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“Hello?”
I had to pull the phone away from my head. After straining to hear, Gunnar’s voice had sounded as if he was speaking through a megaphone.
“Hello?” he repeated.
I cleared my throat. “Everleigh King,” I barked.
“Everleigh.”
“It’s Miss King.”
He didn’t try to hide his sigh. “Miss King—”
“What can I do for you?” I interrupted.
“I need to talk to you about something.” I glanced at Miles, but he was busy making adjustments to the machine and scrolling through his workout playlist.
“Can it wait? I’m in the middle of something.” When I had broken things off with Gunnar, he had tried to meet up with me to discuss our ‘relationship.’ I had agreed, but at the last minute I’d sent him a curt email to cancel. A few more ignored phone calls and texts were all it took for him to get the hint. I turned so my back was to Miles. “I can’t take a personal call right now,” I whispered.
“This is not a personal call.” Gunnar sounded annoyed and this caught my attention. “Are you behind the potential line changes?”
Discussing business with a player was almost as bad as sleeping with one of them. “If you have an issue, you need to bring it up with your coach and not me.”
“Are you or aren’t you?”
If anyone else in the entire world had spoken to me in that tone of voice, they would have instantly regretted it. I gritted my teeth. “I’m your boss.”
“Oh, don’t worry, you’ve made that perfectly clear. But I think you owe me some answers.”
I had never heard such an edge to Gunnar’s voice, and for a brief second he almost sounded hurt. My heart softened, but then I remembered the pool party. He was obviously not sitting around grieving the loss of our relationship. “I don’t owe you anything.”
“You owe your team the best shot at playoffs. And this little boss girl game that you’re playing is doing the exact opposite.”
Miles had taken a seat on the machine and was staring at me with his legs crossed, cupping his knees with his hands. “I have to go. Perform at practice and you won’t have to worry about any shake-ups to the team. And…” I should’ve stopped there but I didn’t, “ease up on the partying.”
Silence. I looked at the screen to see if he’d hung up, but the call’s timer was still running. “I see,” h
e whispered. “Everleigh, you’re the one who broke things off, not me. You can’t punish me because of what happened.”
I couldn’t have this conversation in front of anyone. “We can meet to discuss the details, but without the paperwork in front of me, I can’t get any deeper into this discussion.” Gunnar might have been a hockey player, but he wasn’t an idiot. Maybe we needed to have an in-person discussion. Pissing off one of my star players wasn’t a smart move with such an important season ahead.
“Wait. Are you with someone?”
Again, he sounded hurt. My cheeks burned at his audacity. He could run around with bunnies but he expected me to pine for him? I ignored his question. If he thought I was with someone, good. It would make solidifying our non-relationship, and setting some solid boundaries for our lives moving forward, that much easier. “I can fit you in this evening. I’ll have my assistant call you with the details.”
I hung up the phone before Gunnar could respond. My heart was pounding harder than it had been on my run or at anytime during Miles’s workout.
I had made two mistakes: I should have ignored his call, and more importantly, I shouldn’t have agreed to meet with him.
I told myself I would set boundaries at this meeting, and tried to rationalize the appointment to make myself feel better. But as Miles put me through the rest of my workout, I couldn’t stop thinking about Gunnar’s hands and the last time that they’d been on my body.
“Are you alright, Blondie?” Miles asked as he led me through our cooldown stretches. “I’ve never seen you like this. You’re shaken up harder than a milkshake.”
“Oh,” I waved off his concern,“it’s just some team stuff. It’s going to get sorted out.”
“It always does,” he said. His eyes met mine. “It’s not my place to say, but you know me – I’m going to say it anyway.”
I sighed. “What’s that, Miles?”
