Page 45 of The Wrong Play

Not that they really knew what I was doing with it. They just knew it was growing.

“Dude,should we be concerned that you’re handling all our investments?” Matty had asked once.

“Not unless you want to be poor,” I’d answered.

That had shut him up. Matty had grown up poor—like his dog had to lean against the fence to bark kind of poor—his words not mine, since I didn’t even know what that meant. It was probably supposed to be funny, but since Matty wasn’t funny, it just made no sense.

But I digress…

Hacking, tracking, reading numbers—it all came naturally. And right now, all of those skills were being put to good use.

Because Riley St. James?

I was learning everything about her.

I pulled up her credit card statement, scrolling through her transactions. My girl did not have my spending habits. She spent almost…nothing.

Riley was on the base plan for the campus dining hall, which means that she got two meals a day of their cheapest meal option, and her last grocery store trip had been almost three weeks ago. The receipt showed protein bars, soup, electrolyte drinks—shit you bought when you weren’t feeling well—or you couldn’t afford anything else and were just trying to get the most bang for your buck.

Was she sick? Because the money problems didn’t make sense. I’d found her birth certificate…and then her parents. And they were rich, North Carolina high-society people.

Unless they’d cut her off for some reason.

But why would they have cut off the most perfect little angel baby on earth?

I frowned again because I didn’t like when I couldn’t figure things out, and I especially didn’t like that I couldn’t find out everything I wanted to know about my future wife.

I pulled up her medical history—nothing easy to find, of course, but I had my ways.Chronic fatigue disorder.Periodic flare-ups.

The words sat heavy in my chest. I didn’t know much about her yet, obviously—I hadn’t been watching her long enough to notice anything was off—but this? This changed things.

Chronic meant long-term. It meant this wasn’t just some temporary thing she’d get over.

I clenched my jaw.

That explained the transaction gaps, the lack of social charges. She wasn’t just avoiding people—she probablycouldn’tgo out sometimes.

Fuck.

I didn’t like not knowing what I was dealing with. I didn’t like that I’d just assumed she wasfinewhen, clearly, she wasn’t. Had I missed a sign last night? Had she seemed tired when we were talking? Was this something that made her life harder every day, or only sometimes?

I had no idea.

And I hated that.

I leaned back, tapping my fingers against my desk, already pulling up articles, medical journals, anything I could get my hands on. I needed to know what this meant, how bad it could get, what I was supposed to do with this information.

Because if she was sick, if she was dealing with this every day and pretending like she wasn’t, then I needed to catch up. Fast.

I needed to know how much she could handle, how much I could push, what she’d need from me—whether she wanted my help or not.

I leaned back, running a hand down my face.

I didn’t know much about Riley yet.

But I knew one thing.

She was mine now. And I took care of what was mine.

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