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“Love you too, honey. Safe travels.” She ended the call.
I clutched my phone, knowing I had roughly seven hours of flying to make up a story that was good enough to appease Ally. I didn’t like lying to my best friend, but I couldn’t tell her the truth.
My eyes burning, I watched Champion stride straight to my gate. I filled my vision with the sight of him, getting my last fix.
Apparently, I meant more to him than I’d thought. Even after I stood him up and took off without another word, he’d come looking for me. In the right place that was the wrong place.
An analogy could be made to us and our time together. We felt right, but only temporarily. It wasn’t real life.
Moving to the window after the agent said something to him that made him frown, Champion looked right at my plane. He saw me. Across the distance separating us, I felt him, and longing welled inside me.
Without even thinking about it, I put my palm to the glass. Even temporary, he was nearly impossible to give up. A hot tear tracked down my cheek as he placed his hand on the glass window from his position inside the terminal.
“Good-bye,” I mouthed as my plane started to back away.
The pressure in my chest building to a sharp and painful crescendo, the last fragile cord binding us together snapped. It hurt losing that connection to him, but I knew going in what would inevitably happen after our brief time together was through.
I just hadn’t anticipated the end hurting this bad.
Champion
“DRINK THIS.” ZACK slid into the captain’s chair across the small table from me on Morris’s private plane.
“No, man.” I pushed the crystal tumbler with the block of ice and a double shot of Four Roses whiskey back across the shiny teak surface toward him.
“Drink it,” he said again and slid the glass back toward me. “No need to be sober. You’re not driving home when we land, are you?” He arched an inquiring brow.
“No, I’m using the car service.”
I cupped the whiskey between my hands. Warming it, I watched him tip back his glass mug, swallowing the rest of his amber beverage. I knew it was a Shiner beer. That was his favorite drink, like the Four Roses was mine.
“You moped around the villa all fucking week.” He made a face that he wouldn’t want to show up on the cover of a sports magazine. “You turned down diving at the wall and the Jeep tour of Annaly Bay. It was depressing as hell being around you.”
I shrugged. “Sorry I was shitty company.”
Knowing I was a miserable wretch, I’d kept to myself after Electra left, but I managed to put a little effort into doing those things Trinidad had suggested. I read a book, but I couldn’t remember the story. I swam laps every day to the point of exhaustion, but my mind still ran in circles. Whatever the reason, Mercedes’ call or my age—it certainly wasn’t my performance—I’d screwed it up and Electra had taken off.
The message was clear. The man behind the legend didn’t appeal to her.
“You ready to talk about this chick yet?” Zack asked softly. Soft was uncharacteristic for him, which meant I might be in worse shape than I’d imagined.
“Trinidad told you.” I narrowed my gaze when Zack nodded. “Nothing to talk about. It was just a one-night stand,” I muttered bitterly and turned my head to look out the window so he wouldn’t see the lie in my eyes.
“Doesn’t seem like it was a typical hookup for you,” he said, giving me a pointed look when I returned my gaze to him.
“Doesn’t matter what it seemed like.” I sighed heavily. “She made her feelings clear when she stood me up.”
Talking to Zack wouldn’t change anything. Stalking Electra on the internet wouldn’t either. I had enough information to locate her, having her last name and discovering that her plane had been bound for DFW. She lived in the metroplex. Close enough for us to do something with what we’d started, but without her on the same page about our night together, we were just books shelved in libraries on opposite sides of the globe.
“I’ve known you a long time, Champ.” My best friend knocked on the platinum SM inlay, only the best for Simon’s jet.
Well, the best his money could buy. I suspected what he really wanted was Mercedes, and she couldn’t be bought.
“Do you remember when we first met?” Zack asked.
“At the practice field when you came into the league seven years ago.” I nodded, wondering where he was going with this.
“You told me to forget everything I learned in college,” he said, both his tone and expression turning reflective. “That I’d have to start at square one if I wanted to play pro-level ball.”
