Page 19 of Undisputed Player
Focus. Just focus on the work.
But my mind kept circling back to Jax Easton's laugh, rich and deep when Avery had dragged him into the classroom, genuine in a way that suggested he might actually have a soul underneath all that practiced charm.
To the way he'd commanded attention without trying, his presence bending the room around him like gravity.
To the stupid, traitorous part of me that wondered what it would be like to have someone look at me like that every day. To have help. To not be so goddamn alone all the time.
He wasn’t for me. He was a hurricane, and I was a house made of matchsticks.
The math was simple, cruel in its clarity. I was a single guardian with a target on my back, working two jobs to afford an apartment that should have been condemned.
He was a rich, famous boxer with a different supermodel on his arm every week, living in a world of private jets and champagne where people like me were invisible.
Our worlds didn't just clash; they existed in separate galaxies, spinning around different suns, operating by completely different laws of physics.
But the way he'd said my name still lingered in the quiet spaces of my mind, making my stupid heart clench.
No one had cared enough to really say my name since Giselle passed. The thought brought familiar grief pressing against my ribs. My sister had been the only person who'd ever made my name sound like something worth keeping.
I saved the essay with a vicious jab of my finger and moved to the next one, trying to drown in the work. Outside, a car alarm suddenly split the night air, and I jumped hard enough to knock over my water bottle.
The security app showed nothing—just an empty parking lot and shadows playing tricks in the wind. I took a shaky breath, hands trembling as I mopped up the spilled water with an old shirt I used as a rag.
I was losing it. Actually losing my mind.
But the truth was, I'd been losing it for two years. Since the night I'd found Giselle already gone, the needle still cruelly hanging from her arm.
Since I'd heard Leo screaming in the next room, two years old, and crying because his mother could no longer hold him.
Since the courts had granted me custody, and Damon had made it clear he considered it temporary.
Since I'd realized that love wasn't a shield, it was a weapon, and it could be used against you in ways that left permanent scars.
Jax Easton was a distraction I couldn't afford. A match held too close to the kindling of my life.
I finished the last essay a little after 1 AM, my vision swimming from exhaustion and the strain of staring at a screen.
The lesson plans would have to wait until tomorrow, or later today, technically. I had remote tutoring sessions starting at nine, which meant I could grab maybe six hours of sleep if I was lucky.
Sleep. What I wouldn't give for eight uninterrupted hours of unconsciousness.
I pushed the laptop aside and folded my arms on the scratchedtable, resting my head on them for just a moment. Just long enough to close my eyes and pretend I was somewhere else.
With soft beds and no security cameras, and where the biggest worry was what to have for breakfast instead of whether we'd have money for breakfast at all.
In the darkness behind my eyelids, Jax Easton's face materialized like some sort of golden hallucination. I was sure he'd already forgotten my name, moved on to whatever stunning woman was waiting in his bed tonight. Men like him didn't linger on encounters with tired teachers in discount clothes.
Men like Jax Easton were bad news wrapped in expensive packaging.
I'd learned that lesson watching Giselle fall for Damon's charm and gifts. Adoration could quickly turn into something poisonous, and love could become a cage built from your own desperate need for someone to choose you.
Damon had swept my sister off her feet, showered her with things we'd never been able to afford growing up—jewelry, clothes, fancy dinners in restaurants with actual tablecloths. He'd made her feel special, chosen, like she was worth something more than the gutter we'd crawled out of.
And then he'd gotten her hooked on the very drugs he sold, making her dependent on him for the fix that eventually killed her.
I felt the familiar rage surge through me, sharp and clean as broken glass. My nails bit into the scarred wood of the table hard enough to leave marks.
I wouldn't make the same mistake Giselle had. I couldn't.
