Page 45 of Hard to Break

What if I have?

My ribs hurt with the dull ache of betrayal and loneliness that’s as familiar as it is painful.

Waffles snuffs at my ankles, and I lift him into my arms as I kick off my shoes and head for the couch.

MILES

“Princess?”I drop my gear beside the front door and look around the condo.

It’s late, or early depending on how you think about it.

The game feels like a thousand years ago. Since then, I’ve been dragged over the coals by management, interrogated by lawyers, and I’ve seen way too much of my agent’s bleary face after he got dragged out of bed to come down to the stadium.

“What do you mean you found drugs in my locker?”

We’re back in the conference room. This time, there are lawyers.

Harlan and James are on the same side of the table.

There’s no Jay.

“A team member was putting gear in everyone’s lockers and saw a suspicious substance.”

“There was nothing in my locker. My keys. My phone.”

James doesn’t look persuaded. “When you got into a fistfight, we backed you. Then there was the incident after the all-star game?—”

“Nothing happened.” I say it for the millionth time.

“This is a new level of problem.” Harlan’s the reasonable one of the two of them, and the fact that he’s not on my side anymore is sobering. “I understand that you’ve flown high this year, and that kind of change has a tendency to impact aperson. Aside from the fact that you’re violating multiple team rules, the police could charge you with possession. That would drag us into the media, which is bad for everyone.”

“Surely we can deal with it internally.” This is from James.

“There’s nothing to deal with. Whatever you found, it’s not mine,” I insist.

“So, what did happen?” Harlan asks.

They stare me down, the Kodiaks’ attorneys silently flanking them.

As far as the team goes, I haven’t had a second to talk to any of them, but I hope to hell they have my back in this. I hate wondering what they might be thinking.

I didn’t get to see the texts from my girl until way too late. At that point, I wanted to see her more than I wanted to correspond through impersonal texts.

Now, I call her name again into the empty condo.

Brooke emerges from the direction of the bedrooms.

Seeing her is a relief, soothing my stress.

“Jay told me.” Her hands find my arms. Her bright-pink nails should be cheerful, but they can’t erase the pit in my stomach. “I’m sorry.”

Everything crashes into me at once. “It wasn’t mine. Someone put it there.”

“I believe you.” Her dark eyes are intent on mine. “But you have used. In the past.”

My chest tightens. This isn’t how I wanted to tell her. This isn’t how I wanted any of this to be.

“It was a long time ago,” I say. “My Grams was having a hard time, my parents had split. It was a mistake and I didn’t know better. I do now.”

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