Page 9 of Cross Check Daddies
I set my iced coffee down and face him with arms lightly crossed. “What deal?”
His laugh is low and rough, like gravel dragged across silk. It coils in my stomach, heat blooming behind my knees.
“Don’t play coy with me, Brooke,” he says. “I know the Miami Icemen reached out to GameHatch about a collaborative game.”
“Did Tanner tell you?”
Something shifts. A flicker. Barely there, but I see it—this flash in his green eyes that punches breath out of the room. Realization sets in, and when he speaks again, it lands like a bruise.
“You don’t know,” he says quietly.
I tilt my head. “Know what?”
His jaw tightens. “You really never googled me. Never checked up."
I hate how my stomach knots. Guilt scratches at my ribs like it belongs there. I haven’t. Not once. I’d buried that part of my life so deep, I never thought it would dig itself out.
“I’ve been busy,” I say too quickly, and it sounds exactly like the excuse it is.
He doesn’t respond. Just starts pacing, fingers grazing the edge of my credenza, head angled like he’s sorting through a dozen versions of the same thought.
“I’m the team analyst,” he finally says. “For the Icemen.”
I go still. Shit.
“I didn’t know,” I say, my hand sliding through my ponytail, tugging lightly at the scalp.
“Yeah,” he says, voice sharp with something jagged. “Clearly.”
He looks at me now, really looks, and it slices through the air between us. “I only came by to tell you not to let what happened last night change your mind about the deal. That it was just... one night. That you should take the contract anyway.”
The room shrinks. My mouth goes dry.
“But now I feel like a fucking idiot,” he says. “I shouldn’t have come.”
“King,” I say, but he shakes his head and turns slightly like he’s already halfway gone.
Then he freezes, eyes locking on something behind me.
I don’t turn around. I already know what he’s seen.
The photo. Jackson and me at the beach last summer. His curls wind-tossed and sticky with saltwater, both of us laughing like the world never hurt us.
“You have a kid,” Cam says, voice barely catching.
I nod.
His gaze drops. His hands rub against his thighs, palms flat and searching. “Are you married?”
The way he says it makes my stomach twist. Like he’s already bracing for the worst answer.
My spine stiffens. “Do you really think I’m the kind of woman who would sleep with someone else while married? I was on a date just like you,remember?”
He flinches at the words, just slightly. “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know anything about you anymore.”
“Fuck,” I mutter, turning away, hating the way this conversation makes everything inside me churn sideways.
“I’ll reject the project,” I say before I can stop myself. “I’ll pull out.”
