CHAPTER 17 Everleigh Bradley
Freight Train
Nearly a week after our shelter visit, Dr. Baker clears him for full practice, which means he’s also cleared to start bonding with his teammates—a fact I point out on the way to the weight room where he plans to start today.
In the last six days, he’s been adamantly against me telling anybody about his work at the shelter. It’s a closely guarded secret, but I can’t really figure out why he wouldn’t want to use it to his advantage. Still, I respect his wishes—even if I keep pressing it.
“Find at least one other guy you can talk to during workouts today,” I suggest. “We need to start building bonds for you to become the kind of leader Jack is looking for, and that begins with at least coming off as semi-approachable.”
He looks at me like I’m stupid. “Workouts are individualized to each player, and Adrian is meeting with me to amend the personalized plan he created for me coming off an injury.”
“Yeah, but don’t you, like, I don’t know…shoot the shit with the other players while you’re in there? You know, invite someone to the shelter?” I ask.
“Do I seem like the kind of guy who shoots the shit with anybody? And the shelter is a hard no. That’s mine.”
I scowl at him, and he relents.
“Fine. I’ll try to shoot some shit.”
He meets with Adrian first, who’d been working with him on throwing shorter distances and keeping up his strength with exercises that wouldn’t affect his ribs.
But now he needs to get back to full game speed and strength, which means he has just a few days to get back to where he was before the injury.
I listen with rapt attention as I try to piece out where I can be helpful, but this is sort of all Maverick from this point.
I snap a few pictures as he trains with Adrian, and I send them to Ellie, who’s devising his social media plan.
He’ll need to approve everything first, and I can fully see him telling us not to post any of this, but if he wants his angle to be split somewhere between grinding athlete and everyday dude, we need to get started somewhere.
It’s a long day as he starts in the weight room and then joins the rest of the team for drills on the practice field.
As a bystander, it appears to me that he never missed a beat.
He’s at his most natural when he’s standing on the line, looking downfield for his receiver as he holds the ball in his hand.
He’s confident and patient, two words that wouldn’t come straight to mind when I think of the little I’ve gotten to know of Maverick Jennings.
I’m reminded of when he told me he’s broken. I’m reminded of when he asked why I haven’t left yet. I’m reminded of the way he has exactly zero patience for me.
But this man on the field is someone else entirely. He waits for his moment. He scans the field. He’s precise and disciplined.
It’s commanding and beyond sexy.
I shake that word straight out of my head.
The only reason it would matter if he’s sexy is if I can somehow use it to help his image. My personal feelings on the matter need to be kept in check at all costs.
My phone rings while I’m watching practice, and I see it’s my little sister Ivy calling. I send the call to voicemail since I’m working right now.
Practice ends, but Maverick doesn’t leave the field with everyone else.
In fact, even the coaches leave, and he’s still out there on the field.
He’s running some extra drills, testing things out.
He’s probably happy to be back here in the place he loves—the one place that gives him respite from whatever it is that seems to plague him.
Because something is definitely buried beneath the surface with this guy.
You don’t just walk through life hating everyone without having some reason why.
I walk over toward him after a good fifteen minutes, and I’m not sure why.
It’s starting to get dark out here as the sun goes down, and the sky is a brilliant shade of pinks and oranges.
Sunsets in Vegas just hit differently than they do in Chicago, especially when there are a few clouds in the sky—a rare occurrence in the desert.
I stand by the goalposts as I watch him run his drills, and I lean against it, watching him. Observing. Thinking.
He’s working through some footwork, weaving, dropping back, sprinting. Faking throws. He holds a ball but doesn’t let it go, and he repeats the same drills several times before he finally glances over at the sky, and then he walks over toward me.
“You shouldn’t be on the field,” he grunts. He stops in front of me. He’s close enough to touch, close enough to reach out and grab a fistful of his practice jersey. I don’t.
Until he moves in closer. “You shouldn’t be here at all,” he says. His body is flush against mine, and his arm loops around me to haul me into him. That’s when I grab a fistful of his jersey.
His eyes are heated as they move down to mine, and I’m honestly a little terrified as I stare up at him. Terrified of the complexity of these feelings that seem to be growing between us. Terrified we’ll get caught. Terrified he’ll kiss me. Terrified he won’t.
