Page 9 of Treat

“Because rent is expensive, Jude,” she said, her cheeks heating as her temper spiked. She bit it back, forcing herself to focus on keeping her job. “I was supposed to move into a new place at the first of the month, but at the last minute, Cora decided to have her boyfriend move in instead. I already paid her but she hasn’t sent it back yet, and since she blocked me I doubt she’s going to, so that’s money I won’t see again. And well, you weren’t here, and I was coming in every week to clean anyway?—”

“Hold on, time out. You’re cleaning my apartment?”

Shit. “Um. Yes.”

“I thought you hired a cleaning service.”

“Yeah, well, I hired myself.” Her cheeks were burning, shame a roiling ball of nausea in her belly, but she forced herself not to look away. “I needed the extra money.”

“Why?” he said, baffled confusion in his pretty blue eyes. “You make plenty.”

Her temper spiked again, and this time, she couldn’t bite it back. “I know you’re a professional hockey player,” she began, trying to moderate her tone and failing miserably, the words slicing through the air like knives, “and your family has money, but for your information, five hundred dollars a week is not enough to live on.”

“What?” he began, but she wasn’t listening.

“Even if I didn’t have student loan payments, which I do,” she continued heatedly even while one part of her brain warned her to tread carefully due to the whole squatting/trespassing thing, “or a car payment, or insurance, or any of the other financial obligations that come with being an adult in late stage capitalism?—”

“Brynn—”

“—like needing toeat, with groceries costing three times as much as they did before Covid,” she fumed, yanking her ankle out of his grip and lurching to her feet—“it would still not be enough to live on.”

He stood a beat behind her. “Something’s wrong here.”

“And since I’m not even gettingthatbecause it’s the ‘off-season’,” she went on, throwing up her hands to put air-quotes aroundoff-season,“that means I’m living on even less, whilestill doing my job, so yes, I’m cleaning your house, and yes, I’m dog sitting for extra cash, and yes, I’m squatting in your apartment, and you can take your ‘you make plenty’ and shove it up your?—"

“Brynn!” he shouted, a foot away from her face.

“What?” she shouted back.

“Are you telling me you stopped getting paid when the season ended?”

“Like you didn’t know that,” she snapped, sarcasm dripping, then the look on his face registered. “Wait, you didn’t know that?”

“And you’re only getting paid five hundred a week?”

“That’s what we agreed on,” she reminded him, all but spitting the words. He looked mad, and it was pissing her off. What right did he have to be mad?

“In Grand Rapids,” he said, his face like a thundercloud, “when it was only part-time. When you agreed to move to Detroit to work for me full-time, I raised it.”

“No, you didn’t,” she scoffed.

“Yes, I did. To one hundred thousand dollars a year.”

Her knees went so weak so fast she’d have fallen if the sink wasn’t right behind her. “What?”

“It took effect in February. And you don’t know anything about it, do you?”

She gave in and slid down, landing on the floor with a thump. “No.”

Tilly, her nap disturbed by the shouting, waddled over to climb into Brynn’s lap. Brynn lifted her hands automatically to stroke, but her eyes were fixed on Jude’s furious face as he dug out his phone. “What are you doing?”

“I’m calling Grant.”

She swallowed. She didn’t want to ask, but she needed to know. “Because I’m fired?”

“What?” He stopped stabbing at the screen long enough to shoot her a furious look. “No. You’re not fired.”

“Okay.” The breath she didn’t realize she was holding whooshed out. “Thank you.”

---