Chapter 14
BEA
There was no better feeling—after a day filled with travel, work, and utter, bone-deep confusion—than stepping back into my apartment.
Not the quiet.
Not the familiar weight of my bag slipping off my shoulder.
Bento.
A soft thud of paws hit the floor from somewhere deeper in the apartment, then another, then the quick, indignant patter of him launching himself across the hardwood with all the urgency of a creature personally betrayed.
He rounded the corner at a dead sprint, his fluffy gray-and-white body low and dramatic, golden eyes huge with accusation, and threw himself against my ankles like I had abandoned him for war instead of one night.
“Oh my God, I know,” I laughed, already dropping my bag beside the door and bending before he could escalate into full emotional collapse. “I know. I’m terrible. Call the police.”
He answered with a loud, wounded meow anyway, climbing into my arms the second I scooped him up, dignity having no place in a reunion this important.
His body folded against my chest with immediate, offended trust, warm and familiar and absurdly solid for something with such delicate whiskers.
I pressed my face into the curls under his ear and inhaled the clean, powdery warmth of him, the faint scent of litter and fabric softener and home, and some tight, ugly knot in my chest loosened by degrees.
“I missed you too,” I murmured into his fur. “Even though your guilt tactics are manipulative and frankly abusive.”
He purred so hard I could feel it through my arms.
Alois did not say anything. He had followed me inside without fanfare, broad shoulders filling the entryway for half a second before he moved further in, his duffel in one hand, his coat hanging open, all that size and stillness and muted authority changing the shape of the room just by standing in it.
My apartment was not big. It was tidy and bright and mine, full of cream throws and soft wood and framed prints and carefully chosen little pieces that kept it from feeling temporary.
He should have looked out of place in it.
He should have felt too severe for the warmth of it.
Instead, he looked as if he had already decided exactly how much space he intended to take.
Bento stiffened instantly in my arms. His purr cut off so abruptly it felt theatrical. He lifted his head from my shoulder, turned in my hold, and stared at Alois with the narrowed, deeply suspicious focus of a tiny mob boss evaluating a threat to his operation.
“Do not start,” I warned quietly, though whether I meant the cat or the man, I could not have said with confidence.
I set Bento down before his claws could become part of the evening’s conflict, then crossed into the kitchen and reached for a glass.
The cold water that hit it from the faucet ran clear and fast, and I filled it halfway just to have something chilled and solid in my hand before I said what had been pacing circles in my head since leaving the Hayes’ magnificent penthouse.
“Are you going to explain to me what happened this morning?” The question came out harsh. Not polished. Not measured. It cut clean across the room, first shot fired.
Alois had been halfway to the living area, duffel already half unzipped. He stilled. Slowly, he straightened and turned his head toward me, expression unreadable in that infuriating way of his that never seemed blank so much as heavily guarded.
“Explain what?”
My pulse spiked, hot and immediate. “What was that?” I demanded. “You could have told me who we were meeting. You could have said one sentence in the car, or in the elevator, or at any point before I walked into that room looking completely ignorant.”
His jaw shifted once. That was all. The smallest movement. Then, to my absolute horror, I saw the faintest pull at the corner of his mouth. “You should have done your homework.”
The words hit so hard I actually felt my spine lock.
“Excuse me?” I snapped.
Alois held my gaze as he sank down onto my couch. He leaned one shoulder lightly against the back, as if the entire conversation did not interest him enough to meet my energy. “J'ai dit que tu aurais d? faire tes devoirs.”
Him repeating himself in French was gasoline on a fire. And he knew it. The calm of it made my skin prickle with heat. “I heard what you said.”
“Then why are you yelling?” The mocking edge as his accent curled around his words in a chuckle continued to stoke the flames building inside my mind.
“Because you let me walk in there blind.” I was pacing, panting, spiraling right in front of Alois and he was still treating my breakdown like a joke.
“No,” he sighed. “I let you walk in there unprepared. There’s a difference.”
