“Not even,” I said, suppressing the urge to just round the counter right now and plant a giant kiss on his forehead. “I really do appreciate the concern, Adam, but it doesn’t matter. I’m not sure it would’ve changed things at the time and at this point, I’m just done thinking about Caspar. Yesterday was pretty good closure,” I said, warmth in my cheeks as I remembered the words Adam had said yesterday. The speech he made that I told myself was all an act, despite the fact that I was pretty sure it wasn’t. “And even if there wasn’t that closure, I could never look at him the same after all those completely shitty things he said.”
I’d barely finished my sentence before the thought of Schilling popped up.
Ugh. I wrinkled my nose. And for the next thirty seconds, the topic of what Caspar said lingered palpably in the air, the whole house silent save for the sounds of basketball and my chopping.
Peering up, I smirked. “Wow. I’m impressed,” I said.
“What?”
“You usually have zero impulse control but you’re refraining from asking me about the whole Schilling comment he made.”
Adam laughed. “If I had zero impulse control, you would’ve been naked and fucked on multiple surfaces of the office already,” he said with such confidence that I felt a little shudder. “But yeah,” he relented after another second of silence. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious about whatever happened with him.”
Him. As in Simon Schilling.
Everyone in the sports world knew his name. Back when I knew him, he was just a superstar agent. Now he was the VP of Roth Talent Agency.
Also known as RTA, our direct competition.
“I met him when I was a sophomore. He was my professor for sports law,” I said before explaining just how coveted that particular course was.
Everyone in my major scrambled to get that class every year, because everyone knew that Schilling always awarded one lucky student an internship with RTA that included a front row seat to the MLB Winter Meetings—which was basically heaven for anyone interested in the business side of baseball.
“We learned negotiation strategies, participated in mock negotiations.”
“I’m assuming you crushed that shit.”
“I was definitely top of the class,” I said, grinning when Adam held up his hand for a high five, which I swiftly returned before getting into the race for the internship. “We had to draft up the best mock contract, and everyone knew it was between me and this kid Corbin because we were the top two students. But between us, Schilling was always heaping more praise on me. Constantly spotlighting me and my work.”
Adam nodded slower now, and I mentally commended him for feeling wary this early in the story, because he was right to. But at the time, even Emily hadn’t suspected anything was fishy.
“I wound up landing the internship and after, Schilling invited me out to meet with him and some other agents from RTA. The first meeting went well. But the second time, it was just us two and Schilling started doing these… little things that I recognized as early trouble.”
I wasn’t looking at Adam as I detailed everything, because I was sliding two baking trays into the oven. But I could actually feel his heated disdain, his rising anger as I talked about how Schilling started doing the things that all girls knew as warning signs, like touching my shoulder a lot. Putting his hand on my back when there was no reason to at all. He even asked if I had a boyfriend and mused about how much attention I probably got for being an attractive woman in a male-dominated field.
“I told my guy friends, but they said it was no big deal and it wasn’t worth getting up in arms about. Basically, they told me not to blow the opportunity by being sensitive and just look past it.”
“Did you?”
I looked up at Adam, feeling a tinge of regret as I said, “Yes. Just out of sheer hope that I was overreacting, because I really wanted that internship. I just wanted to learn. It was RTA. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
Adam nodded, that handsome little frown knit in his brow. “Of course. I understand,” he said.
And while I knew he did, I still took a little while to muster up the strength for the rest of the story, because it’d been awhile since I’d said it aloud. Probably college, actually.
But after getting everything in the oven and grabbing the chicken from the fridge, I went into the start of my internship. How it had been amazing at first.
“I learned so much so fast that it felt like a whole semester of college compressed into one week. It was exhilarating. I loved it so much. But at the same time, I knew my gut feeling about Schilling was right, because he kept it super professional at RTA and barely spoke to me at the office, but at school, he’d always flip a switch and ask me to hang back after class. He started letting his gaze wander more openly. And then he started make comments about how as a woman, I actually had an advantage because I could showcase my ‘assets.’ To catch the eye of future clients.”
The string of expletives that Adam muttered under his breath was so full of disgust and fury that I opted not to say the rest of that part, which was that Schilling would always take that time to drop his eyes to my chest and let them linger.
“At this point, I pretty much knew I was in a bad spot, but I also knew I had only my word against his, and more often than not, he was professional around me, so I essentially just prayed every day that he’d behave so I could keep studying what I loved and showing up to this job I adored without any trouble.”
“But he tried to get you in bed?” Adam asked tightly. I looked up at him.
“Yeah,” I said, which was the short version.
The long version was that Schilling had lured me to stay one day after class by giving me a real, recently-negotiated Major League contract to look at.