Page 16 of Passing the Red Line
This was my payback, and I enjoyed every single damn second of it.
CHAPTERFOUR
Eliana
Glutton for punishment.
That’s what I am. I am a damn glutton for punishment and don’t give a shit about getting on people's bad side. That has to be it.
Because no way in hell would any sane person go back to the place where her day of relaxation was ruined. A sane person would steer clear of the beach where the grumpy hockey player lives, and not want to interact with him again just to provoke him and get payback. A sane person would find another beach and not see said grumpy hockey player until the season starts up.
That’s what a sane person would do, but apparently, I’m not a sane person if I’m voluntarily going back to the beach that puts me in the vicinity of Christian Rodriguez and his damn grumpiness. For no other reason than to see if I can get under the man’s skin some more and possibly get revenge for him cutting my beach day short.
Like I said, I’m a glutton for punishment.
I should have let it go the first day. I should have ignored the music blasting the second time around and just moved down the beach where it didn’t bother me and continued on with my day. But I didn’t.
I stomped back up to his house with the mindset of breaking in again and turning it off, when I found the door locked, I yelled at the door for a good five minutes before realizing that the asshole left. To top it off, I didn’t decide to leave until I saw a camera in a top corner pointing straight to the door which meant that the bastard was witnessing me go crazy on his door and was probably laughing.
It pissed me off, so I flipped off the camera and decided it was best to head home before I embarrassed myself some more. When I got home, I couldn’t believe that I let a stupid hockey player ruin my day, so I started thinking of ways to get payback.
So here I am, three days later, at the same beach, in a different location with hopes to see gorgeous grumpy asshat so I can annoy him beyond belief like he annoyed me.
Only seems fair.
Is there a point to all of this? No, but if anything, it tells him not to mess with me when the season starts.
There was no photo session for me today with the soccer team, so I was able to make it to the beach this morning after stopping by the grocery store to get food for the day. I had no idea if or when I was going to see my target, so if I was going to spend all day at the ocean shore, I wanted to be prepared for anything.
There is a high chance that I won’t be able to follow through with my plan today and that’s okay. I have the rest of summer to make it happen.
After settling in my chair, with my whole body lathered in sunscreen and a hat covering most of my face, I grab my kindle from my bag and start to feel my shoulders deflate into a sea of calmness.
I wouldn’t say what I do is stressful to say the least, but there are some good days and some bad days. Sometimes getting the perfect picture can be a total headache or the easiest thing in the world.
Right now, things are a cake walk compared to what they will be once I officially start with the Knights, but even then I will have a team behind me that will make things a whole lot easier.
That’s something that I will have to learn though. I’m so used to working on my own and taking care of things myself, that having a team behind me where I can delegate things is going to be a hard thing to get used to.
I’m sure with time, I will get used to it and learn how to work with a team, I just have to get there and not get freaked out by it and quit. This is a job of a lifetime, and I don’t want to fuck it up.
Putting the stress of starting a new job to the side, I continue to read my book for the next hour or so with the occasional people watching the session.
It’s Saturday, so there are a lot more people here than there were earlier in the week, but only a handful. People are out and enjoying the summer sun with their kids and dogs and having fun in the water.
As I watch people jump in and out of the water, I have my ears open to any sounds that may come from behind me. At first, I was listening for music, but when that didn’t come, I started to listen for something else.
Footsteps or voices.
The voices don’t come, which is fine, I don’t need to hear and his bunny going at it in the living room. The footsteps do come about two hours into my beach day, though.
Even through the voice of the families having fun and the waves crashing, I’m able to make out the faintest movement on the porch above me. When I hear movement coming down the stairs, I can’t help but smile at my plan coming alive.
I keep my eyes down on my kindle as if to make whoever is coming down the stairs believe that I’m so enthralled in my book, I don’t notice a single thing.
The smile on my face grows even more when what sounds like an annoyed growl sounds through my ears.
“Excuse me. You’re blocking my beach access,” the grumpy hockey player says from behind me.
