Page 44 of Play the Game

Tamela

Twenty minutesafter walking back to the house with Bond, I was lying in bed, knowing damn well I wasn’t going to sleep. I’d blown it. I’d been preparing for my chance to prove myself for more than a year.

When I started working with Penn, back when he was still in the Army and I was working for a government contractor, I realized I’d found the perfect mentor. When he left the Army and joined HEAT, then hand-picked me to join the agency, I knew he believed in me. We became known as the best logistics team in the business. Before the semi-permanent Alpha Team had been assembled to address the unique challenge that was the Carbonados, he’d started hinting that it was time for me to step into a lead position.

“Everyone wants Penn and Sparks on their operations,” he would tell me. “But soon, they’re going to start asking for Sparks and Penn.”

He had supported me. He’d probably even advocated for TJ not to pull a more senior agent from elsewhere when he’d been sidelined by broken ribs. Those had also been courtesy of Jason’s blatant disregard for rules and protocols and following plans. Now, I was suffering the fallout from his pain-in-the-ass savior complex, or TJ complex, cowboy act, as I’d always thought of it. Remembering back before I’d developed my crush on him six months ago, that vigilante shit had been the one thing about Jason that had annoyed me.

When my feelings had shifted, my perspective had, too. Some of it was for the better. One of the few things Penn told me I needed to improve was my ability to be flexible and improvise in the middle of an operation. I’d decided maybe I could learn something from Jason about relaxing my rigid adherence to rules. What I hadn’t realized was that he could learn something from me, too, like how to slow the hell down and think through the consequences, proceeding if, and only if, the juice would be worth the squeeze.

My phone pinged with a message from him. I ignored it. A minute later, my phone rang. I declined the call and turned off my ringer. Shortly after that, there was a tap on my door.

“Tam, I need to talk to you.”

“Not tonight, Jason.”

“Please, just a minute.” When I didn’t respond, he tapped again, then knocked. “Tam?”

I was going to have to talk to him sometime, and maybe tonight, while I was still in the full flush of my fury, wasn’t the worst time. I knew the right thing to do, the way to save my career. No time like the present to lay it out for him, since my path forward affected him, too. I hopped out of bed and padded to the door. As soon as I cracked it, he moved to step inside.

“No.” I held the door in place with the weight of my body. “We can talk right here.”

He glanced up and down the hall. “It’s not very private.”

“Then I suggest you be very quiet.”

The hurt look on his face didn’t move me. I was right to have this conversation tonight because waiting until tomorrow or the next day might weaken my resolve.

“First, let me say I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“You already said it a dozen times on the drive back from town.”

“I’m saying it again because you haven’t accepted it.”

I scowled. “I’m not going to, not until I’m ready. And if that’s all you came here to say, then you can shut up and listen.”

“Actually, I was going to...” He pressed his lips together and furrowed his brow. Probably reading my face.

“Good,” I said. “This isn’t all your fault. Don’t interrupt me. Of course, going off half-cocked to the warehouse and getting me arrested the other week was completely your fault. But the reason I’ve gone along with your bullshit is all on me. My feelings for you knocked the sense right out of my damn head, but starting tonight, all that changes.”

He blinked rapidly. “What are... I don’t know what that means.”

“I told you when this started,” I pointed my finger back and forth between us, “that my career is too important for me to give it up. When we chose to sleep together anyway, I stupidly convinced myself we could be three things to each other: friends, colleagues, and lovers. I was wrong.”

He shook his head. “Tam, we can’t give up any of those.” The shattered look on his face echoed the stabbing pain in my own chest.

If only I hadn’t started any of this, or even if I’d stopped after our first interlude last week, or stepped back after our wild night in the IT room in the barn, I might have saved us both from this heartache. And yes, it was on me, because I was the sensible one in this relationship. I always had been. But last night had been too much. We’d connected on a whole new level, on a plane I hadn’t known existed. And now, less than twenty-four hours later, I had to give it up.

In the early days after my dad’s death, sometimes life had sucked so hard, I’d wanted to punch someone in the face. That’s when my discipline, my goody-two-shoes ways, had paid off by holding me back from assaulting anyone. Now, standing there in the dark with Jason, with him outside and me inside, but farther away than we’d ever been from each other, that feeling returned. This time, though, I didn’t want to punch. I wanted to disappear. Run. Give up.

But I wouldn’t do it. I would use my sheer force of will to ride out this storm, stay on the straight and narrow, and reclaim my place on the Alpha Team, a position I’d damn well earned, a reward I wouldn’t allow anyone, even Jason, to wrest away from me.

“Friends, colleagues, lovers,” I ticked off on my fingers. “Our recent behavior has proven we can only have two out of those three, and the first two are nonnegotiable.”

He shook his head, but his shoulders slumped, his body already accepting the truth.

“As for forgiveness,” I said, “at some point—not tonight, not tomorrow, maybe not any time soon—I’ll be ready for that. Between now and then, you need to do some soul-searching and grow the hell up. And then”—I gently pushed his shoulder, pushing him farther back into the hallway and away from the door—“maybe you’ll understand how to act like a true friend.”

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