Page 40 of Play Me
“Yeah. Really.” He rolls the cuffs of his shirtsleeves up his forearms. “You think everyone is against you, but it’s really you against yourself. Face the facts.”
“I didn’t realize you were a philosopher on the side.”
He pins me in my seat with a sharp look. “Look around. I’m doing just fine for myself. It would behoove you to shut your mouth and take notes.”
If it were anyone else in the world saying those things, we’d brawl.
“I see me in you,” he says. “I’ve not been exactly where you are right now, but I can imagine it.”
“You can imagine it?” I lift a brow, not sure what he knows.Doubtful that Renn Brewer could ever understand my shit.“I find that hard to believe.”
Renn finishes his sleeve and adjusts it to his liking before he looks at me again. Once he does, I know the truth. He’s done his research.
He knows.
The room closes in, the walls rapidly encroaching. My heart kicks into overdrive, rushing blood through my veins at warp speed. I haven’t discussed this at length with anyone—not Brooks, not Hartley.No one. I’m not prepared to talk to Renn about it, and I sure as fuck don’t want to talk about it now.
Everything feels urgent, and I’m desperate with no direction. My life is slipping through my fingers, and I’m watching it happen. No matter how tightly I curl them, I can’t stop the grains from falling to the floor.
“A few years ago, my father did some very unscrupulous things to my family,” he says, his temple throbbing. “He’s now living the rest of his life in a cage—that’s how bad it was.”
I still.
“So I’ve been through some shit, my friend,” he says. “And I’ve battled a lot of demons. A lot of guilt. I’ve maneuvered a lot of blame.” He takes a breath, and it feels like the room does, too. “Do you know what I’ve learned?”
I subtly shake my head.
“Every loss doesn’t mean someone fumbled.” He tosses that into the room with the casualness of a weather report. He plants both hands on his desk and levels his attention on me. “I brought you here to try to save you—to give you an opportunity to save yourself. If you don’t want to do that, that’s on you. But you won’t take Astrid down, too.”
I rest my elbows on my knees and hang my head.
His words slice me like a thousand papercuts. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if I was prepared—but I wasn’t. I wasn’t ready to have things brought to the surface and shoved in my face.
I didn’t want to look in this mirror.
As hard as it is to hear, knowing that Renn has some idea of what I’m going through does marginally ease the burden. Just enough to breathe. That small opening reduces the fog in my head and lets me think clearly.
And the first thought that comes through the haze is Astrid.She’s uncomfortable working with me. Renn’s statement echoes throughout my body, winding through my veins like venom. The words are deliberate. She doesn’t just dislike working with me, and she doesn’t just hate me. She’suncomfortablewith me.
Flashes of our interaction in the locker room come rolling back. The wordsIchose. The way I chose to deliver them. The impact they might’ve had …
“But you won’t take Astrid down, too.”
Those thoughts are followed by the memory of her standing in my living room, holding that fucking picture, and the fury andembarrassment I felt—and that I let get to me. That I let spill over to Astrid.
Sure, she’s a savage who has poked me as many times as I’ve needled her. But she’s really an innocent bystander in all of this, and she doesn’t deserve my bullshit.That look in her eyes?Itwaspain.
I’m no better than Breaker.
Fuck.
I sit up, fortified by the clarity in the truth, and clear my throat. “I said a few things more …harshlythan Astrid deserved, and I can man up to that.”
Renn nods.
“Is there any chance she’ll work with me again?”
“There’s zero chance I’m asking her to do that.”
