Page 73 of Playoff
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t have thought that about Jessica.”
No one did. She’d been running on guilt and playing it safe since my parents skipped out with her family’s money. Fitch was right though. We were messing with fire. This couldn’t keep going.
“I know it’s gotta stop. She doesn’t want to hurt her brother, and I don’t want to upset the team’s chemistry. He’s trying to get past his history, which I appreciate after what my parents did, and I want to win.” All of these reasons were true, but they’d always been true. Still, we were adults, not hormone-driven teenagers.
Fitch expressed the thought I’d been trying to avoid. “You’ve known that all along.”
“But now you know, so it’s no longer our little secret. We’ll stop.” I’d just have to send Fitch down to get anything from the storage lockers from now on. Didn’t want to explain that to him.
Fitch rubbed his eyes. “You’re lucky you haven’t been found out. You have to end this before JJ hears about it.”
“I know. I know. It’s— I don’t know. Something about her.” Jess with her proper clothes and boring underwear that pulled at me, hiding the woman underneath. That woman who just worked with me. But it couldn’t be.
The smart thing to do would be to delete Jess’s number from my phone and avoid her whenever possible. But before I cut her off, I needed to warn her Fitch had figured it out. It wouldn’t be fair to let her be blindsided.
Once Fitch had gone to his room, I took a slice of the coconut bread, because it was good and because it was Jess’s, and went to my own room where I pulled out my phone.
Me: Remember giving me that bread?
Trouble: It was only a couple of hours ago. Of course I remember.
Me: Fitch noticed that I showed up with bread at the same time you were baking.
Trouble: …
I waited while she stopped and started a message.
Trouble: You denied it, right?
Me: I planned to.
My phone rang.
Jess was yelling before I had it at my ear. “What the hell? Why did you tell him?”
“I didn’t. I just paused too long before I lied to him and he picked up on it.”
I could picture the expression on her face. “Why did you pause?”
“Because I couldn’t think of a place I’d have gotten bread without a label on it and without going out of the building, since Mr. Detective noticed I hadn’t worn a coat.”
“You could have said you got it from a bakery. Small ones don’t have labels. And there are enough delivery options— Oh hell, it doesn’t matter now. Is he going to tell?”
“No. I told him it was an accident the first time and we wouldn’t do it again.”
“What?” Her voice almost shattered my eardrum.
“We aren’t doing it again, are we?”
“You said it was an accident the first time? Why did you tell him anything?”
“Jess, he’s my teammate. And my roommate, as well as being some kind of Swedish James Bond. The bread made it obvious something happened after that first night. I didn’t want him to think I was that kind of an asshole, so I promised it wasn’t happening again.”
She sighed, and her voice returned to normal volume. “You’d make a lousy spy.”
“Yeah, well, being a spy wasn’t on my shortlist of career options.”
“How am I going to look him in the face again?”
