Page 105 of Dirty Player

Melissa looked down at me, her pretty little nose all crinkled. “You smell.”

“I’ll shower later.” I rolled my eyes at her before staring back at the television set.

ESPN was now the only way I was getting any updates on Oliver or Sean other than the texts Beaux got from the team manager’s updating the team on Sean’s condition. He was getting released from the hospital that night.

It had been two days and I hadn’t heard anything from Oliver. I hadn’t received a single text message, not a phone call. And after I sent one message the day before, asking him how his dad was doing when I’d heard he made it out of surgery via Beaux, I hadn’t gotten a response.

Was it possible for a heart to actually break? I understood he was busy. I understood he needed to be with his dad, and I had originally believed Melissa: he’d freaked out on me because he was scared and angry that he hadn’t known about it as soon as it happened.

Two days later, and radio silence from him, and I no longer believed her.

My chest hurt. After we’d left the hospital, Melissa and I had gone to Beaux’s house. I didn’t want to be alone in my apartment.

He freaked out and shouted when Melissa had relayed what happened and then he’d stalked off to be with the team at the hospital. Visions of him giving Oliver a black eye for being a dick to me popped into my mind, but I pushed them away. Beaux wouldn’t do that to him…not yet, anyway. But if I knew my brother and his protective instinct, it’d come at some point.

Melissa bent down and picked up the remote. She clicked the button and the television screen faded to black immediately. “We have to go out. And you have to get back to work tomorrow.”

I should have been working for the past two days. There was too much to do and not enough time for any of it.

“I will. Tomorrow.”

“Fine. Then tonight we go out. Beaux said the team’s finally celebrating their win and he wants us there.”

I pushed off the couch and fixed my messy bun. I cringed at the feel of it. I really did need to get cleaned up.

“I’m not going out with them. Not now.” Before she could protest, I smiled at her. “But I will go shower, we’ll go to Stamped so I can check the mail, and then we’ll get drunk here.”

She pouted for a moment before her blue eyes shone when she smiled. “Deal. Now go, before I hose you down.”

“I’m not that bad,” I shouted as I walked away.

Melissa’s fake gagging sound was the only response I got.

I showered quickly, throwing on minimal makeup and comfortable lounge clothes while I got ready. And while I did, I hatched my own plan. I had stayed in a crappy relationship once, knowing it was going downhill but too afraid to stand up and ask for answers then. I wouldn’t be that woman again, and I wouldn’t wait around, eating my weight in food and drowning my sorrows, waiting for him to come to me.

I refused to believe that only shortly after telling me he was falling in love with me, Oliver truly meant the things he’d said.

“Let’s go,” I said to Melissa when I returned to the living room.

She was dressed just as casually as I was, both of us in tanks and short yoga shorts, our hair pulled up and off our necks.

She turned to me and must have seen the determination that had set in my eyes because her glossy lips spread wide. “Well, that shower seemed to have worked.”

I laughed and walked toward the door, digging my keys out of my purse. “Yup. And tomorrow, I get the rest of my shit together.”

I’d give Oliver the day, one more day to help his dad and be there for his parents, but I knew from Beaux that he was staying at the hotel in Raleigh while his dad was in the hospital.

***

The elevator bell dinged, jarring me. Wiping my palms down the sides of my skirt, I inhaled a breath as I stepped out of the elevator car and onto Oliver’s floor. I was surprised when the doorman at the hotel had given me permission to go straight up, but took it as a good sign. I hadn’t yet been removed from visitors allowed to head to Oliver’s place without a phone call first.

It was mid-morning. The night before, after getting done at Stamped, Melissa and I had sat around Beaux’s condo drinking and talking about everything and anything that didn’t involve Oliver Powell. Instead, we’d talked about her job as a freelance graphic designer while she continued to tell me how she loved the Raleigh area. Despite the heat that was going to take me years to get used to—but much less time to get used to in the winter, since I’d get to avoid Iowa’s bone-chilling windchill temperatures—I agreed with her.

Raleigh was beautiful. Not too large of a city that it was intimidating, and it had everything I could possibly want.

The bonus was definitely that my online sales of Stamped were still going strong. Soon, I’d be able to start paying Beaux back for everything he’d done for me.

Hopefully sooner than that, Oliver would apologize for being a complete prick and we could move past this small hitch in the road. All couples had problems. All couples fought. All couples said things out of anger, and he had to have been beside himself with worry.

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