Page 14 of If All Else Sails
Jacob paying me could be my big break. I happen to know how much Jacob’s athletes make. And I know how much of a percentage he gets. He can’t skimp on paying me the big bucks.
I could ask for an amount that would make a significant dent in my down payment fund. I’d feel icky about it, but it is what it is.
“He needs you,” Jacob says. His thinnest and least persuasive argument by far.
“He needssomething. Not me specifically.”
“You,” he repeats. “Listen—though I really do want him back on the ice, I’m seriously concerned about him. When pro athletes deal with injuries, a great deal of the recovery work is mental. And since Wyatt has holed up in this house I didn’t even know he owned and hasn’t been showing up to his physical therapy appointments or answering his phone, it’s fair to say he could use a friend.”
I’m not his friend. The man didn’t even recognize me in his yard. Still. Jacob’s concern gives me pause.
“So, why aren’tyouhere? If your bestie needs a friend.”
“I’ve just signed two new clients and...”
He drones on about sports things. Negotiations. Contracts. Draft picks. I wipe sweat from my forehead while my eyes glaze over. I should get out of the heat. Even in the shade, the temps have to be cresting ninety degrees. My head throbs again.
“I can’t get away or I would have been there already,” Jacob concludes.
I believe him. But I also believe he didn’t try as hard as he could have, probably assuming I would, per the usual, spring into action the moment he asked.
“Think about it. He’s lost the most important thing in his life. At least temporarily.”
This strikes me as desperately sad. If hockey is the most important thing in Wyatt’s life, I get why he’s burrowing into his own pit of despair in this little murder cottage.
Which, honestly, is the perfect setting for a pit of despair.
“The man is in a dark place,” Jacob says. “Being around you is like taking hits of pure sunshine.”
That’s actually...really nice. So nice that I might be softening a little to his ridiculous plan.
Until the sun pokes out from behind a cloud and I remember being stuck in the back of a cop car.
“I’d appreciate the compliment more if you hadn’t tricked me into coming here and now weren’t trying to manipulate me into an inconvenient favor.” A very profitable inconvenient favor.
This last point is another inconsequential argument for me to stay. Jacob doesn’t seem to have realized, but I am not sunshine for Wyatt. Based on the way he treats me, Wyatt views me more as a tiny dark cloud raining on only his head.
Over the years, anytime I wasn’t avoiding him and we were forced to interact, I was snippy. Snappy. Sarcastic.
In return, he has been surly and sardonic. I suspect he spends time quietly noting all the ways I’m lacking. He probably has a notebook somewhere with a long list.
“Please, Josie. He’s struggling and needs someone.” Jacob pauses. “It’s not just about his career but his life.”
“Well...that sucks for him,” I say finally.
It’s the nicest platitude I can offer, though it comes with a pang of guilt. Because I know I’m being too harsh. Except this is about Wyatt. The man who, as I’m reminded by the bead of sweattrickling down my neck and throb of my head, is responsible for the time I spent in the back of a cop car in cuffs.
But aside from the man in question, I also resent the fact that Jacob is asking this of me. Because while I hate to think this of my own brother, I know his motives aren’t simply altruistic or about his friendship with Wyatt.
“He won’t want me to stay,” I say.
“No, he won’t,” Jacob agrees. “But he doesn’t have a choice. He knows I’ll keep sending people. And now I’ve brought out the big guns.”
“I’m the big guns, huh?”
He chuckles. “You’re like a battleship cannon.”
“Um, thanks?”
