Page 110 of The Shake Off

But I did know him.

Penn Shepherd didn’t get nervous. He got what he wanted, and he did what he wanted. Anything in his way had better watch out.

I had an ominous feeling that was about to be me.

“Want a tour? Or do you want to tell me why you’re really here?”

His boyish grin spread across his face. It didn’t make him any less threatening though. “Touché.”

“I guess you figured summoning me to your office wouldn’t work.”

“I figured you’d tell me to go fuck myself.”

I threw my head back with a loud laugh. Penn knew me as well as I knew him.

“I guess that depends on what you have to say.” I nodded to an empty meeting room along the side by the windows. It had glass walls, but whoever had designed this open-plan situation had obviously decided beggars couldn’t be choosers. You either got privacy or you got quiet, not both. “Let’s go in here.”

Penn followed me in, and I closed the door.

He walked straight to the window, then turned around. “Is something happening between you and Ace Watson?”

“Wow, right out the gate there, aren’t you?”

“Payton…”

I stood there, trying not to cross my arms over my chest and get all defensive. But even as I was trying my best, I could feel my shoulders squaring back, and a little of the defensiveness slipped out.

“I guess that would depend on what you deem as something.”

“Are you sleeping together?”

My barriers were weakening, and my arms crossed over my chest. “I don’t know why you think it’s your business who I sleep with.”

“It is my business when Ace is in the middle of the best season of his life, and it’s my team he’s playing for. I don’t want him fucking around and messing up his head. He needs to be concentrating.”

“And what makes you think he’s not?”

“Because he spent his Saturday evening with you at Nathalie Cheung’s summer party,” he shot back.

“How did you find that out?”

“I know people who were there, and they couldn’t wait to tell me they’d just met my starting pitcher – and I know it was you he winked at coming off the field last week.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “What’s going on? Are you in a relationship with Ace Watson?”

“No.” I wasn’t about to ask how he knew Ace had winked.

He narrowed his eyes even further, but I held firm. It was like a game of chicken, and I knew I was stubborn enough to not give in. I also knew Penn was equally stubborn, but suddenly the rubber band which had been slowly stretching inside me the past few months snapped hard.

I’d had enough of baseball, and baseball players, and stupid,stupidsuperstitions and theories and stats and, and,and…

“You know what? This is your fault in the first fucking place. You told him to do whatever it took to fix his game.”

Penn’s hard stare crumpled in confusion. “What does that mean?”

“He decided the way to fix his game was to sleep with me. You and your fucking stupid baseball superstitions.”

He scoffed loudly. “And I bet you couldn’t fucking wait to help him out!”

“Ex-fucking-cuse me, Pennington, I did not. I didn’t want to sleep with him. I said no!” I managed to grit out, though I swear I’d stripped some enamel off my back teeth from how hard they were grinding together.

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