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Something tightened in the space between us, or maybe that was just my feelings getting way too caught up in how close he stood to me. It wasn’t new…the closeness, the ease around each other physically. But it was getting harder every day to ignore how my body reacted to him, how my heart sped up every time I heard his voice.
“I didn’t because I’m a selfish bastard,” he answered with a shrug. He dragged a knuckle down my cheek, and I swear my blood was on fire with the innocent touch. He looked at me for a few more seconds, then blinked a couple of times before backing up.
“So, it’s not about your trust issues with delegating larger tasks to people?” I asked.
He shook his head, and I watched as he walked with that confident gait of his back to my office door.
“Don’t work too late,” he said, then paused in the doorway, glancing over his shoulder. “And Brynn?”
The look in his eyes pinned me to the floor.
“Yes?”
“You’re not wrong about the trust issues,” he admitted, then shrugged. “But there’s only one person in the world I trust implicitly. And that’s you.”
WESTON
“What the hell are you still doing at work?” Hendrix Malone—my best friend and the current best wide receiver in the NFL—asked by way of hello when I answered his FaceTime call.
We had a standing monthly call ever since he’d traded to the Cougars—Gareth Maxfield’s team. Normally, I was already home or out for late-night drinks, but not tonight.
“Brynn is still working,” I said.
“Ohhh,” he said, dragging out the word and pairing it with a shit-eating grin. “That explains it.” He laughed. “I’ve never known you to work past seven.”
I shrugged. “Unlike Asher, I know my limits and actually enjoy my time off.”
Asher was the definition of a workaholic, but ever since he paired up with Daisy, he’d been taking more time off. It was good for him to find a life outside of work, but I couldn’t help it that right now my life and my work were colliding in a big way.
Usually Brynn would’ve already tapped out by now, electing to meet me at my house before I’d even woken up the next morning. But things had changed since I’d made her the head of marketing.
“How are you handling having her focus more on the firm than you?” Hendrix prodded.
“Just fine,” I lied. “I don’t need her attention twenty-four seven,” I continued, shifting in my office chair behind my desk. I’d claimed a smaller office at the marketing firm when I acquired it, knowing I wouldn’t spend all of my time here but wanting a space for myself all the same. “I am capable of functioning as an adult, you know.”
Hendrix burst out laughing, shaking his head. “You keep telling yourself that,” he said. “Wasn’t it Brynn who always brought your books to class because you constantly forgot them?”
I rolled my eyes. “What are you getting at?”
“I’m just saying, you’ve always gravitated toward her in any capacity. It’s not a surprise you’re hanging around while she works late even though you could’ve easily left. It’s not like she needsyouto do her job.”
“Whereas I need her to do mine?” I grumbled the question, but we both already knew the answer.
He wasn’t wrong, the over-confident prick, and I appreciated him even more for always calling me out on the bullshit. That’s why our friendship had lasted so many years in the first place.
“Definitely,” he said. “Pretty sure you’d be out at least a billion if she hadn’t stepped up as your personal assistant. No way you’d be as successful without her.”
Couldn’t deny that either. She’d saved me more times than I could count with her brilliant mind and her ability to take a step back and offer non-biased advice on one prospective deal or another.
Brynn had saved me in more ways than she would ever know, starting with the first day I met her.
She’d been a freshman while Hendrix and I were juniors in high school, and I’d already earned an established label ofhot jock with daddy’s money—which I absolutely hated. I had girls tripping over me left and right, always saying exactly what they thought I wanted to hear just so they could get a chance to ride in my father’s Porsche to prom.
Not Brynn though.
She worked one of the concessions stands at school games, and the first time I went to buy something—boasting that I could buy the whole stand in a way to try and impress her—she’d rolled her eyes and skimped me on the popcorn. “You don’t get special treatment just because you have money,” she’d said. “You have to earn it. If you don’t, then you’ll never know what’s fake and what’s real.”
Her words had struck something vital in me. Not only had no one ever spoken to me like that before, but she wasright.She’d cut to the quick of me because I’d been lamenting about my role in life for years before she came along.
