Scoring the Billionaire(42)

What in the hell just happened?

It was like Wes Lancaster had just broken up with me even though he didn't want to break up with me.

If that wasn't the biggest mindfuck I'd ever been dealt, I didn't know what was.





Five … Four … Three …

The last seconds on the clock ran down as New England's quarterback took  a knee on the forty-yard line. I stared at the scoreboard and watched  with a heavy heart and regret gnawing at my chest. It felt like so much  more than a shitty end to an otherwise spectacular season as I watched  Winnie on the sideline from above. She was still beautiful, but all the  light was gone from her eyes. Instead, anger lived there, laced  toxically with the memories of us in every inch of stadiums across the  country.

Two … One …

I watched from the Owner's Box as our opponent ran out onto the field in  celebration, rowdy and taunting, their chants nearly audible despite  the distance and thick glass, and the Jumbotron blinded my eyes with  confetti and congrats to New England.

Our season had officially come to a close, the evidence of a seventeen  to thirteen loss in the divisional round play-offs stamped out on the  scoreboard. Our guys had played good for the first two quarters, great  even, but shit had sprayed violently from the churning fan after  halftime. Three minutes into the third quarter, we'd been up by thirteen  when Bailey had thrown an interception that led to a defensive  touchdown for the opposition.

And unfortunately for us, that set the pace for the rest of the game.

One mistake trickled into another, penalties and turnovers and too many  goddamn third and outs to count. We'd become our own worst enemy,  playing head games with ourselves, and eventually, loss by  self-detonation occurred.

Our guys walked slowly off the field with their heads down and their  helmets hanging limply from their hands, disappointment visible in every  step they took toward the tunnel, but my focus wasn't on them.

I only had eyes for the victim of my own self-destruction, her blond  hair and white shirt shining startlingly bright through the crowd of  blue.

I had let my own demons fuck with my head. I'd been scared of the  commitment and the speed with which I'd decided on it, Amelia's words  ringing soundly in my ears.

For the first few days this week, I'd done my best to blame it on  Amelia, like she held responsibility for my downward spiral by simply  voicing her own fears.

It was cowardly and petty and nothing more than an attempt to avoid the  facts: the tragic end to my relationship with Winnie Winslow rested  solely on my shoulders.

When she disappeared into the shadowy recesses of the tunnel, my mind and focus finally came back to the room around me.

The chatter was dismal, as expected, but I just didn't have it in me to  make small talk or to relive the mistakes of this horrible game. I  needed to get the fuck out of there. I picked my jacket up from one of  the black leather sofas resting against the wall of the suite and put it  on, zipping it up to my chin. Halfway into January, the frigid  temperatures had set in. A true fair-weather dweller, I always hated  this time of year, but now, after everything I'd done to destroy my own  life, the real cold lived inside of me. Deep in the depths of my empty  soul, and I didn't know how to vent it out.         

     



 

I missed both of my girls more than I had ever missed anything in my life.

I missed Winnie's texts. I missed her smile, her laugh, our inside  jokes. I missed having her in my arms, both platonically and laid out  beneath me as I made love to her. I missed everything about  her-everything about us.

And I missed Lexi. Her football season was over just like this one, and  after all the work we'd put in together, I had nothing to show for it. I  didn't get to see her smile at me at first sight, and I'd never hear  her sweet voice as she scoured the world and people around her for  knowledge.

And now, with the Mavericks' season officially over, my opportunities to  see Winnie at work would be few and far between until the summer  months.

I had absolutely nothing tying me to them anymore.

I can't do this.

Four bullshit words had ruined everything.




My office was drab and dreary for a Friday morning and smelled nothing like peaches and goddamn sunshine.

In fact, it smelled so bad in comparison, I'd almost gone out to get an  air freshener. But I didn't want to go out into the bustling crowd of  Manhattan. There were too many people in a really small proximity to  hate. I'd have wound up getting arrested or stabbed or worse.

