Page 105 of Twisted Shot
“Jaryd will never buy it,” she says, her voice brittle. “I built that account from the ground up. He’ll ask questions.”
“Did I stutter?” Richard says, low and wicked.
The fury is instant and blinding, hot in her throat.
“You weren’t so full of yourself when Theo was staring you down and deciding which wall to put you through,” she fires back, her control fracturing.
“You’ll make Jaryd believe it,” Richard repeats cooly, as if he hasn’t heard her. “Or I go to him with what I saw. Your job won’t survive it. Neither will your precious reputation.”
And then with a smirk he adds, “Karma’s a bitch, isn’t it, sweetheart?”
Mila’s mouth opens. Closes. She wants to throw something. Break something. Instead, she takes a measured breath and lets her voice drop to a knife’s edge.
“I hate you.”
His eyes flash, but she doesn’t stop.
“I hate the way you speak to people. I hate that you think everyone owes you something because you managed to string together a few half-decent campaigns in your life. And I deeply regret every moment I spent pretending you were someone worth taking seriously.”
She doesn’t wait for a response.
Just turns, storms out of his office, and slams the door behind her hard enough to make the glass shiver.
Back at her desk, her hands won’t stop trembling. She exhales through clenched teeth, trying to hold herself together, but her shoulders ache with the effort. Her eyes sting, too full, too hot. She doesn’t cry, but it feels like something inside her is unraveling, stitch by careful stitch. She wants to call Theo and hear his beautiful, careful voice whisper something soft just for her.
But she doesn’t move. Because right now, she has no idea how to fix any of it.
CHAPTER 39
THEO
He sits at the edge of the bed with a towel-wrapped ice pack strapped to his calf, the sting of the slapshot throbbing beneath his skin like a slow-moving fire. It’s going to bruise like hell tomorrow, deep purple and angry. His whole body hums with soreness from the game, shoulders stiff, thighs aching, a dull throb pulsing behind his left knee. Three full periods of grinding defense will do that to a man. Especially one who already spends half the season stretched across thin, lumpy hotel beds, and folded into a packed bus to travel across the country.
Theo has decided he hates all hotel rooms that do not contain naked Mila. He hates the recycled air and bland furnishing. He hates the way they all blur together, just different shades of the same nothing.
He misses her with an ache that borders on pain, more torturous than the throb in his calf. The space where she should be is a hollow drumbeat under his skin, louder in the quiet. He misses the silk of her voice in the dark, the way she looks at him like he’s never been broken, never been less. He wants her here, pressed up against him, so he can breathe her in like an addict.
She’s on speaker now, her voice soft and tired in the quiet room.She’s just finished telling him everything—Richard’s demands, the threat hanging over her head. And all Theo can do is sit there and listen, pulse pounding, fists clenching around the ice pack.
“Absolutely not,” he growls into the phone, louder than he meant to. “You worked too hard for this. He doesn’t get to take that from you.”
“It’s fine,” Mila says, maddeningly calm. “We’re together now. Me stepping back from the Whalers wouldn’t change that. Plus, Naomi’s still around. It will be okay.”
“That’s not the point.”
He knows she’s trying to be reasonable. Knows she’s trying to protect him as much as herself. But the fury blooming in his chest is molten, scorching every rational thought. If Richard were in the room right now, Theo isn’t sure he’d be able to hold himself back. He wants to drive a fist through the cheap hotel wall, or, ideally, into Richard’s goddamn nose.
But his temper is what landed Mila in this hell to begin with. And that knowledge is the only thing keeping his knuckles gripping the ice pack.
“This is my fault,” he says, voice thick with regret. “I made it worse. I threatened him, and now he’s taking it out on you.”
“Theo—”
“No.” He sits forward, elbows on his knees, the ice pack slipping off his leg, forgotten. “I should’ve let you handle it. I shouldn’t have gone after him like that. I just—he insulted you, and I snapped.”
There’s a pause on her end, like she doesn’t know what to say.
“I even thought about calling my other brother Quentin,” he adds ruefully, half-laughing but also very much not joking, “to see if he knows a guy.”
