So it has to be fate intervening when a flash of buttery brown hair whips down the hallway to the player’s exit in front of me.
“Colleen.” My voice echoes, and I know she can clearly hear me.
There could be any number of reporters around, but I don’t really care. I haven’t seen her in the flesh since the morning I left her house, where she stood on her hardwood in that adorable nightgown, looking properly bed-tousled. I wanted to do so much more than restrain myself and walk out her front door.
But she doesn’t stop, and I’m forced to walk faster, her heels clacking on the linoleum.
“Oh, Hayes. Hi.” Her expression is completely phony, because there is no way she didn’t hear me calling her name.
“You heard me,” I deadpan, not one for stupid games.
Colleen shrugs, trying to keep her professional mask I’ve seen dozens of times before. But we’re past this, or so I thought. It feels like she’s icing me out, even after the week and a half of us being in constant contact over text.
“I actually have to get going …” She trails off, looking behind her in an attempt to escape.
“I’ve been wanting to see you—” I start, trying to articulate everything that’s been on my mind.
For some reason, I don’t want to hold back when it comes to her any longer. It doesn’t matter that this can only end badly, or may not even start due to the reality of who we both are. But it’s the first time in a long time that I feel any sort of connection to a woman, much less another person, and I’m tired of fighting it.
She cuts me off. “I was in the family room tonight. Met your … uh, girlfriend.”
The way Colleen says this has a jealous undertone to it, and my curiosity is piqued. Is she mad?
“Marlena is an old friend, and we’re spending some time together while she’s in town,” I tell her, not wanting to get into the specifics.
I’m doing this for her, for us, to get some of the heat off, but it feels like if I say that out loud, it will only make the thing happening between us more evident.
We text every day, and it’s not just initiated on my end now. What started out as me checking on her after the attack in the parking lot has turned into us updating the other on the small goings-on of our days. She’ll text me about a movie that just came on TV, so I can watch it if I’m home. We message about the obnoxious person listening to their music too loudly on the team plane when we’re just rows away from each other. I tell her about my home chef failings, and she laments me with stories about the gossip from her cousins.
“Well, I’m glad she’s here. It’ll be good for you to have some … company.” There is no way she didn’t mean for that to be scathing.
“Are you jealous?” I ask, leaning into her.
Colleen gives a snort, one that most definitely says she’s trying to cover up the fact that she’s envious. “Hayes, I’m your general manager. What goes on in your love life is none of my concern, unless it endangers the good of the team.”
“Now we’re back to being professionals? Just last night, we were discussing the pitfalls of Jack or John Locke being the tribe leader.” I reference the Lost marathon we’ve been partaking in.
“And now you have Marlena here. I hope you have a great night.”
Colleen walks off briskly before I can argue anymore, and it hits me square between the eyes. Shit, maybe I should have mentioned my agent’s strategy to her, because she clearly thinks I was talking to her last night and am now going to get off with another woman tonight.
It’s asinine of me, but I go after her, no matter who might see us quarreling in the hallway.
19
Colleen
That deep command echoes down the concrete hallway, the same one where he gave me that dressing down before the season started.
“Will you stop?”
My feet carry me as fast as my four-inch heels will allow, and my heart races as tears prick my eyes. I’m being ridiculous, but I can’t help it. I ignore his next plea of my name, and for me to stop. I have to.
When I walked into that family suite tonight, I thought it was going to be a pleasant experience. I was there to socialize, which I felt like doing for the first time since the attack. And my own assault left me thinking a lot about Hannah Giraldi, who I wanted to check up on.
But I’d barely been three sentences in when I heard the tall, statuesque blonde give a whooping yell and scream “Go, Hayes, baby!” Most everyone in the family suite cast their disdained eyes her way, because it was common knowledge that people invited to sit in here just did not cheer on their relatives like they were completely obsessive fans.
Obviously, she was there for Hayes, and I immediately became suspicious. And completely jealous, if I have to admit it to only myself in secret. Whoever the woman was, she was drop-dead gorgeous in a way I’d never be. I’m not insecure, and I know that I have an attractiveness that I’m typically proud of. But this was the type of woman that attracted every stare in the room, be it male or female. With long blond waves out of a Pantene commercial, the figure of a Victoria’s Secret model, and a thick accent behind her cheers and whoops, she was both exotic and stunning.
This was the type of woman you just knew would be absolutely killer in bed, and my stomach burned with a big green monster.
Hayes and I had been toeing that line, and typically crossing it, with our texting the past couple of days. Just the night before, he sent me a picture of him in baggy sweatpants, watching the Lost marathon we were both tuning into. He’d been shirtless, and there had been a definite bulge in said picture.
My whole body flushed at the thought.
And yet, here was Miss Sports Illustrated, in the family room waiting for him. Actually, I think that’s where I’d seen her. She was literally a model that graced the most famous sports issue of a magazine ever.
So with Hayes hot on my tail, I speed up. I probably look desperate and childish, but I feel duped. Duped by him, and stupid on my part. Because I ridiculously thought that there was something between us, but clearly he just liked passing the time flirting with his general manager over text. Maybe he even thought this was some sort of twisted revenge, to get back at me for what my father did to him.
I’m just feet from the exit when his hand lands on my elbow, tugging not harshly, but not gently either.
“Stop this.” He whirls me to him, bright green eyes dodging to the left and right.
Before I know what’s happening, he’s leading me into what appears to be a supply closet. When we get inside, Hayes closes it at my back, and then I’m cornered against it.
Our mingled breaths are coming fast, and my heart is skipping leaps and bounds being this close to him. I’m surprised we’re not causing electric shocks between the two of us, lightning bolts shooting off into the room around us. Sexual tension, desire, anger … it’s all so thick in the air that I begin to sweat.
Hayes’ hands box my head in as he ducks his eyes, looking at the floor, and then those emeralds are looking squarely into my soul.
“I invited her tonight to get some of the heat off of us. If I could have you up there, cheering for me, that’s … shit, Colleen, I want that too much. Which I shouldn’t. We both know we’ve been skirting around this, refusing to say it out loud and avoiding seeing each other. But I’m not going to let you think I want another woman. I want you so badly, I ache for you.”