His arm is above my head, balancing on the goalpost as he leans into me, and he leans down so his nose brushes mine again, just like the other night.
The hate between us seems to cross onto some other plane that’s passionate just the same.
I think for a second about how getting into bed with him would be absolute fire.
The reality is that I’d be fired if anyone caught us. If anyone saw us out here like this.
And the other reality is that I can’t lose this job. It’s my key to the rest of my life. The key to the career I’ve always dreamed of. I’m here to do a job, not to give in to whatever it is that’s burning between my client and me.
His lips are a breath from mine, and I use that fistful of jersey to push him away.
“I can’t do this,” I mutter, and I run off the field before he can hit me with another line that will only leave me feeling worse.
I’m shaking as I get to my car.
I shouldn’t have run out. I should have let him kiss me even though I know I did the right thing.
I need a distraction, so I call Ivy back once I’ve started my car and pulled out of the parking lot.
“Hi Ev,” she answers.
“Hey, babe. What’s going on?”
“Mom hurt her arm, and I’m kind of worried,” she says.
“She hurt her arm? How?”
“She was at a store and had several dresses draped over her arm, and said she bumped into a clothing rack on accident. Liam took her to the emergency room because she thinks it might be broken, but I don’t know, it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that would break an arm.
It’s just under her shoulder and above her elbow. ”
“Ouch,” I say, wincing at the thought. “Don’t worry. She’ll be fine. I’m sure it was just a freak accident. Are you there with her?”
“No,” she says, and she sounds annoyed that I don’t know where she is. “I’m back at school.” She’s in her senior year of college, and I guess that tracks.
“Hey, keep me updated, okay? Let me know when she’s home.”
“I will.”
We hang up, and I pull into the parking garage and happen to find Maverick waiting for the elevator when I walk into the building. Milton isn’t at his usual desk, but two people are waiting at the counter, so I assume he’s in back looking for a package delivered for them.
Maverick doesn’t acknowledge me, and I feel like I should say something to try to alleviate some of the awkwardness. But I can’t seem to come up with anything to say.
We step onto the elevator together, and it’s just the two of us. I feel like I’m panting. This space is too small for the two of us, and I’m not sure why there’s this sudden magnetism pulling me toward him. I’m quite sure I don’t like it.
At all.
But I feel it.
And then this image of being wrapped in those big arms plows into me, and I have this sudden craving to know what that would feel like. What was it like to be married to him? What was it like to be loved by him…or, hell, even to be liked by him? He doesn’t seem to like anybody.
I feel his gaze smoldering at me, and my eyes edge over to him in the blurry stainless steel of the elevator door. It’s too hard to tell if he’s looking at me, and I can’t help when my head turns toward him.
Our eyes catch, and my breathing stops for a few seconds. He inclines his head a little, and I think he’s going to move in toward me.
I want him to. The air is charged with sexual energy, and maybe it’s been too long since I’ve had sex, but I just…
want it. I want it with him. I want to know what he looks like naked.
I want to know what he feels like as he pushes into me.
I want to know what his lips feel like against mine, how his tongue would tangle with mine.
Would he melt from this vitriolic man full of anger into something kinder and sweeter?
Somehow I doubt it, yet I want to see for myself.
I want so badly to not be so attracted to him, but I can’t seem to stop it. It’s like a goddamn freight train barreling at me, and I’m frozen in place, helpless to jump out of the way of impending danger.
I move back a step so I’m leaning against the elevator wall, and just when I think he might pounce, the car glides to a stop and dings to let us know we’ve arrived at our floor.
He gets off first. There’s no gentlemanly holding out of his hand to allow the lady to step off first, but in doing so, he also blocks my view of the person standing by my door waiting for my arrival.
“Billy?” I say, and I freeze in the elevator doorway. Billy’s handsome face with those dark brown eyes and white teeth and bright smile breaks out into a grin as he opens his arms to me as if I should walk forward and step into them.
I don’t want to walk into them.
Even less so when he breaks out the “Sweetheart!” and sort of waggles his fingers to beckon me into his arms.