Warning Track (Callahan Family #1) - Carrie Aarons Page 0,73
into me as we slept at night, or the shimmy of her hips as she’d dance to random radio songs making breakfast in the morning. I miss the sneaky, flirty glances she’d cast me across a crowded meeting room. I miss everything.
I can’t force her to confront her demons. She has to be the one to do so, and until then I guess I’ll just wait. It feels like everything in my life is hanging on a tightrope between two skyscrapers. My contract, the future of my career, my future with Colleen, the need to figure out how we could move forward if she does decide that she wants to do this.
Meanwhile, my heart, and my stomach, have been in a state of depression I’ve never encountered. I keep thinking, so this is what it feels like to truly break up with someone.
I’ve never, not even as an orphan who fantasized about his biological parents, felt this kind of pain from a loss. It’s sharp and jagged, nagging at my chest twenty-four hours of the day.
The email from Charlie containing the various contracts or offers being proposed sits in my inbox. I’ve barely skimmed it, too heartbroken and emotional to make a rational decision. Plus, part of me just doesn’t want to move on from this moment. If I take a step forward, it means I’m moving out of this phase, which includes Colleen.
Now that we’re through, it almost doesn’t make sense to stay here. It would be too painful, seeing her almost every day. And I wouldn’t dare trying to throw her off her game as general manager, she’s far too talented and good at her job for me to be a distraction.
I wish I could just show up, demand that she stop being so stubborn and let me in. I may have pushed her, but I wasn’t wrong. Since the first time we bumped into each other in that hallway, she was cowering in the shadow of her father’s mistakes. It’s time to walk out of that darkness, since I see it cloud her face at each mention of him.
She might think breaking things off is noble, that it saved us scandal and drama, but I’m not convinced. Because I feel like shit warmed over now that we’re not together. All of my happiest moments in the league, all the accomplishments and rings and feelings of being a champion combined can’t fill the gaping hole of Colleen in my life. That’s how I know she’s more important than anything.
Right now, I have no idea what my future holds. But there is a ticking clock counting down in the back of my head, like something out of Peter Pan. Eventually, it’s going to catch up to me, like that goddamn crocodile.
And if I haven’t made the right decision, whatever that may be, it’s going to swallow me whole.
35
Colleen
It’s been almost two weeks since I broke up with Hayes in my kitchen, and it’s not gotten easier when we accidentally bump into each other.
Case in point, this very moment. I’m walking to my car, trying to avoid the player’s exit and taking a different way out of the parking lot, but apparently Hayes has chosen this exit for the exact same reason.
Ever since the night of the attack, I’ve been cautious about what time I leave and that I’m always in view of a security guard. If I don’t have someone to walk me out, most times in the past I’ve asked Hayes or Walker, I contact Gerald and he comes with me. Most of the fear of being assaulted again has faded as the months have passed, mostly because I have too much going on both personal and professional to be weighed down by the psychological trauma I know is still looming in the back of my brain. But it seems, for now, I’ve locked it safely in a box to be addressed at a later time. Probably when the trial starts, which will be a perfectly opportune time for another mental breakdown.
Gerald and I are walking side by side when Hayes comes out of the stairwell a few feet in front of us.
“Oh, I …” His eyes are shifty as he sees me, and my heart seizes at the sight of him.
I’ve barely let myself acknowledge him, the pain in my chest too overwhelming if I really took him all in. But now his gorgeousness is smacking me in the face, and there is nowhere to run.