Page 18 of Wicked Player

“I think that you, as pretty as you are, would probably make Brandon smile. Would you like to meet him?”

No way. Not with Gage there. Not with the way he’d glared at me so viciously earlier. He would not want me there. “He’s not a story,” I said. There was no way I was going to have her son glorified in his illness.

“Trust me,” she said. “If it helps other families, other kids like him, Brandon would want to be.” With that stunning response, she tossed out her hand. “I’m Penny. Brandon’s mom.”

“Elizabeth,” I said.

“I know.” She winked and her hand went to the door. “We watch a lot of news around here. Not much else is on and Brandon really loved your last story of the pregnant elephant at the zoo. He said he wouldn’t have learned that much in school if he was able to be there. Trust me, he’ll be thrilled to meet you.”

My cheeks flamed bright hot at the compliment, and I could no longer hurry away like I should have before I even stepped off the floor. Instead, Penny had opened the door and stepped back, waving me in.

Why did it feel like I was walking a plank on a pirate ship as my feet trudged forward?

Seven

Gage

“You’re pulling my leg,” Brandon said. His frail body shook with laughter but to egg him on further, I did what he just accused me of doing except this time literally.

I reached out and yanked his ankle. “Now I am. But it’s the truth. Ferrets are evil, evil little creatures.”

Every time I visited Brandon I always made sure to tell him a story about an animal. Most of them were from my childhood when we lived in the house the church provided my dad and backed up to a creek. There was always some sort of animal wandering through our land. Foxes. Deer. Raccoons. Snakes and rodents.

Mom used to get so pissed off I kept coming home with toads shoved into my shirt pockets. And the day it was a baby snake in my jeans pocket I thought I’d end up sleeping on a street corner bench.

This particular story I’d told him was about my college roommate’s ferrets. Hennessy loved those things like they were family. Always carrying Tater and Tot around on his shoulders. Gross as hell.

Those things freaked me out and Hennessy had been even scarier.

“The pet store he bought them from assured him they were both girl ferrets. Turns out they were wrong.”

“Ten of them, though?” His pale face scrunched up.

“Yup. Ten little babies. And they were all on my bed when I got home from practice. Covered in goo and everything.”

I had to throw away all my bedding. No way was I going to just wash the sheets and comforter and sleep under sheets where a ferret had given birth. I might have been a guy and a jock, but I had some standards for cleanliness. A ferret’s afterbirth crossed the line.

“That’s gross.” He laughed this hoarse, painful sound and we both heard the door open and turned our heads.

And what the hell?

I pushed off the chair immediately standing in front of Brandon.

She’dfollowedme? “What are you doing here?”

It was hard enough watching the other reporter look like he was flirting with her only a few feet away and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it. It was even worse when I had to fight my dick going hard having Beth…Elizabeth thanks to the nametag she was wearing…so damn close to me. So far away.

And shit. She was a damn reporter. The kind who sniffed out stories and spilled secrets. And the woman I’d had bound last night, screaming out in ecstasy was now following me for the next two weeks.

It was a disaster and maybe I was staring at her, being a dick I wasn’t normally, but this was bad.

Did she know who I was? Could she tell?

Her cheeks blushed and she whipped her head to Penny. “Um. Well…”

“I ran into Miss Hayes.” She leaned to the side, catching Brandon’s attention. “You remember her, right? From the news?”

A smack hit my back. “Move Gage. Miss Hayes? From the zoo?”

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