CHAPTER 19 Archer Bradley
You Have a Lot to Learn
I shouldn’t have done that. I should have carried her up to my room and gotten a condom.
The heat of the moment got the best of me, I guess, and now a quiet fear plants itself as a knot in my stomach.
Millie already told me she isn’t on the pill. She said the timing should be fine, but we didn’t want to risk it the other night. I’m not sure why today, when I haven’t had a drop of alcohol, it was fine, but when we were both a few drinks in, we knew it was a bad idea.
Maybe I’m more rational when I’m drunk. Maybe I’m a little drunk on Millie Monroe.
Fuck it all, she’s gorgeous and fun to be around.
Even bickering with her is fun, and she has the power to keep my mind off the fact that I’m missing forty games while we hang out for the next month.
She’s making it easy for me. It’s just sex for both of us, and there’s something inherently sexy about that.
We can do what we want without consequences.
This is a learning experience. A chance to grow. A chance to try new things with someone who’s willing, able, and hot as fuck.
Once I help her to the restroom and back and we’re both dressed, she grabs her phone.
I don’t know why it bothers me as much as it does. It’s not like I have anything else planned for the moment, but I guess I just wanted a few quiet moments together after we just fucked with nothing between us.
Maybe to talk about things. Maybe to make myself feel a little better about what just happened. To get her reassurance that it’s all fine.
But she turned to her phone…as usual.
Instead of turning to me.
I’m overreacting. I know I am. It’s my own personal trauma when it comes to phones after the scandal with my father, and I’m taking it out on her.
Still, it just proves to me that even if it were a possibility on the table, which it’s not, this would never work between us in the real world.
“What are you looking at?” I ask.
She clears her throat and turns her phone off, setting it on the end table. “Nothing.”
I tilt my head as I stare at her for a few beats. She looks bored, and it’s either because she’s not working or because she’s not doing something.
An idea plants itself in my mind. She thinks she’s relegated to this hotel room because of her injury, but she’s not. At all. Yeah, she needs to rest her ankle, and I can keep an eye on her and make sure that happens, but that doesn’t mean we can’t go out and do something.
In fact, a whole list of ideas is forming in my mind.
“You look like an idea just hit you,” she says, and it’s a little weird how she can already read me like that.
“One did. Hang on a second.” I send Clive a text, and when I glance up, she’s pursing her lips at me. “What?”
“So you can be on your phone, but I can’t?”
I roll my eyes. “I sent my personal butler a request for something for you, and he’s going to bring it here to your room.”
“Oh,” she says.
I laugh. “That’s not what you were expecting?”
She shakes her head. “I figured you were checking social media like everyone else in the world does when they pick up their phones.”
“A, no, they don’t, and B, I don’t have social media.”
She grabs her phone and pulls up some app. “What’s this, then?” she demands.
I shrug. “Something my publicist probably set up for me.”
“You don’t even know you have an Instagram account? And meanwhile, you have one-point-seven million fans who go crazy every time you post anything at all. Only…it’s not you, and you had no clue that this even existed.”
My brows push together. “What is it?”
She flashes her phone at me and shows me the profile.
She reads the bio aloud. “Archer Bradley. LF @vegasheat. That’s it.
As simple and as private as can be.” Then she clicks on a photo of me.
“Look at this. Your engagement is nuts. I’d give my good ankle for sixty-two point three thousand likes and a thousand comments per post.”
I look at the photo. It was posted during spring training, and it’s of me on the field in my usual stance as I wait for the batter to connect with the ball. The caption says something about how I’m ready for anything.
It looks like Kendall, my publicist, was posting every few weeks, but she stopped once my suspension started. I’m sure there’s a reason for that.
“What does yours look like?” I ask.
She taps on her phone and shows me her profile. The bio part is packed with details, the photos are clearly curated, and there’s a little circle around her headshot that my profile didn’t have. “What’s with the circle around your picture?”
“That means I posted to my story. There’s a new story to view.”
“What the fuck is a story?” I ask.
She laughs. “God, you have a lot to learn.”
“Feels like I’ve been getting by just fine not knowing any of this,” I mutter, though it does feel a little weird that I have an entire platform I didn’t know existed.
A knock at the door prevents me from having to sit through any more of this lesson, and I open it to find Clive with my request.
“Thank you,” I tell him.
He wheels the wheelchair into the room and stops it in front of Millie. “How are you feeling, madam?”
She looks a little shocked as she answers. “I’m okay. Thank you.”
“Can I get you anything at all?” he asks her.
“No, but thank you.”
He turns to me. “Sir? Will that be all?”
I nod. “Thanks, Clive.”
He leaves, and I turn to Millie. “Hop in.”
“Excuse me?” she asks.
“Oh, right.” I walk over and pick her up into my arms before depositing her into the wheelchair.
“Wait, I need my ph—”
“No, you don’t,” I say, and I wheel her out the door and toward the elevator before she can try to escape to grab it.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Just on a little excursion. No phones allowed.”
“You still have yours,” she points out, narrowing her eyes at me.
“Good point,” I say, and I leave her in the middle of the hallway as I jog back to her room, open the door with the spare key I snagged from the end table, and leave my phone next to hers.
I wheel her down to the lobby of our tower, and then we go for a walk.
“Where are you taking me?” she asks when we walk into the Coast Tower.
“You’ll see.” I follow the signs until we end up by the tunnels that feature the marine exhibits. There are tons of lagoons showcasing different marine life, and the one we start in has sharks and stingrays along with different types of fish.
“Wow,” she murmurs, clearly in awe as we walk through the first tunnel where the sharks and fish can swim overhead and all around us. It’s not crowded, and I find a spot where I can sort of park us as she looks up and around at everything in this tunnel.
I kneel down beside her. “What’s your favorite animal?”
“I’ve always loved butterflies,” she says. Her choice is very sunshine and sparkles, just like her, but it doesn’t reveal any new depth to her.
“Mine’s the shark. Specifically the mako. They’re fast as fuck and strong as hell, and they tend to travel alone.”
“Like you?” she asks softly.
I lift a shoulder, and we both stare at the fish. It’s quiet in here. Tranquil, almost, and it feels like we’re on a date. Sort of.
“Can I be honest about something?” she asks.
I glance down at her, and she’s looking up at me. “Always.”
“I hate that I don’t have my phone to take pictures…but it feels good not to be tethered to it.”
I can’t help when my lips tip up in a small smile. “You look good without it.”
She presses her lips together and nods as she resumes looking at the fish. It’s perhaps the first time she’s made the realization that she can do things without that device attached to her hand, and for the first time…maybe she even likes it.