Chapter Twenty-Three
Twenty-Three
Tristan
I get to work early.
Early enough I figure I can catch Michelle before I have to be on the field for practice.
All night and morning, I’ve been rereading our text conversation, wondering if Luke was right, if I should have just told her how I felt.
But then I did, I laid myself on the line, told her exactly how I felt, and she didn’t respond, and fuck it all, I panicked.
Friends with benefits.
Yeah fucking right.
Michelle might want to call us that, and fuck if I won’t take whatever crumbs she gives me, be the best friend I can be to her, but I won’t ever think of her as just a friend.
Ever.
The skinny window beside her office door is dark, and I frown as I peer through the glass.
She better not have slept here again.
If she did, I will fucking drag her ass out of here tonight and make her get some real sleep. In my bed. With me.
The thought soothes me slightly, but the couch is empty, the blanket folded neatly across an arm.
She’s not here yet? I hold the cookies I baked for her tightly in one hand, trying to decide if I should leave them at her door or take them with me. I’d hate for someone to grab them before she gets a chance to have one.
I rub my jaw, the stubble telling me I forgot to shave this morning in my eagerness to get here. No, not to get here. To see her. To explain myself, that I meant what I told her last night, that I was being a coward when I said friends with benefits.
“Early bird, I see.”
Mark Adely’s walking down the hall. I’m so busy staring like a freak into Michelle’s office that I didn’t even hear him.
I jerk my head in a belated greeting. “Thought I’d get a good stretch in and work with PT this morning.”
“In Oxford’s office?” Mark peers at me, his hands jammed in the pockets of his expensive-looking jeans, a worn Aces shirt not hiding the fact that the man is literally one of the richest people in the state of California. “She isn’t in yet?”
“Like you said, it’s early,” I say, defensive in spite of myself. I know how hard he’s been pushing her, how much stress she’s been under, and his fucking attitude about her not being here is pissing me off.
“Yeah, but she’s usually here.” His lip curls in annoyance as he looks through her window to the dark office.
“Because she’s been sleeping here.” It comes out clipped, curt, and there’s no backpedaling from that tone.
“She has, huh?” The prick seems pleased to hear it. “She’s more dedicated than I thought, then.”
My jaw tightens, a muscle twitching in my temple. “She’s the best,” I manage through clenched teeth.
“I hear you’re trying to help her mellow out?”
That catches me off guard. “What?”
“That’s why you’re waiting for her, right? The doughnut debrief?” He laughs like he’s in on the joke, and I hate that he thinks anything about Michelle is a fucking joke. I hate that he likes the idea of her working herself to the bone for him.
But he’s given me an out, a reason for being here that has nothing to do with the fact that I want to push apart her thighs and make her come again.
“Yeah,” I say, my voice low.
Mark reaches up to clap me on the shoulder like we’re old friends, and I’m petty enough that I stand straighter, making it awkward because he has to stretch to close the distance.
“Don’t work too hard on mellowing her,” he says, wagging a finger at me as he starts to walk back toward his corner office. “I like my guard dogs hungry and ready to attack.”
My hands fist at my sides, and it takes every ounce of my self-control not to shove him against the wall and ask him exactly what the fuck he’s talking about.
He glances over his shoulder as he puts his hand on his doorknob, a shit-eating grin on his face. “Gotta keep ’em on a short leash, if you catch my drift.”
With his free hand, he mimes jerking a chain, and I see red.
“She’s not a dog. She’s a fucking person.”
Mark laughs. He fucking laughs.
“Of course she is. She works for me, though, not you, and I’ll manage her the way I need to to get the best from her.” He gives a little shrug and walks through his door, closing it behind him with a soft, anticlimactic snick.
What a fucking asshole.
I stare at the door.
I thought he was better than the last owners, and for the team, the organization, he has been. But as a person?
He’s just a different flavor of shit show.
I scrub a hand down my face, my mind whirling.
No wonder Michelle’s been a nervous wreck. He’s doing it to her on purpose.
It makes me all the more resolved to find her today, to help her relax, to be the person she needs me to be.
Whatever she needs me to be, whether it’s a friend, a friend with benefits, or maybe even…something more than that.
I take the cookies with me. I’m not giving Mark Adely a reason to look too closely at me and her.
I would hate myself forever if I made work even harder for her.