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“It’s beautiful,” I said, feeling like I was going to hurl again. I hadn’t pushed myself this hard in a long time.
He studied me and then walked to the refrigerator and pulled out a blue Gatorade. “Drink.”
“So bossy,” I said as my throat constricted, and I dry heaved again.
“Keep your insults in for a few minutes until that hits your system.”
I didn’t argue this time. I drank, and he pulled out a chair in the kitchen, unscrewed the lid from his bottle, and started chugging it.
After a few sips, I felt remarkably better.
“Thanks for the Gatorade.”
“Better?”
“Yes.”
He nodded and pushed to his feet. “Are you hungry?”
“No, thank you. I think I’d puke if I ate something right now.”
He grabbed two bananas and returned to his seat. “Save this for when you’re feeling better.”
I nodded. He was bossy. But I didn’t mind it at the moment.
“Thanks, Captain.” I smiled because I couldn’t help myself.
He rolled his eyes. “You like that one, don’t you?”
“I mean. Captain Jack Sparrow? How can I resist? He’s the best. What made you pick that name?”
He chuckled. “Off the record?”
Something in my chest squeezed at the way he looked at me. Like he’d been burned too many times to trust anyone.
I’d always had a gift for reading people and was fairly certain I was reading him well right now.
“Yeah. I won’t print anything you aren’t comfortable with.”
“My mom threw me a pirate party every year until I was ten years old and I thought I was too cool for a themed party. I loved pirates as a kid, and she loved that I was into it. So, anytime I use an alias, it’s Jack Sparrow. But seeing as Brandy, who I didn’t know then, answered the phone when I’d called in that first time…” He paused and laughed, and I was surprised by how much I liked the sound of his laugh. “I said it was an order for Jack Sparrow, and she replied,Captain Jack Sparrow?”He mimicked her voice so dramatically that it made me laugh harder.
“So, what was I going to say? No? But Lionel must have told her I played football because now she’s called me every name under the sun—none of them being my actual name.”
“That’s pretty hilarious. You don’t have to use an alias here. No one is going to sell you out. The press hasn’t arrived, have they? If they knew you were here, they’d be all over you, right?”
“Yeah. I’ve kept a pretty low profile. But those who have seen me haven’t done anything about it. I worried your boyfriend, that douchebag Lockhart, would do something, but that would be pretty low, even for him. There’s an understanding amongst athletes, even if we don’t like one another.”
“My boyfriend? He’s a client. What is your deal with that guy? He hooked up with your ex? Did she break your heart?” I asked because I’d tried googling it, but nothing had come up about him and Breen. Just that he’d dated Jaqueline Barrett and then she’d gone to every news channel, sharing everything she knew about him afterward.
He clearly didn’t open up in relationships either, because she didn’t have much to say that wasn’t already public knowledge.
“Hell no. And this is still off the record because I don’t want to give her any more attention than she’s already gotten by selling some story about my mom being a single mom and raising me on her own, which people already know. But she tried to act like she had intimate details, which she didn’t. I’d ended it with her because we hardly saw one another. She liked to come to my games and wear my jersey, but we had nothing in common. Just some good fucking sex, I guess. I realized I didn’t miss her when we weren’t together, and I broke things off. End of story. And that’s when Lockhart ran into me at a sports banquet and told me he’d been banging her while we were together. I think he actually thought we were going to bond over it. But it was disrespectful to her, and even though I don’t care for her, I don’t like people that shit on women.” He shrugged.
Not what I expected him to say.
I’d assumed it had hurt his ego, and he was mad for himself.
“You’re sort of a rude gentleman,” I said, before I could stop the words from leaving my mouth.