The humiliation came so fast it was almost dizzying.
It started hot in my face and spread downward, a rush of sick heat under my skin that left me too aware of my own body, my own voice, the glass in my hand, the stupid fact that he was right.
I hated that he was right. I hated that my mind had gone straight to anger because anger felt cleaner than the truth.
I should have known who Gavin and Myla were before we got there.
I should have known how they fit into his world.
I should have known enough not to be caught off guard by introductions in front of people whose opinions mattered.
I should have spent the flight researching the opposing team—reading every article, every archived interview, every thread and profile and old team feature I could find.
I should have built myself a map before stepping into his world and pretending I knew the terrain.
Alois watched me over the space between us, all six and a half feet of him infuriatingly still, his expression unchanged. “I had no idea,” he snickered, and now there was something almost dry in his tone, “that someone like you would walk into a room without knowing who was already in it.”
My fingers tightened around the glass until cold condensation slicked over my knuckles. “Is this funny to you?”
The laugh that escaped him was quiet and brief and did absolutely nothing good for my blood pressure.
“Is this a game?” I pressed, taking a step back before I could do something absurd like throw water at a professional hockey player in my own kitchen.
“Because from where I’m standing, you seem very entertained by the fact that I almost floundered.
Ezra is my fucking boss. My career could have been over before it even really started. ”
“You didn’t almost flounder,” he sneered.
The correction was immediate enough to trip me for half a second.
Then he added, “You did.”
I blinked at him. Then I turned on my heel before my dignity could fully dissolve where I stood. “I’m showering.”
“Mm.” That was all he gave me. A low, knowing sound that somehow managed to be more insulting than a full paragraph.
I stalked down the hall with as much composure as I could fake, and shut the bathroom door behind me.
The click echoed in the small space. I twisted the knobs harder than necessary and the old pipes in the wall answered with their usual cranky protest, whining and rattling before the water sputtered to life.
The apartment building was charming in the way old buildings always were when you were not the one relying on them.
In the winter, everything fought you a little.
The radiators knocked. The windows sighed.
The shower ran either too cold or too hot before reluctantly finding a middle ground.
Tonight, freezing water spat from the showerhead in a mean little burst, scattering over the tile.
I stripped and stepped under it anyway.
The cold hit first, sharp enough to steal a breath, then softened by degrees as the water warmed. Steam began to gather, clouding the mirror, blurring the room at the edges, but it did nothing to quiet the spiral in my head.
I do not deserve this job. The thought came in clear. Not dressed up as anxiety. Not softened into self-doubt. A hard, bright fact in my own voice.
I had spent years making myself impossible to dismiss.
I had crossed countries and classrooms and boardrooms and internships and every single condescending smile that came with being young and female and connected to the wrong people.
I had learned how to over prepare because over preparing meant no one could catch me slipping.
No one could point to me and say pretty hire, lucky hire, Ezra’s girlfriend’s ex-stepdaughter, whatever version of the same insult they preferred when they thought I could not hear it.
And today I had failed at the smallest task.
Knowing the room.
Knowing the people.
My only job— knowing him.
The water ran over my shoulders and down my spine, hot enough now to turn my skin pink, and I tipped my head back beneath it, squeezing my eyes shut.
Was Alois a dick? Yes. Obviously. That part was not up for debate. He was smug and too observant and infuriatingly comfortable telling the truth in the exact shape it would hurt most.
But that was not the whole of it.
That was what kept catching on me.
Nothing about him felt careless. Not his silence.
Not his timing. Not the way he had watched me in that room when he knew exactly what he was doing.
He had not embarrassed me for sport. He had exposed a weakness and let me feel it.
There was a difference, and somehow that difference bothered me more.
A sharp, guttural roar tore through the apartment. It snapped me right out of my spiral. I stilled.
“Fuck—”
Another howl melting into a scream bounced off the tile around me.
Bento.
“Fuck—” Alois’s grunt was followed by a sharp hiss. Violent. Immediate.