Page 58 of Home Game

Maybe I couldn’t pull myself together around Storm, but I had to do it with the Fixer Brothers guys. Storm and I had blown past professionalism long ago, but I had a standard to uphold with the Fixer Brothers.

I swallowed past a tightness in my throat, standing up tall. “Good morning,” I greeted them all. “Shawn, did you hear about the new book series B.R. Jordan is releasing? I was excited to talk to you about it.”

Internally, I was still reeling, like that volcano was still deep inside me.

But on the outside I was having a casual, friendly chat about books.

Easy.

“I read about that last night,” Shawn said, his eyes lighting up.

I followed the guys inside the house, and as I walked past Storm to head inside, I couldn’t even look him in the eye. Maybe I’d been wrong about feeling like I was a volcano that was about to erupt—now, when I looked at him, I just felt hollow. Like a cave.

Maybe I’d felt hollow inside for a long time, and it was finally just time to accept it. And maybe Storm was right, in some way.Moneywasn’t the only thing that mattered to me, but doing my job certainly mattered.

I couldn’t make Storm like me. Couldn’t make him understand me.

I had to go back to the way things were before.

Tuck my head down, interact kindly with my clients, connect in any way possible, and do my job well.

I had been stupid to forget that that was the true reason I was here, anyway. It was all this was ever going to be.

14

STORM

With four big camera rigs surrounding me and two giant studio lights filling the corners of the room, I walked through what was left of my kitchen and whistled.

I’d always been good at football, but I’d never thought of myself as a particularly good actor.

Right now I had to act more than I ever had before, hamming it up for the TV cameras even though I was restless inside.

“That is somefastwork,” I said, looking around at my kitchen and keeping a happy face for the show.

Nothing had been sitting right for me all day, though.

Like maybe, for once, I should have controlled myself instead of always having something to prove.

I knew I’d hurt Emmett, and it was all I could think about, even on the first day of demolition in my house. Chase was operating a handheld camera and he tracked after me as I walked through crumbled drywall, looking over the place where kitchen cabinets used to be.

Shawn and Nathan were on the opposite end of the kitchen, smiling and looking like the TV stars they were.

“All it takes is a few sledgehammers, crowbars, and a lot of Led Zeppelin playing in the background,” Nathan said.

“Demolition is the best part,” Shawn chimed in. “Other than the final product, of course.”

The guys had been at work in the kitchen for eight full hours. The half-wall that used to separate it from the dining room was ripped out now, leaving raw concrete beneath. The patch of hardwood that had been badly water damaged was gone, too. The cabinets were history, leaving empty spots where the old blue paint on the walls stopped.

“This morning, I had a run-down kitchen, and now I’ve got a construction site,” I said. “That’s what I like to see.”

“And that’s just day one,” Shawn said. “We’re going to be back bright and early tomorrow morning to keep the ball rolling.”

“Cut!” the director yelled out from the dining room. “Good stuff, guys. That’s a very solid wrap on day one.”

I’d been looking forward to this day for weeks and weeks, but now that it was here, I’d been waiting for it to end. I breathed out a sigh of relief even as I went over to high-five all of the guys from Fixer Brothers.

“Thank you, guys,” I said to all of them. “This really is a dream come true.”

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