Page 84 of Unmanageable

“We should probably get those bags upstairs,” she says, her voice barely carrying over the low hum of the bar.

“Yeah,” I say, not moving an inch. “Probably.”

***

11:02 PM

Me: guess what I’m thinking about

Sharky: Hockey.

Me: wrong

Sharky: Yourself?

Me: usually yes, but no

Sharky: I give up.

Me: i’m thinking about you, like always

23

Scottie Reed

4:38 PM

Ivy: Blink twice if you’re in love with him.

Me: I’m blocking you.

***

The hotel carpet is a dizzying pattern of maroon and gold spirals, and I have been staring at the exact same gold loop by the baseboard of Room 412 for nineteen minutes.

I know it’s nineteen minutes because my phone has buzzed four times with automated email notifications from the agency’s central server, and every time I check the screen, the digital clock reminds me that I am actively losing my mind in a public hallway.

My hand goes up. My knuckles hover exactly two inches from the dark wood of the door. Then I drop my arm, turn around, walk five steps toward the ice machine, stop, and march right back.

I am standing outside Finnian O’Connell’s hotel room at ten o’clock on a Tuesday night and my heart is hitting my ribs like a puck rattling around a blender.

It’s been a week since the commentary coach disaster. We survived the play-by-play drills, we survived the early morning rush, and we officially wrapped up the last scheduled training session this afternoon.

The shoulder is pristine. The anxiety that brought us out here should be gone.

Instead, it’s been replaced by a different kind of tension.

The kind that’s been building ever since that karaoke bar, ever since that jazz club, ever since I decided that the best way to handle my growing, terrifying attraction to my star client was to simply pretend it wasn’t happening.

Except the human brain can only sustain that level of delusion for so long before it starts fracturing at the seams.

I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and bring my knuckles down hard against the wood before I can talk myself out of it again.

Knock, knock, knock.

The door flies open so fast I actually jump back a step.

Cash is standing in the doorway, wearing a pair of gray sweatpants and a green t-shirt that stretches tight across his shoulders. His hair is damp from the shower, sticking up in dark blonde, messy spikes, and he’s holding a plastic television remote in his left hand.