I wasn't really sure what was worse than a stabbing, but I was pretty  sure it lived in Manhattan and it definitely resided post  Winnie-breakup.

My office was eerily quiet, none of the hustle and bustle of the  stadium, and notably less to look forward to. But as much as this place  blew, the stadium wouldn't have been any better.

After last week's upset in the divisional game, most of the employees  had crawled away to get in vacations and family time before serious  preparation for next year began.

I had no family to have time with. I'd considered going to see my dad,  but January in Wisconsin seemed even worse than heartbreak in New York.

So I was here. In my office. Doing a whole lot of nothing disguised as something.

I'd just finished reading an article in the New York Post about a blind  hoarder in Brooklyn who'd been unknowingly living with the skeletal  remains of her daughter for nearly thirty years. Apparently, she'd  thought her daughter had simply moved out.

And still, when I thought of all the people who were the most  unbelievably fucking ridiculously dumb in the world, my name came up  number one on the list. Losing Winnie and Lexi was proof of that.

A knock on the door barely preceded its opening, and Kline and Thatch stepped in without invitation.

"Ah, see," Thatch told Kline after nothing more than a quick glance in  my direction. "The little bird's nest has come back to Manhattan."

"Shh," Kline shushed him before stepping forward into the office and  taking a seat in front of my desk. He rubbed at the leather of the  armrests as he made himself disgustingly comfortable.

His hair was messy as though he'd visited his wife first.

I hated him for it.

"She's busy working, you know," I said in an effort to lash out, picking  up a random stack of papers on my desk and slamming the stapler down on  them.

"She wasn't five minutes ago," he countered without shame and no more than a glance in the direction of the angry stapler.

"Fucker," I insulted.

"Nah," Thatch said with a laugh. "Just a little foreplay."

Kline laughed at that, but all I could do was glare.

We stared at each other, letting the testosterone fill the space until  any movement from the outside world would make it explode.

"So?" Thatch questioned like an impatient bastard.

"So … what?" I asked, snatching the football-shaped stress ball off my  desk and squeezing it to the point that the fake laces threatened to  pop.

"How are you going to win Winnie back?" Kline asked, cutting right to  the chase. I both loved and hated that he was so straightforward. Hated  it because it was annoying, but faced with it or Thatch, I unabashedly  loved Kline's ability to cut to the chase.

"Win Winnie," Thatch murmured. "I like that."

I shook my head before I even started to speak. My mind was made up. "I'm not."

Kline blinked and turned to Thatch, who reacted altogether less calmly.         

     



 

"What the fuck does that mean?" he asked with both freakishly long arms held out in exasperation.

"They're better off without me," I told them, and they were. I was  completely messed up and mixed up and just … fucked up. I was a fuck-up,  that was for sure.

I'd gone over everything again and again in my mind, from the meeting to  the way I'd handled everything afterward, and it all reeked of  immaturity. Thirty-five goddamn years old and immature. But, out of  everything, I hadn't been able to forgive myself for not being man  enough to ever tell her how I really felt. She deserved that-someone who  not only loved her but told her he did. Repeatedly. They both fucking  did.

"How the fucking fuck do you figure that?" Thatch yelled. Kline put a hand to his elbow and subtly shook his head.

All of Thatch's anger had already snapped something inside of me, though, and I started to talk.

"I'm fucking unreliable, busy, always goddamn late. I'm not any of the things Win and Lex need."

Thatch opened his mouth, but Kline again stopped him from speaking, and I gladly filled the silence.

"Lex is so fucking special. Smart and unique and goddamn perfect.  Society doesn't think so, but they're wrong. But she doesn't need me out  there getting into fistfights with every fucking person who looks at  her wrong, and Win doesn't need that either. She works so hard and, God,  she's brilliant too, so it's no wonder Lex is as smart as she is. Win  needs to be able to come to work without dealing with some Neanderthal  asshole. She needs to be able to relax for once in her goddamn life and  know everything is taken care of."