Brandon was still standing with Dak.
His legs were slightly apart. He was wearing jeans and a team sweatshirt. He was so big and broad and handsome. I thought about the way he sounded when he laughed. He didn’t laugh nearly enough. He was serious, as Poppy had pointed out on multiple occasions. Yet, I could get him to laugh. Did that mean anything? It had to. It did.
He must have felt the weight of my stare. He glanced over and made eye contact with me. I felt like an idiot. I was completely turned around in my chair gawking at him. For the first time in our relationship, I felt at a total disadvantage. Like he had all the control and I had none.
Because I was in love with him.
I smiled at him.
He scowled and looked away.
What the fuck was that?
Hurt, I turned back to Eloise and Teri, determined not to let Brandon get the best of me. “So where were we? Discu
ssing doing a TikTok with the cheerleaders at the hospital to solicit donations for fighting kids’ cancers?”
That was what was important here. The kids.
Not my dumb heart, which may have just taken a serious hit.
Dakota had turned in her meeting and smiled. I didn’t mean to make a face, but North had just told me that there was talk. People thought me and Dakota were together and it had been discussed around the organization. There were mixed opinions about it. Players like North didn’t give a shit. The GM might care. The public would invariably have a lot of opinions, half of which would probably be scathing. Comments about the coach and the cheerleader. The cliche of her being my nanny.
None of that thrilled me.
But what worried me was the girls catching wind of it before I could talk to them about it.
Stressed out about what North was saying, I had accidentally scowled at Dakota and now she was sitting in the car on the way home telling me exactly how she felt about what I had done.
“You can just lie in your bed alone tonight,” she said. “You embarrassed me. You were all weird about the meeting, then you were weird about Dak, then you glared at me. Eloise and Teri both saw it. It was so humiliating.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, for the third time. “I didn’t mean to glare at you. It was a general glare. Not one specifically aimed at you.”
She made a sound of exasperation. “Ugh, you’re so grumpy. And I don’t even understand why you’re jealous of every guy who looks at me. It’s stupid.”
Maybe it was. But maybe it was also because I didn’t have her locked and loaded. I had tried to bring up the future and she had brushed it off. I had no clue where we stood exactly. “I’m not jealous,” I lied.
“Dak was flirting with Eloise, not me.”
“Who is Eloise?” I asked, bewildered.
“She’s the social media liaison! The woman who was there today.”
“Oh, right. Sorry, I forgot her name.” I had been seriously distracted by my jealousy. “I wasn’t jealous.”
“Please stop talking.”
That irritated me. “No. I apologized. I’m not sure what else you expect me to do. I’m just stressed out, I wasn’t glaring at you.”
“If you think this is just about a glare, you’re totally missing the point.”
“Then I guess I’m missing the point.”
Dakota wasn’t usually vague with me. She was straightforward and told me what she was feeling. I didn’t know how to deal with this conversation. I didn’t even know what we were fighting about.
I hit my horn when the car in front of me didn’t start moving fast enough at the green light. Dakota jumped.
My phone rang. The caller ID showed up on the dash screen of my car. “Oh, God.” It was my ex-wife. “That’s Willow and Poppy’s mother. I should take this.”