The words hit so hard I actually felt my spine lock.
“Excuse me?” I snapped.
Alois held my gaze as he sank down onto my couch. He leaned one shoulder lightly against the back, as if the entire conversation did not interest him enough to meet my energy. “J'ai dit que tu aurais dû faire tes devoirs.”
Him repeating himself in French was gasoline on a fire.And he knew it. The calm of it made my skin prickle with heat. “I heard what you said.”
“Then why are you yelling?” The mocking edge as his accent curled around his words in a chuckle continued to stoke the flames building inside my mind.
“Because you let me walk in there blind.” I was pacing, panting, spiraling right in front of Alois and he was still treating my breakdown like a joke.
“No,” he sighed. “I let you walk in there unprepared. There’s a difference.”
The humiliation came so fast it was almost dizzying. It started hot in my face and spread downward, a rush of sick heat under my skin that left me too aware of my own body, my own voice, the glass in my hand, the stupid fact that he was right. I hated that he was right. I hated that my mind had gone straight to anger because anger felt cleaner than the truth.
I should have known who Gavin and Myla were before we got there. I should have known how they fit into his world. I should have known enough not to be caught off guard by introductions in front of people whose opinions mattered. I should have spent the flight researching the opposing team—reading every article, every archived interview, every thread and profile and old team feature I could find. I should have built myself a map before stepping into his world and pretending I knew the terrain.
Alois watched me over the space between us, all six and a half feet of him infuriatingly still, his expression unchanged. “I had no idea,” he snickered, and now there was something almost dry in his tone, “that someone like you would walk into a room without knowing who was already in it.”
My fingers tightened around the glass until cold condensation slicked over my knuckles. “Is this funny to you?”
The laugh that escaped him was quiet and brief and did absolutely nothing good for my blood pressure.
“Is this a game?” I pressed, taking a step back before I could do something absurd like throw water at a professional hockey player in my own kitchen. “Because from where I’m standing, you seem very entertained by the fact that I almost floundered. Ezra is my fucking boss. My career could have been over before it even really started.”
“You didn’talmostflounder,” he sneered.
The correction was immediate enough to trip me for half a second.
Then he added, “You did.”
I blinked at him. Then I turned on my heel before my dignity could fully dissolve where I stood. “I’m showering.”
“Mm.” That was all he gave me. A low, knowing sound that somehow managed to be more insulting than a full paragraph.
I stalked down the hall with as much composure as I could fake, and shut the bathroom door behind me. The click echoed in the small space. I twisted the knobs harder than necessary and the old pipes in the wall answered with their usual cranky protest, whining and rattling before the water sputtered to life.
The apartment building was charming in the way old buildings always were when you were not the one relying on them. In the winter, everything fought you a little. The radiators knocked. The windows sighed. The shower ran either too cold or too hot before reluctantly finding a middle ground. Tonight, freezing water spat from the showerhead in a mean little burst, scattering over the tile.
I stripped and stepped under it anyway.
The cold hit first, sharp enough to steal a breath, then softened by degrees as the water warmed. Steam began togather, clouding the mirror, blurring the room at the edges, but it did nothing to quiet the spiral in my head.
I do not deserve this job.The thought came in clear. Not dressed up as anxiety. Not softened into self-doubt. A hard, bright fact in my own voice.
I had spent years making myself impossible to dismiss. I had crossed countries and classrooms and boardrooms and internships and every single condescending smile that came with being young and female and connected to the wrong people. I had learned how to over prepare because over preparing meant no one could catch me slipping. No one could point to me and say pretty hire, lucky hire, Ezra’s girlfriend’s ex-stepdaughter, whatever version of the same insult they preferred when they thought I could not hear it.
And today I had failed at the smallest task.
Knowing the room.
Knowing the people.
My only job— knowinghim.
The water ran over my shoulders and down my spine, hot enough now to turn my skin pink, and I tipped my head back beneath it, squeezing my eyes shut.
Was Alois a dick? Yes. Obviously. That part was not up for debate. He was smug and too observant and infuriatingly comfortable telling the truth in the exact shape it would hurt most.