Finally, he relented.“I might need help.Perhaps Erica should talk to the repor?—”
“No.”My growl not only rumbled through the line but alsofoundmy spine, wrapping around each vertebra like a fist and squeezing.
“You don’t fucking call the shots.”His voice lost any pretense of civility, becoming raw and jagged.“You may be the subject of this profile, but it’smine.”Another beat, slower.“And I can have whoever the fuck I want interviewed.”The silence that followed was long and pointed, designed to cut exactly where it hurts.“I’m not confident you’re going to give it your best.”
“I will.”I hated how much effort it took to keep my voice steady.
“Then say it.”Another silence stretched like a held breath.“I can’t hear you.”
I closed my eyes.“I will do my best.”The words were dragged up from somewhere it cost me to reach.
“Who are you talking to?”His voice cracked across the line.“Say it again and address me.”
Every muscle in my jaw locked.If he stood in front of me—me, a man who never once lost his temper easily—I’d have choked him.
“I will do my best, Mr.Madrigal.”I ended the call before he could take anything else from me.
Applause cracks through the gym, followed by a bark of laughter that pulls me back into my body.My stomach hasn’t settled since Marcos said her name.
What the fuck?
He hates Erica.Always did.He called her a distraction when we first arrived, then a nuisance, then worse when we broke up and she kept showing up anyway.But maybe he hates me more now—enough to use her as leverage.I can’t see him trying to find her unless the end game is to let her hang herself and take me down, too.
Or maybe this cat and mouse game is for his amusement.The thought loosens something dark in my chest as my hand runs across the back of my neck and my eyes cut to the bleachers.
Grace stands there with her notebook, pretending she isn’t watching me.But every so often her gaze lifts, quick and curious, like she can’t help it and knows she’s failing to hide it.Every time, her peek catches somewhere between my ribs.A spark finding dry timber.
I’ve been keeping my distance, trying to, since Sunday.On the porch, I felt her eyes on me while on the phone, and I kept my back to her like that might be enough.
It wasn’t.
I call a timeout, the boys scatter, and Grace takes the opportunity to edge closer, her voice dropping into something careful and soft.“Even with a long weekend ahead, they’re dedicated.They readily do what you ask of them.”
“They know I’ll run them into the ground if they don’t.”I keep my eyes on the court.
The corner of her mouth twitches.“You don’t mean that.”
“No… and they don’t need to know that.”
Her smile blooms, quick and warm, and something shifts in my chest, knocks loose what I’ve been barely holding in place.
I step back before the rest of me catches up with the impulse already forming, the one where I reach out and tuck that curl back from her face like I already know the weight of it and it’s my business to know it.
That’s exactly the problem.
Distance stopped being about professionalism somewhere between the almost kiss and the real one.Now every inch of space between us feels temporary, borrowed, waiting to collapse under its own pretense.She’s here to do a job, I keep telling myself as if it still means something.
But Grace isn’t the obstacle.I am.
Wanting her means wanting something real, and I’m not sure I remember how to do that without the cost.The last time I let someone close enough to matter, I watched Erica change in ways I couldn’t stop and couldn’t leave either.
That’s what no one tells you about loving someone—sometimes the damage isn’t what they do to you.Sometimes it’s what you let continue because not being there is one more failure you can’t afford to own.
I may have only truly failed one person in my life, but fuck, he was one of the most important, and I can never undo that.I can’t do that again.
So I keep people at a distance, fix what I can, and carry what I must.It’s best to never lean on anyone long enough for them to notice I’m not as solid as I look.
And that’s the part I can’t logic my way around.Not the complications of this feature or the timing.No, just the plain, stubborn fact that I don’t trust myself to be who Grace deserves without eventually proving I’m not.