Brogan (Carolina Reapers 9)

Damn, the house was quiet.

The clock on the stove said it was after eleven p.m., which meant I had about a zero-percent chance of seeing Skye before morning skate tomorrow, given how she’d been not only sleeping through the night, but sleeping past my alarm for practice. I paused midway to the refrigerator, weighing the pros and cons of waking her up just so I could hold her.

Don’t be a selfish dick.

Right. No waking up Skye.

I reached past Fiona’s apple juice and grabbed a bottle of water. Throwing it out would have been the easiest solution, but I couldn’t make myself do it. Kind of like cleaning her stuff out of the drawers upstairs. It had been six days since she’d stormed out of here. Six days without a single word or a text.

Five days since I’d quit trying to call her and decided to give her what she ultimately needed—space.

Five excruciating days of questioning every decision I made when it came to the woman I loved—the woman who might not actually love me.

And that fucking sucked.

A knock sounded at the door before I could twist open the bottle, so I set it down on the counter and headed toward the entryway. “Did you forget something?” I asked as I tugged the door open, fully expecting to see Evie standing on my porch.

Instead, Fiona arched an eyebrow at me. “Expecting someone else?”

My heartbeat stuttered. She was here, and damn did she look good. She was wearing a blue sheath dress that matched her eyes, like she’d come from an office…or a date, and her hair was down, long and loose.

“Evie,” I finally managed to answer, pushing the words through lips I was sure had to be covered in streams of drool at the sight of Fiona. “She just left.”

“She was watching Skye while you were playing in D.C.,” Fiona assumed correctly.

“Yeah.” I stared at her. She stared at me.

The awkwardness of the moment would have been funny if I wasn’t so desperate to pull her into my arms and erase the entire last week. How could something so good, go so wrong, so fast?

She looked away and pursed her lips. “Can I come in? I need to talk to you.”

I stepped back as I nodded, and she swept into the house.

“Were you out…” I couldn’t even bring myself to finish that question. If she was already dating, I’d… You’d what? I had no fucking clue, but it would probably involve a loss of self-control.

Her brow furrowed in confusion.

“You just look…good.” Lame, Grant. So lame. “Not that you don’t always look good, but you’re…” Just quit while you’re behind.

“Oh.” She glanced down her body, like she’d forgotten what she was wearing. “I’d just gotten home from the office, and then I…”

The office. She’d taken another job. She wasn’t coming back to us. Disappointment sank like a rock in my stomach.

She shook her head and her expression changed, anger and frustration radiating from her frame as she crossed her arms over her chest. “I needed to talk to you, but then I remembered that you were playing in D.C., so I just drove around aimlessly for hours, and finally took a gamble that you’d be home.”

“What did you want to talk about?” She still kept up with my schedule. A tiny flicker of hope lit up inside my chest, illuminating the dark thoughts that had kept my head occupied.

“You paid off my student loans, didn’t you?” she asked, her tone leaning toward accusation.

I blinked. “Um. Yeah.”

Her eyes flew wide. “Why would you do that? Did you think I needed some form of extra payment for services rendered or something?”

My head jerked to the side. “I’m sorry, are you asking me if I think you’re a whore?”

She gasped.

Shit, guess I’d read that comment all wrong.

“No,” she ground out. “I’m asking if you felt you had to pay me off for our relationship.”

I cocked an eyebrow at her. “Isn’t that pretty much the same thing?”

She swallowed and seemed to weigh her thoughts. “Why did you pay my loans off, Brogan?”

“Because I didn’t want you feeling any sense of obligation to come back to me.”

Another gasp.

“What the hell did I say wrong this time?” I threw my arms out. “I’m trying to be open, honest, and direct. You know, that whole communication thing you’re supposed to do when you’re in relationships.”

“You didn’t want me to feel like I had to come back to you?” she spat.

“Financially!” I flinched. “Skye is asleep.”

She nodded. “You thought I’d have to return to you for money?” she whispered loudly.

It would have been hilarious, how easily we both slipped into lowering our volumes for the sake of Skye, but nothing about this situation was humorous at the moment.

“For fuck’s sake, it’s like you’re trying to deliberately misunderstand me.” I raked my fingers through my hair, no doubt making it stand up at the edges. “Yes, Fiona. I thought you would come back to your job because you needed the money to pay for your student loans.”