Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 69847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
“I’ll go ask the coach the time limit.” Ashton stood up and walked away.
Joe got up and walked to the bar, leaving me alone with Titus who’d barely said three words the entire night.
I was so freakin’ bored.
And I almost thanked the stars when my phone rang, giving me something to do.
Ari’s name lit up my screen, along with a photo of her and me in the gardens by our hotel at the last game that she’d attended.
My first smile that night lit my face as I said, “Hey, Ari baby.”
The first thing to register on the end of the line was her sniffling.
“Ari?” I asked, sitting up.
The smile that filled my face quickly fell off the moment she said what she did next.
“Hey, baby,” I said again to the silence.
There was a pause at the end of the line and then, “I thought you’d at least give me a few weeks before you moved on.”
I frowned.
What was she talking about?
“What?” I asked, sounding just as confused as I felt.
My phone beeped, and then I was looking at a picture of myself and a random woman I’d never met before.
The second one came through right on the heels of that. Me kissing the random woman. Deeply and passionately.
In a tux, with someone that I didn’t know in my arms.
Hell, in the photo, I still had Briley’s bracelet that she’d made me before I left on my wrist.
Something inside of me dipped at seeing that photo.
Goddammit, that was just a normal thing for the media to do.
The caption of the photo said ‘trouble in paradise already for defensive end for the Liners.’
I groaned and said, “Baby…”
Then I was listening to her cry.
“I was gone for less than a day, Slone.” She sniffled. “I was…I trusted you.”
I opened my mouth to deny everything, but she hung up before I could.
When I tried to call back, the phone went directly to voice mail, letting me know that she’d shut her phone off.
Or blocked me. Neither one was good.
Well, fuck.
“What the hell was that about?” Titus asked, looking concerned.
I turned the phone to show him the photos and he whistled. “Whomever did that has some excellent Photoshop skills. That looks real as fuck.”
It did.
Which was why it was even more concerning.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
I looked at my watch. “Looks like I’m about to blow this popsicle stand. I’m not going to stay here a single second more with her thinking that.”
If I left now and flew to her, I could be back in time to meet up with the team at our home game in three days.
“Safe flight, bro,” Titus said as I got up.
“Hey, where is he going?” I heard Kay snarl.
I kept walking, not once looking back.
CHAPTER 18
I’m not fucking stupid. I mean, I used to be, but we broke up.
-Hades to Caristonia
CARISTONIA
I’d slept like hell.
Actually, hell was too easy of a word for how I’d slept.
If I had to be completely honest, I’d slept less than a wink, which wasn’t a freakin’ good thing for the day ahead of me.
Even worse, I had three freakin’ shows to do today.
One of which was Simi’s aerial show.
The only good thing about taking over her show was that I could do it without worrying about how I might kill myself.
Simi’s show had moved from super-duper high up to way lower, and there was now a firm net underneath that she used in case she fell.
Being pregnant changed the rules of the circus.
Though not, I’d like to add, being handicapped like me.
Needless to say, the few days that I’d been home had been hell.
I had to admit, though, the circus wasn’t what was on my mind.
Slone was.
Slone’s total one-eighty on me.
How had he gone from being the absolute best person in the world, to the worst?
How had I given him my complete and utter trust, only for him to punt it straight out the window the moment I was no longer there?
I mean, let’s be truthful here. People didn’t usually tell someone their biggest, darkest secret—Briley not being his biologically—and then go and sleep with someone the next night.
Well, even ‘sleeping with someone’ had been implied by that article.
Plucking my phone out of my back pocket, I turned my phone back on and winced when I saw all the missed calls.
Two hundred and thirty-seven missed calls, sixty-one voice mails, and twice as many text messages.
Shit.
I ignored them all and went to the article that was still up in my web browser.
The one my sister had sent me with a cynical smirk on her face and glee in her eyes.
She liked that I’d given myself over to Slone. What she didn’t like was that I’d started to genuinely like him.
She didn’t like anyone that would take me away from her.
And to be completely honest, Hades had never been completely ‘there’ when it came to who she loved.