“Not unless you want me to.” She winked. Her phone jumped on the table, screen flashing. She downed the rest of her drink. “Duty calls. Have a good one, Keyton.” She pecked me on the cheek and rushed off toward the guys with headsets and clipboards headed her way.
After a few more minutes with my auction winners, my assistant, Gwen, showed up to coordinate all the parting gifts they’d won.
Just after midnight, like Cinderella leaving the ball, I put them into the black SUV headed back to their hotel.
“Headstrong Foundation needs you for two photoshoots for their annual donation campaign. I can squeeze both in after the first game of the season. Ernie sent me your itinerary for the meetings with Wisconsin, so those tickets are in your phone.”
“Do I have anything tomorrow?”
“Not too much. Adidas wanted to schedule a call, so I had it on your calendar for four.”
It would be the perfect excuse. Gwen could call and let Holden know that my call had run over and I couldn’t make it. The perfect way to hide, unfortunately I wasn’t doing that anymore.
“See if you can move it up to noon. I have a meeting at five.”
Her gaze snapped back to her tablet. “What meeting? I don’t have a meeting on here.”
I laughed at the edge of panic creeping into her voice. “It’s a personal meeting.”
“Oh…oh!” Her eyes lit up. “Personal, like a date.”
“Not a date.”
My car pulled into the loading dock behind the stage where travel cases of equipment were being loaded into semi-trailers. I opened my door and she opened the front passenger side door and climbed in.
I leaned forward. “You know I feel like an asshole when you have me sit back here by myself.”
“Keeping things professional, boss,” she called out from the front.
“You just hate it when I’m staring at your tablet as you move everything around in my life like chess pieces.”
“You’re so nosy.”
“It’s my life.” I peered between the front seats.
She held the tablet to her chest. “And you don’t need to know about all the hiccups that arise along the way while I keep everything moving as it should.”
Glancing over her shoulder, her eyes narrowed. “And I want to throw it out there—I look hideous in a floor length insulated jacket with fake fur lining around the hood. My lips are also prone to drying out and cracking when temperatures dip below -15 degrees.”
“I see Ernie got to you, too.” Sitting on the sidelines year after year had built up an insurmountable frustration from watching my team play and feeling responsible for what happened on the field, but not being able to do a damn thing to fix it. Most people would tell me to shut up and take the money, but I wanted—needed—to prove I had it in me to help my team with more than shouting encouragement from the bench.
“I’m only throwing it out there. In case you wanted to know.”
We rode in silence the rest of the way to my apartment. Me alone with my thoughts, which returned to Bay. It had taken a few months for her texts to peter out once she left me in LA after the first one saying she might be coming back. They’d been dark months. And when she showed up at the loft Knox and I had been sharing in LA almost a year later, I’d sat with my back against the wall beside the front door gulping down a bottle of Jack with the buzzing of the intercom and her voice on the other end being drowned out by the clawing panic in my chest.
But tomorrow I’d see her again. I went in through the residents’ entrance, not the hotel one where I might run into Bay.
In my apartment, I grabbed a bottle of water and stared out at the glittering lights of the city. I’d had so many different views from wherever I happened to be. On the road, in my apartments, from the field in a stadium. My view now was different from LA. It was closer to Charlotte. There weren’t massive sky scrapers for as far as the eye could see. The silver of Liberty One reflected my building back to me.
Being back in the city had been like returning to an old friend, and I didn’t have many of those—just enough to count on one hand. Philly had been one of the first places I’d felt safe after leaving Greenwood. The first place I’d felt like I had a chance of escaping my past. It was fitting this was the place she’d reappear.
It was time to finally wade through the murky water of my past and find a salve for those old wounds I couldn’t pretend were long-since healed.
5
Bay
The noise from the concert crowd leaving filled the sticky night air. A black SUV with tinted windows idled outside the artists’ entrance to the arena. I climbed into the car and found my usual seat in the middle row behind the driver. It meant everyone else could talk around me about plans without me getting in the way.
We left for the hotel and I stared out the darkened windows. The anticipation of my coffee with Keyton tomorrow made it impossible to focus on whatever Holden was talking about. People walked in and out of bars, spilling onto the sidewalk, laughing and singing with friends. They smiled, ran around, joked like people in their mid-twenties should before all the true seriousness of life descended on them. Things like real relationships, kids, marriage.
Keyton was getting married. There hadn’t been a ring on his finger. The wedding hadn’t happened yet. Not that it mattered either way. But I still wanted to talk to him, and maybe finally give him answers he deserved.
The answers I owed him.
At the hotel, I was hustled through the parking garage entrance.
Holden swiped the key and pressed the PH button in the elevator. It shot up, popping my ears all the way.
The suite was a lot like every other one on the road, joining the blur of beds overflowing with pillows, room service meals and heavy security doors that always made me jump whenever they slammed shut.
“Night, Bay. Room service will be here at five, so don’t stay up too late watching House Hunters because that’s only”—he pushed back the sleeve to his blazer and glanced down at his watch—“six hours from now.”
“Of course, I won’t.” I pressed against the door, slowly closing it with my cheek against the wood. “I’m going straight to bed.”
He glared through the crack in the door. “You’re a liar. I’ll add an espresso to your breakfast order.”
The silence of the room was deafening. All the chatter, pinging and vibrating phones disappeared, and I was left alone with the gentle hum of the heater. My legs nearly gave out and I sagged against the wall. I’d seen him. After all this time, I’d seen him in person.
Tomorrow we’d get to talk. Straightening, I walked deeper into the room.
Muted voices were a whisper through my door. They were silenced completely by the time I leaned against the high-backed chair in the living room area. My aching toes sunk into the plush carpet, freed for a short while from their sweaty prison.
Hobbling past the coffee table with vases of flowers and cards from fans and admirers, I grabbed the TV snacks from my stash and took the lukewarm fries from the room service tray with me. I changed while trying to come up with my big speech for tomorrow.
I ran through how it would go, like a dance routine the poor choreographers drilled into me.