“You’re good at this,” I told her with an appreciative smile.
“Thanks. I get really bored when I travel with Trey, so I end up going down the beauty influencer rabbit hole.”
“Are the other wives really that bad? You can’t hang out with them?”
“Some of them are nice, but like I said, not all of them travel. They have families and stuff. It just so happens that the women who are usually around are the ones I really can’t stand.”
Dinner (or wherever we’re going) is over in Maken, and it takes us forty minutes to drive there.
Since returning from California, I haven’t made it to Maken at all, so I’m not expecting to find a chic French bistro nestled in the heart of town square. It must be new and, judging by the line of people wrapped around the block, very popular.
“Looks like it’ll be a while before we can snag a table.”
“Oh…uh”—she clears her throat—“we’ll be alright. C’mon.”
I don’t pay enough attention to her strange response, and I should have because when we walk into the restaurant, past the two bodyguards stationed at the door, I realize the entire back half of the place has been cordoned off. We can’t even get to the private dining room entrance until we pass through another blockade of bodyguards who recognize Leanna right away, ask to see my ID, jot down whatever information they find pertinent, and then let us both through.
“Sorry, they can be weird like that sometimes,” Leanna tells me, hooking her elbow around mine.
“It’s okay. Just doing their job.”
She smiles and tugs me through the door held open for us by one of the guards, and an intimidating scene unfurls before me: a long table filled with all the Olympic basketball players, along with their girlfriends and wives.
I feel all eyes on us as we step into the room. One gaze in particular carries so much weight it’s hard to keep one foot moving in front of the other. I saw Ben the moment I walked in. My eyes hunted for him, praying and pleading that he would be here among these people. I’m not sure if I’m relieved or worried to find that he is. My gaze barely lingered on him, but it was enough to sear his image into my memory, every detail rendered perfectly: clean-shaven jaw, prominent brow, that ridiculously sexy hair with a hint of wave to it.
He sits in the center of the table, surrounded by people—a fact that makes me inexplicably sad.
“Lele!” Anthony calls out in greeting, shooting to his feet alongside Trey. Trey catches Anthony’s shoulder and pushes him back down in his chair.
“Don’t,” Trey warns.
“I wasn’t going to do anything! Damn, you need to chill!”
It’s very obvious from the mischievous grin on Anthony’s face that he was about to come over and cause trouble just to get a rise out of Trey. Fortunately for the room, Trey reaches us first, bending to kiss Leanna and then shooting me a friendly smile.
“Hey, Raelynn. You guys got here just in time. We were about to order. Come sit.” He ushers us farther into the room and makes a sweeping introduction on my behalf. “Everyone, this is Raelynn. Raelynn, this is the team—”
“Yeah, we met her already, Trey,” someone calls out. I think his name is LaMarcus. He was one of the guys at the diner a few weeks ago. “Same time you did.”
“Yeah, well, not everyone was there that day, so shut up.”
There’s laughter and snickers all around the room as we get led back toward the end of the table where Trey was sitting. There’s a vacant seat beside him, but everyone realizes a beat too late that there’s not another seat right beside that one for me. In fact, there’s not another open seat at the table at all. My cheeks turn into two hot flames. If I weren’t already seen as an outsider, it’s painfully obvious that I am one now.
“She could go get a chair from out there,” a girl says with a noticeably bitter tone. She might as well add, And she can just eat out there too while she’s at it.
Ben stands, his chair screeching, and every eye in the room turns to him.
He doesn’t say a word as he turns and leaves the room, likely to ask someone on staff to bring me a chair, but then a moment later he reappears with one in hand.
I watch in shock as he curves around the table, back to his seat.
I frown, expecting him to continue carrying the chair over to where Leanna and I are standing, but instead he drops it right beside his.
“Move down,” he tells the guy beside him.
The guy looks confused and points over toward us. “There’s plenty of room—”
His words cut off once he gets a good look at Ben’s face.