CHAPTER 11 Everleigh Bradley
Why Do You Hate the World
I stayed longer after the game than I needed to.
You know when you meet someone and you just click with them?
On a friendship level? That’s what this felt like.
Maybe Ellie makes everyone feel that way, but it seems like we have a lot in common.
She owns her own business. I aspire to, and I plan to at the end of my contracted term with Maverick. One year—minus a couple weeks—to go.
She’s married, and she has a couple of kids. She’s got the full package, from a hot husband she works with to the cute little family they’ve created together.
I want that, too.
And maybe it’s something I can find here in Vegas, but I can’t do that if I’m shadowing Maverick Jennings twenty-four seven…which I think is what Jack expects of me.
So maybe hiring Ellie on as his local publicist is a genius idea. Maybe she can be the vessel that occasionally allows me to take a break, so to speak. I suppose I’m setting my own schedule, but I’m nothing if not an overachiever.
I’ve always been that way.
As soon as I’m presented with a problem, it would seem I immediately conjure twelve different paths toward the solution.
Which is why Maverick is such a goddamn enigma.
I don’t see twelve paths toward the solution. I can’t even find one.
But I’ll keep chipping away until I do, and I really think Ellie might be able to help me with that.
Maverick must’ve stayed a little bit after the game as well because I find him standing by the elevator, waiting for it to come down to carry him up to the seventeenth floor when I walk into the lobby of our building.
I blow out a breath and consider waiting by the entrance, but Milton blows my cover. “Good evening, Ms. Bradley.”
I smile and wave, and at his words, Maverick turns around.
The doors open, and he steps on. So does the couple behind him, and I get on behind them.
The doors seal the four of us in, and the man turns to Maverick. “How much longer until you’re in? Because Fletcher is good, but he can’t read defense the way you can, and he certainly can’t command a field like you.”
“Depends what the doctors say. I’m hopeful I’ll be cleared for full practice this week,” he says. I study him as he answers. He keeps his eyes on the electronic numbers as they flip, and I glance up there, too. Six, seven, eight, nine.
“We need you back, man,” the man says.
I wait for Maverick to respond with more than the press of his lips that nobody would mistake for a smile, but he doesn’t.
So when we both get off on the seventeenth floor, I smile at the couple and head toward my door.
The elevator doors close, and we’re both in front of our doors, sliding our keys into the locks, when I turn toward him.
“What the hell was that?” I demand.
He turns around, his key in the lock and the rest of his key fob dangling the same way mine does. His gaze meets mine, and it lingers before he takes a step toward me. “What the hell was what?”
“That couple. The man was so nice. So complimentary. And you barely acknowledged him.”
“I answered his question,” he protests. He didn’t spare a second of a glance for the couple in the elevator, but his eyes are glued to mine now. He takes another step, and our doors aren’t really all that far apart. Two more steps, and he’d be in my orbit. Close enough to smell. Close enough to…
I force it away before I finish that thought.
“Yeah, and then he said ‘we need you back,’ and you couldn’t even be bothered to form a smile.” And then, before I know what I’m even saying, I add, “Wonder why everyone hates you? That’s why!”
My hands are shaking. He’s coming closer. Too close. I lean against my door.
His brows crash together as he closes the gap.
“Everyone can hate me all they want. I’ve told you before, and I’ll say it again.
I don’t give a fuck.” He moves until his body aligns with mine, and I can feel the heat rolling off him as my eyes flick up to his.
His body is big over mine. He’s nearly a foot taller than me, especially when I’m wearing the flat Converse I wore with jeans and an Aces tee to the game today.
His eyes are flashing, and his breathing is labored.
I feel like I can’t catch my own breath as the smell of his expensive cologne lingers far too close to me.
“Why do you hate the world, Maverick?” I ask, my voice going from loud to soft between sentences.
He doesn’t react to my question. Instead, he angles his head down a little, and my breath hitches somewhere in the back of my throat. I swear to God I can hear my knees knocking together as the rush of my pounding heart throbs in my ears.
My eyes flick to his lips for just half a second, and a fire ignites in my chest as butterflies flutter around my ribs.
He leans down, and his nose brushes against mine. He’s going to kiss me, and God, do I want him to kiss me. I close my eyes as I breathe him in, and I wait for his lips to connect with mine.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I know it’s wrong.
All wrong. I shouldn’t be doing this. I can’t do this.
He’s a client. I can’t get involved with him.
But what if getting involved is what we need?
What if it opens the doors to why he is the way he is?
What if it allows him to finally confess everything to me, to let me in, to let me help him?
It’s a gamble, but it’s one I’m willing to take to get the job done.
I won’t let my heart get involved, that’s all.
Aside from the beating of it. The racing of it.
The pounding in my ears is so loud, and the desire for him to kiss me is so strong and sure that I don’t even hear him as he moves away.
He pulls back, and it takes a second for the air conditioning in the building to sweep down from the air vents, but when it does, that’s when I notice his heat is no longer pressed against me.
My eyes fly open as my cheeks burn with embarrassment. I must look like an idiot standing here waiting for him to kiss me when that was probably never his intent at all.
Our eyes meet, and the heat in his has shifted back to icy cold detachment. “I don’t make mistakes, sweetheart.” His voice drips with sarcasm on the last word.
Tears bite behind my eyes at his cruel words, but I can’t let it get to me.
I was mistaken, that’s all.
It’s embarrassing, but life moves on.
It’s time to get back to work and figure out this puzzle that I can’t seem to strategize my way out of.