Page 8 of Hard to Take

“I’ll pay your rent,” I call over the music.

“Yeah, no.” She laughs in my face. “You’re not my boyfriend, real or fake. The gig is over.”

She shifts the two drinks into one arm and grabs the other from me, then pushes through the crowd to her friends.

What is it with this girl?

Never figured I had a thing for stubborn, independent women. With Brooke, I can’t decide if it’s a feature or a bug.

Two more beers disappear in a heartbeat.

“It’s nothing, right?” I look up to see Jay at my shoulder.

“What?”

“What Coach said. That you and me are a step slow.”

“Of course not. It was a couple of missed connections. My head’s been all over with my grams.”

He nods slowly.

“This is about Hawkins shooting his mouth off,” I guess.

Jay smooths a hand over his braids. “Nah. Just a long road to playoffs. A lot on my shoulders.”

“Not only yours,” I remind him. “We’ll get there.”

I’m a little drunk and can’t resist saying, “You’re going to talk her out of this shit, right?”

He follows my gaze toward where Brooke is dancing, her hands in the air and her smile flashing bright in the lights.

“She wants to live with a rando. That’s how bad things happen.” Triggering her brother’s fears isn’t the most aboveboard way to crack down on this, but it’ll have to do.

He squares to face me. “She asked me to be more trusting, and she told me to back off.”

“Then move her in with you,” I try.

“My place is getting renovated. She doesn’t want the construction in her face.”

So much for Jay helping.

“Hey,” I go on, the beer definitely going to my head. “What did you tell her about what happened with Kevin? You know, so we’re all on the same page.”

He blinks at me. “The truth.”

Right.

Because we all have the same version of what went down.

As I nurse another beer and watch her without looking like I am, I know she’s going to ignore my advice from earlier like she ignores every other thing she doesn’t want to hear.

It’s obvious she wants nothing to do with me, and getting inside her stubborn head is harder than breaking into the NBA.

Yeah, well, two can be stubborn.

There’s one option. It’s an obvious overstepping of any boundaries between us.

Princess is going to hate it.

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