? I know what I want, and I don’t mind you knowing it’s you.”
“Damn,” he said, eyes widening. “The things you come out with.”
While he kissed a line along my brow, I gestured to the phone. “Everything go all right with your parents?”
“As well as could be expected.”
When he kissed down my cheek and along my jaw, giving no sign he intended to expand on this, I said, “That’s it?”
He sighed, straightening up to look at me.
“What else is there to say? My dad shouted, because that’s what he does.
Then my mother used her placating croon, because that’s what she does, calling me baby and telling me she’ll fix everything until I feel like some overwrought toddler.
And when that didn’t work, they fell back on tears and guilt trips about all they’ve done for me. ”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah, but don’t worry, it got worse. Because when they realised none of their usual tricks were working, they found a way to spin my choice to hire Cam as their own brilliant idea.
It was the best I was going to get when I needed them to sign off on the funds, but now they’re determined to use the opening to choose my new coach.
It’s going to be a fucking mess if they hire someone without telling me, because either I put up with it, or I fire them right away – not the sort of talk I want spreading around the tour. ”
The answer to how much his parents controlled sounded increasingly like literally everything. I blew out a heavy breath. “That’s shit.”