Page 70 of Elevator Pitch

Chapter 23

[Vee]

“What a game.” Cassandra sighs while glancing at her phone, watching a replay of the aggressive arm twist that sent Ford Sylver to his knees.

My best friend cringes as she stares at the screen.

“Why do you keep watching that?” I admonish her while standing in my kitchen. Cassandra sits at the square high-top table that separates us in the small space.

“It’s like a trainwreck I can’t look away from.”

My thoughts race to the man in charge of these men. So many decisions for Ross to make. How does a team come back from such aggression among members? Will Ford recover? Rumors have it his left shoulder has been a concern for a while. Will Romero get booted from the team? In my opinion, he’s a terrible human being.

Reaching over the table, I cup my hand over her phone to cover the screen, and demand, “Well, look away. I feel terrible for Ford as both a captain and senior member of the team. Not to mention that Romero Valdez is a shit-stirrer.”

Cassandra wrinkles her nose. “But he’s so fine.”

I scrunch my nose in return. “He’s an ass.”

“He has a nice one.”

“Would you stop?” I chuckle while releasing her phone. “We don’t foam at the mouth over adulterers.”

Cassandra sighs. “True that. So, let’s talk about Ross Davis and his fine ass instead.”

“Let’s not,” I counter, because I don’t want to think about Ross.

Ten days. Ten freaking days of nothing.

If I wanted more evidence that our arrangement ended, a stamped ‘expired’ on a contract would be less obvious than this silence.

Then again, I haven’t reached out to him either. What does one say to a man who rocked your world, not once but twice in a night, and then didn’t call the next day or the typical three days later? Is it still a standard three days after one has sex with someone? I’m so out of tune with dating, yet we aren’t dating. We were only supposed to be sleeping together.

Obviously, Ross didn’t want more from me. He didn’t want to level up and start a relationship or call us anything other than what we were—a convenient tryst.

And as much as I want to hate myself for having sex with him, I don’t. That night was special. Ross made me feel beautiful. While our first time was a rush of sensations and frantic energy, the second time was more an exploration of each other.

His fingertips traced over my body. My palms memorized him.

I shiver at the memory. While I’d told Cassandra I had sex with Ross, I tried to downgrade the experience, brushing past the confession, and skipping the finer details. Cassandra wanted more information but something in my face must have told her not to ask.

She’d been a pillar for me through everything with Cameron, and I didn’t want to turn into that overly dependent friend again. This time, the choices had been mine. I’d willingly had sex with Ross Davis, and I hadn’t done it for notoriety. I didn’t want to share the night’s happenings like he was just a notch on my bedpost.

Cassandra knew me better than that anyway. After Cameron’s death, Ross makes only the third man in ten years. The statistic wasn’t impressive, compared to my best friend, the perpetual bachelorette attracted to younger men.

“But you haven’t talked about him at all,” Cassandra pouts.

“What’s there to say? He didn’t call. He’s done.”

Cassandra sits taller on her stool. “Well, that’s not how it works. No one ghosts my best friend and gets away with it, unless he is a ghost, and that’d be a good thing because it spares me the mess of killing him.”

“You’re ridiculous.” I laugh.

“And he owes you an explanation.”

I tilt my head. “But does he? He didn’t ask for more. He didn’t promise it either. It was just sex.”

The declaration is easier said than my true feelings about Ross and that night. About the life-changing, body-reassuring, glorious sex we had.