“Morgan—” I started in protest, but she held up her hand.
“Holland,” she countered firmly, with a bit of a wince. “Truly, I regret this. However our backs are against the wall. The decision had to be made, and we’re letting you go. So please clear out your locker. Lana will be here shortly to take over your shift.”
Lana—?
What the fuck?
I stared at Morgan, eyes wild and mind racing. The decision had to be made? Backs against the wall? The odd phrases played in my head on repeat till I felt the heat in my veins suddenly turn into ice.
“Did someone tell you to fire me?” I blurted.
The question left my lips before it had even fully formed as a thought in my brain, and I would’ve figured I was being crazy if Morgan didn’t suddenly freeze and stare at me like a deer in highlights.
Ho-ly.
Shit.
My mouth fell open as I realized what—or who was really behind this decision, and suddenly, I was so livid that I legitimately broke into a sweat. My heart slammed in my chest like it was trying to shatter my ribs, and my mind raced with the burning need to get answers—to grill every last detail out of Morgan, who was now jumping to answer the phone so she wouldn’t have to talk to or even look at me.
Un. Fucking. Real.
I was getting madder by the second, my teeth clenched tight as I hawked Morgan, ready to launch into the interrogation I was mentally preparing in my frantic mind. I knew I was going for it as soon as she hung up, but instead of hanging up, Morgan frowned, glancing my way and saying “sure” before handing the phone over to me.
Reluctantly, I took it. And I barely got out a “hello” before Mia’s stiff voice interrupted.
“Holland. You need to get home right now.”
I got up to the third floor of my walk-up to see the door of my apartment propped open and two men walking out with a mattress. Wait, no.
My mattress.
Whoa, whoa, whoa! What the hell?
In my mind, I sputtered in furious protest. Ran over, arms flailing while yelling, “Hey, hey! What’s the big idea?”
But I didn’t actually do that.
What I did was suddenly process what I’d seen outside my building right before I came in.
A truck. But not just any truck.
A furniture truck.
And with that image in mind, I felt a sudden pit in my stomach. A fog of disbelief dizzied me as I shook my head weakly, letting my feet float me up the rest of the steps and carry me me past the movers into my apartment, where I saw empty cardboard boxes stacked against the wall, plastic packaging strewn about the floor, and a stunned Mia standing just outside my bedroom, looking in with both hands pressed to her cheeks.
When she saw me coming, she threw her arms out.
“Holland! I’m so sorry. I was so confused! I probably I should’ve stopped them but I…”
Then she trailed off.
Either that or I stopped listening because I could no longer process anything else. I could no longer think anywhere close to straight now that I was standing right next to her, my pulse slamming in my ears and my blood boiling in my veins as I stared into my room at exactly what I knew I would see.
The bed of my dreams from Stone Pine.
Brand new and fully assembled.
Gifted to me from none other than Iain Fucking Thorn.
5
IAIN
The afternoon started with my two favorite words: Client emergency.
Prior to that, it had been a punishingly slow morning. Staff meetings and video calls that I conducted on auto-pilot because they were gratingly routine. They presented few problems that required more than a minute of thinking to resolve, which was less than ideal for me today, because today, more than any day, I needed a challenge.
A distraction.
I needed something to occupy the space in my head for more than sixty fucking seconds so I could think of something other than the images that had jolted me up early this morning.
Despite an alarm set for 5AM, I’d found myself flinching awake at a quarter to four. And barely a second into consciousness, I’d found myself glaring at the ceiling, silently cursing my brain for the images it had forced on me in my sleep.
Images of her.
Some innocent. Some less so.
Either way, they had no fucking business in my subconscious let alone the active thoughts I had while going about my day, so when my assistant interrupted a staff meeting to inform me that Drew Maddox had “an urgent issue to discuss,” I gladly cleared the next two hours of my schedule and hopped in a car to Empire Stadium in Brooklyn.
ME: Care to tell me what this is about?
I sent the text to Drew just as my car turned onto the Queensboro Bridge, and within seconds, got his characteristically prickish reply.
DREW: Nah I’m in the training room deal with me when you get here
Asshole, I thought, though I couldn’t help but smirk as I put my phone away, because I wouldn’t expect anything less from him.
Of all my clients, there was no one person with more cocky asshole tendencies than Drew Maddox.
Before we met, he had been a hotheaded trainwreck who brawled with teammates, partied till 6AM on game days and got himself blacklisted from the league after a major run-in with the law. It wasn’t till after I signed him that he transitioned into the role of reborn superstar—a fan favorite whose new team and agent helped him hide the fact that he was still a walking disaster whose career remained at the mercy of his violent temper.
Beyond the surface, there was no real change in Drew until I put Evie in his life a few years ago—until she worked whatever miracle she did and turned him into the man he was now: the most sought-after pitcher in the league, the reigning World Series MVP, and a thoroughly rehabilitated man who still managed to require the most of my time, energy and patience.
Because wifed or not, Drew was the truest asshole I knew.
That said he was also the one client I considered a close personal friend, and today I was grateful for his never-ending ability to derail my day—even when that meant, in today’s particular episode of Complete Bullshit with Drew Maddox, that he intended to break a million-dollar contractual obligation on Tuesday.
“Maddox, you have got to be shitting me,” I said, standing beside him at the pull-up bar in the New York Empires gleaming new weight room. At 1PM, there was a small handful of players locked into game day training, lifting and squatting and forcing me to tune out the deafening sounds of their slamming weights and throaty grunts.
Drew laughed as he added another forty-five pound plate to his belt.
“I’m not shitting anyone. I’ll go to the All-Star game since I’m starting, but all the bullshit festivities after that, count me out. I get one off day a month. If I have a break, I’m spending it with my family,” he said, giving me his tough shit shrug that was once reserved for telling me that he wouldn’t quit the post-game raging till dawn if it didn’t affect his performance on the mound.
I watched as he jumped up to grab the bar, allowing him do a few pull-ups before I gave him shit.
“Look, I find it ironic and… pretty fucking adorable that you’re now begging me to let you not go to a party,” I said, pausing to smirk at the kiss my ass look he shot me through the mirror. “But you agreed in ink to show up at this one, so the best I can do is arrange your appearance down to just the meet-and-greet.”