Page 70 of Vegas Heat

“I’ll be ready to leave in about ten minutes,” he says.

I nod and bolt from the kitchen—mainly because ten minutes is plenty of time for Gabby to make an appearance and fuck more with my brain, but also because I want to change my shirt before we head out.

A heavy weight settles onto my chest as I walk the stairs up to my room. Gabby’s door is open when I walk past it, and I can’t help when my eyes move in her direction. Naturally she’s sitting on her bed with her laptop propped on her legs, and she glances up when she sees me paused in the hallway outside her room.

“Hey,” she says softly.

“Hi.”

She closes her laptop and sets it beside her. “Can we talk?”

I blow out a breath. “Now’s not a good time.” I glance down the hallway even though Troy is on the other side of the house right now.

“Well when can I make an appointment to get on your busy schedule?” she asks, her tone both full of impatience and annoyance with a side of brat.

I lean on her doorway and close my eyes for a beat, trying to keep calm. When she talks to me like that…hell, when shelooksat me like that, I want nothing more than to turn that frown upside down, so to speak. By shoving my cock in her, of course.

But clearly that’s off the table, so I think the better call here is avoidance.

I rub my palms together up and down as I try to figure out what to say.

Up palm, down palm, time to get calm. Breathe real deep and take the leap.

“I don’t know what we have left to talk about, Gabby,” I finally say, trying my hardest to keep my tone neutral despite the waves of emotion plowing into me. I don’t want to have this conversation. I don’t want this to be the end. I don’t want to look at her and know that I can’t have her again.

“Oh, okay. So that’s how old people do this, then?” she asks, the side of brattiness taking the lead in her tone. “They just bow out at the first sign of a problem?”

I know what she’s doing. She’s forcing this conversation now even though I said it’s not a good time. And it’s not. I’m meeting Troy in a few minutes to head to the stadium. But maybe she’s right. Maybe if I just get this over with, I can focus on baseball.

And it’s not just that. She’s pitting our ages against us, and I don’t like it. But I guess it’s what I’m doing, too, in forcing this thing to end. Our ages are, after all, a big part of the reason why we can’t be together. If Troy was a little older, and she was a lot older, then maybe he’d understand. Or maybe if I was closer to her age, he’d be okay with it.

But this is different. Troy and I have a previous relationship. We’re friends. Good friends, and he’s depending on me. I can’t fuck this up.

“A, I’m not old. Don’t use our ages against me when we both agreed it didn’t matter. And B, that’s not what I’m doing. It’s complicated, and I’m just trying to do the right thing,” I say. I rub my palms up and down a little more, trying to create some sort of warmth and friction to force a calmness that isn’t coming.

“It didn’t matter.” She leaps to her feet and shoves an angry finger in my direction. “You’re the one making it matter now. You’re the one who thinks it suddenly can’t work.”

“It can’t, and it has nothing to do with our ages. It’s because your dad is a good friend of mine, and I made a commitment to him.”

“That’s harsh,” she says, hurt in her tone. “So he wins since you and me never made any sort of commitment?”

“That’s not what I meant.” I blow out a frustrated breath as I run a hand along my jaw. “Nobody wins here. I was brought in because your father trusts me to create a brotherhood. How can I do that when I’m lying to him?”

“Why do we have to lie, then? Why can’t we just be honest?” she asks.

“Because we can’t. You’ve told me how protective he is of you. You’re the one who said he’s making up for missing your entire life. You know how he is. He will not understand this no matter how we present it to him.”

She glances away from me, and I can see in her eyes that she knows exactly what I mean. “So where do we go from here?”

“I’m sorry, but I just don’t see that there’sanywherewe can go from here.” My voice is low and apologetic, and she closes her eyes as if I physically struck her. And itfeelslike I physically struck her even though I’d never actually hit anybody. The words coming out of my mouth feel all wrong and jacked up.

“What about the job we talked about with your San Diego company?” she finally asks, clamoring to find a final link between the two of us.

“We never had anything official set up, so I guess Kaylee will just have to find someone else.”

She presses her lips together and nods. “Fine. I need to go.” She heads toward her closet, and I take that as my signal.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper to her back, and then I head to my room, not sure how I’m going to get through the next month living in the room next door when fighting this is the very last thing I want to do.

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