Page 15 of How to Prevent a Fumble

“Excuse me?” Briar asks, her jaw hanging.

“I want to pay you five thousand dollars a week. You’re going to be doing a lot of work.”

She won’t be, but I know what she’s thought of me over the years. I want to help her.

Briar shakes her head, her blonde hair falling out of the delicate messy bun she definitely spent twenty minutes perfecting in the mirror this morning. “That’s way too much, Leo.”

Izara looks at her like she’s crazy for even thinking about turning that down.

“Briar,” she hisses under her breath. “Do you know how much that man makes? Take the money and run.”

Throwing her hands up, Briar opens her mouth to say something before shutting it, her eyes searing holes into the document in front of her. “Leo, that's way too much.”

I shake my head. “No it’s not. And it’s what you’re getting.”

Brown eyes meet mine, her left eyelid twitching just slightly as she fights the urge to look away. The classic Crosby stare. Although intimidating when Owen does it, Briar reminds me of a puppy.

But she’s getting that money whether she likes it or not. Not that I’d force it on her, but all of my employees are paid well. She’s not a special case.

“Briar, you’re going to be doing a lot for me. Training camp is starting in a week, and I’m hardly going to be home. I’m going to be asking you to take care of my place, run some errands, clean, and make dinner so when I come home super late at night, my entire body feeling like it was run over by atruck, I don’t have to cook something. I want to pay you well, okay?”

She slowly blinks as she bites her cheek. A beat passes before she lets out a sigh of resignation, her eyes closing.

“Give me the pen.”

6

BRIAR

I’m not sure how my brother hasn’t caught me yet. Whether it’s the car I’ve had since I was a teenager sitting in the parking garage not that far away from his expensive sports car, or the fact that Elara could quite possibly be one of the noisiest children in the entire world, the fact that I haven’t been made beats me.

“Elara, honey, we need to get dinner ready for Leo, okay?”

She nods, her lips quirked into a sly smile. “Why doesn’t Uncle Owen know we’re here?” she asks me suddenly.

I knew this question was coming.

“It’s not a secret sweet pea. You can mention it to him if you want to.”But please don’t.

“Is it a surprise?”

I think about it for a moment.

“No, it’s not a surprise.” I decide to just be honest with her. “Your Uncle is the best brother to me, and there’s things I haven’t told him about our old place. He’s going to be upset that I didn’t let him fix it.”

Her eyes grow wide. “You kept a secret from Uncle Owen?”

I keep making this harder on myself, don’t I?

I sigh, slapping the chicken breast onto the cutting board in front of me. “No, not a secret really. We don’t do secrets, remember? I just haven’t told him.”

“But you told Mr. Leo?”

She had heard one person call Leo that, and hasn’t stopped since.

“He’s been okay, right? You’re not uncomfortable here?” It’s a question I’ve asked her every day since we started staying here most of the time. We’ve gone back to my place a few times to get some new clothes and things I’ve left, but staying here has just been easier than anything else.

“Mr. Leo is cool,” she nods, grabbing a crayon from the box and grinding it into the coloring book laid out on the kitchen island.

---