Page 100 of A Scoring Chance
My body slides down to the floor of the elevator. Every possibility of what Annamarie might do to the people I love for a chance to be with me, one horror after the other, runs through my mind on a movie reel. Bile bubbles in my throat as I lean forward, pressing my hands to the floor. Beads of sweat dot my forehead as my eyes snap shut, my lips moving slightly as I slowly count backward from ten in my head. I continue counting, willing my body to calm down, only getting to three before sucking in a gasping breath.
“Fuck. Cooper!”
My head snaps up, and I come face to face with my beauty, her worry for me written all over her face. She falls to the floor, tears streaming down her face as she looks me over, trying to figure out what’s wrong with me. I want to tell her I’m fine, but I don’t want to lie to her. But what else can I tell her? The truth? That Annamarie is a lunatic that’s trying to get between us because she has some deluded idea that she and I are meant to be together? I should, but I want one more night. One more night to let her know exactly how I feel about her before she leaves me for good.
“Everything is going to be okay, Cooper. Just breathe with me.” She helps me ease back on my knees, placing my hand in the center of her chest. She counts backward from ten, asking me softly to continue to breathe with her. My heart eventually slows, and the panic recedes.
I blink a few times and take in my surroundings. The door alarm is ringing loudly as the door to the elevator sits open. I don’t even remember the elevator arriving on my floor, but I guess Ramona was waiting for something when I arrived and pulled the emergency stop button.
I don’t want to do this, but it’s the right thing to do. I need to think of what’s best for someone else and not my selfish needs if I’m going to save her. “We need to break up.”
She flinches away from me. “What?”
“We need to break up. It’s the only way I know to protect you.”
She flinches away from me, grasping at her heart as if it is shattering into a million pieces, just like mine. “Why? What are you protecting me from?”
I open my mouth to respond before a strange voice fills the elevator. “Is everything okay? We had an alert that someone had pulled the emergency stop button.”
“Everything is fine. I slipped and pulled the alarm by accident on the way down,” I say, pushing to my feet and reaching my hand out to her.
She eyes it wearily before taking it and climbing to her feet but immediately drops it. “I’ll see you inside,” she whispers, turning to head toward my front door.
“Do you need medical attention?”
“No, I’m fine. Just clumsy.”
“Very well, sir. We’ll reset everything from here. Have a lovely evening.”
“Thanks,” I grunt, moving slowly toward my place.
Beauty left the door wide open, no doubt more focused on trying to make heads or tails of my declaration than safety. I push the door closed behind me to find her sitting on the bench at the end of the entryway, her eyes focused on the floor.
“Beauty,” I whisper, pressing her chin to force her to look at me. Tears stream down her cheeks, but she doesn’t say a word. “She’s going to hurt you and Darius. There’s no way there will be anyone else for me, but she won’t listen to reason.”
“Who the fuck isshe?” She smacks my hand away from her face as she pushes to her feet. Ramona shoves me hard in the chest, and I stumble backward. “Am I the other fucking woman or something?”
I grip her hands in mine and pull her into my chest. She thrashes in my arms, slamming her fist against my chest before all the fight drains out of her and she drops to the floor. I follow her, pulling her into my lap and rocking her back and forth. Painful sobs rack her body as I try to find the right things to say to her. The best way to explain what has happened in the last couple of hours.
“Annamarie. She’s fucking delusional and believes we belong together. I just found out that her dad is the owner of my team, and she’s been manipulating him to get closer to me. But she didn’t count on you.”
“What?” She sniffles, tilting her chin to look up at me. There is so much pain and heartache in her eyes that I put there.
“Annamarie cornered me in the locker room. She has been playing games since I stepped back into Redwood Falls. The only reason I was ever there was because of her.”
“That fucking bitch! Alise and I have been trying to tell everyone she was nuts, but no one wanted to listen. She’s good at hiding that shit, but we knew it was there.”
Beauty climbs out of my lap and to her feet, pacing back and forth as she tries to make sense of what I just told her. “Now, what are we going to do about it?”
“What do you mean? I told you. We need to break up so she’ll leave you alone.” I push to my feet and move toward her, my hand itching to be wrapped around her. I want to commit every part of her to memory because this will probably be the last time I’m able to hold her like this.
Ramona holds her hands up in front of her, halting my movements. “Oh, no. No, no. We don’t give Crazy what she wants. You are not breaking up with me, Cooper Hendrix.”
“But it’s the only way I can protect you.”
“Stop with all the ‘protecting me’ bullshit. We’re in this together, Cooper. I love you too much to leave you high and dry to take care of her crazy ass on your own.”
My brain short circuits as I try to process what she just said. “What?”
