Teardrop Shot(58)

Oh. He did care. I bit my lip to stop a grin from showing.

“I texted you what happened.”

“Yeah.” He scoffed, starting to go through my apartment. Finding my bedroom, he went in and began pulling items out of my bag. I hadn’t unpacked, like, at all. I still had on the clothes I’d left camp in. I just hadn’t had it in me to take off his shirt, and he noticed, his scowl lessening, but then he pulled out a pair of shorts I hadn’t realized I’d grabbed.

“A-ha.” He pulled his phone out of the pocket and tried to turn it on. “It’s dead.”

Crap. I felt a pounding behind my temples and rubbed there. “Sorry. It must’ve been with the pile of my clothes. I was packing in a hurry.” And I was slightly hysterical at the time. “Oops.”

He didn’t answer. Seeing my charger, he took my phone off and put his phone on. When it started charging, he turned back to me, his arms crossed over his chest.

“That crisis is averted. Now you want to tell me what the fuck happened?” His eyebrows went up. “Because I have news to share with you also—news about you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah.” He yawned. “But I need coffee first. Your friends showed up at my cabin, pounding on the door. Then I had to go and pound on Coach’s door, and there was a fucking early-ass meeting this morning. I had to promise two extra charity events before Coach let me come here today and not leave with the team.”

My head was spinning. “What are you talking about?”

Reese ignored me, going into my kitchen. My coffee pot wasn’t on, so he began looking through my cupboards. “Where’s your coffee?”

I moved him aside, ignoring the tingle at just feeling him again, being so close to him again, and pointed to the table. “Sit. I’ll do this. You tell me what happened.”

He went over and sat down. “You tell me first, because I think what I have to say is going to take longer.”

I pulled out the coffee, put in a new filter. “Nothing really major. Keith told me the board hadn’t approved me working there, so they only had the funds to cover me for two weeks. So, you know, I was fired. Then I came out and your coach was there. I thought maybe it was him behind it, which he confirmed when you left. He wanted me gone, and to be honest, I kinda understand why. He was protecting you.”

“Yeah, well, he feels like a dumbass.”

Pouring water into the machine, I hit brew and went to a chair across from Reese. Tugging my knees up, I hugged them to me. “What do you mean?”

“He told me in the afternoon what he’d done and wanted to apologize. The reason he did it was justified—we already knew that—but the way he did it was dickish. I went to my cabin to call you, saw your shit gone, and couldn’t find my phone. I went to find your friends and discovered them having a little meeting in the kitchen guy’s back office. They were upset.”

I swallowed over a knot. “At me?”

“They didn’t say that, but they asked if I’d be willing to speak about why you were staying in my cabin if they needed me. I told them I’d more than say a few things, and my coach too. After that, I decided just to wait till we were done, then try to bargain a deal with Coach to let me come here and get my phone.”

The coffee was starting to brew.

“You said my friends came to your cabin in the middle of the night?”

He nodded. “They had to wait until another guy showed up, the speaker dude, but they’d convened the board and had them willing to do some form of emergency meeting about your boss.”

“Keith?” I leaned forward.

The coffee was ready to pour, but I was on the edge of my seat.

How had this all gone down when I wasn’t there?! The laws of karma were not on my side.

“They were so mad about what he did to you, what he’d done to you the whole time you were there, that they got fed up.”

I might’ve been wrong about karma.

“They called the board and there was a five-am video conference. They wanted to do it before your boss got in.”

Reese’s eyes flashed, and his jaw was like cement. He leaned forward, his gaze holding mine captive. “I sat there and I listened as your friends ran through a list of shitty things your boss had done, and not just these last two weeks, but for years. And you were the subject of several of the items. The fucker sexually harassed you? You mentioned him making comments, but nothing like what I heard. How he radioed you on the camp radio where everyone could hear, asking if you were making out with your boyfriend? How you walked into a meeting with another guy behind you, and he accused you both of screwing around in the woods? I listened to your friends explain to a room of old, white fat dudes how the ‘boyfriend’ had only held your hand once, and you’d only ‘dated’ for two days, and you’d literally just walked into the meeting at the same time as the other guy. And there was more.”

His nostrils flared. Shoving back from his chair, he began to pace: around my living room, back to the kitchen, and around to the living room again. He kept moving, his hands unfisting and fisting in front of him.

“After they got through their sixteen-page fucking memo, complete with names and phone numbers and taped testimony from others, they got to me. I had to sit there and first deal with their fanning, which was fine, but then the leers. When I told them how you and I became friends, how I was at your cabin—fuck those leers. I could feel the dirtiness coming off of them. They didn’t seem to care until I told them I’d gone into your cabin. That got their fucking attention. I went to grab the rest of your stuff. Juan tried too. We both got sick. That’s what made them perk up. They seemed resigned to the shitty stuff your boss had already done, but they didn’t start sweating until they heard that two pro ball players got sick from entering a cabin that wasn’t condemned on their property.”