Take the Chance (Top Shelf Romance #9) - Brittainy Cherry Page 0,382

the change is happening at all. So I don’t ask for clarification, because I don’t want an answer I won’t like. Instead I tell her what she needs to hear.

“It’s always going to be me and you, Charlene. Whatever you need, I’ll be that for you.”

All Good Things

Charlene

Things seem to stabilize after we return to Chicago. My panic over losing my best friend because she now has a real half-sister wanes as I realize things haven’t changed all that much. I mean sure, Violet and Lily might be a little closer because they literally share DNA, and she and Sunny can gripe about sore boobs, but it hasn’t changed how much time Violet and I spend together. In fact, once we’re home, Violet and I are together more, rather than less. Darren and I spend a lot of time in coupley situations with Vi and Alex, so I don’t feel like my best friend position has been usurped.

Things between Darren and me are good—great even. He hasn’t shifted from a quiet, introverted, sometimes guarded man to the kind of guy who shares all of his feelings and loves being around lots of people. But there are shifts, and not all of them are subtle.

I now have a rack in his walk-in closet filled with brand new business wear, the kind I can’t afford unless I switch careers and become a high paid escort who works every night of the week. The price tags are always missing, but I’ve done my research. I know what a Fendi suit costs—especially if it’s this season and has been custom tailored to fit me.

One side of the bathroom vanity now houses duplicates of the stuff I keep at home.

Darren also purchased a second dresser to match his, which is where all of my lingerie, new leggings, sleep sets, and panties now reside. When he has home games, he requests that I stay with him almost every night. He’s grown particularly fond of returning from a game or practice to find me snuggled up in my reading chair with either a book or account files I’ve brought home with me. Although admittedly, that chair ends up being used for sex almost as much as it is for reading.

Series three of the playoffs is intense, once again going to game seven, and putting Chicago into the finals. Darren’s stats continue to rise, and with them his anxiety, and his requests for me to stay at his place. I can’t and don’t want to say no, but I worry, more than I let on, about what’s going to happen at the end of the season when the expansion draft finally happens.

I’d like to believe he’s not going to end up on the chopping block, but the truth is, his game keeps improving. Which tells me something incredibly important about Darren. He adapts to his environment and the people in it.

He played only as well as he needed to in order to keep Alex in the limelight. And now he’s playing better to keep his team afloat. As I settle into this new us, I’ve begun to realize this is who he is and how he operates, whether consciously or not. He adjusts himself and his expectations based on someone else’s need.

When his grandparents took away his privacy as a teenager, he found ways to adapt—physically, mentally, emotionally. In his career, he always puts his team’s needs in front of his own, and I believe, in a lot of ways, he does the same with me.

I’m the reason our relationship never progressed. I’m the reason we’ve stayed the same all this time. Whatever I wanted, Darren gave me. He never tried to open the doors I kept locked. Until recently.

He’s always very careful and calculated in the way he manages me. Us. Except now we’re transforming, and I don’t know how to stop it—or if I can, or if I even want to.

Chicago wins the first two home games of the finals, but loses the first away game in Tampa. I worry this will be another seven-game series, making their off season that much shorter, when they could use the extra time to recuperate. I’m relieved when they win the second away game by one goal, and even more relieved when it’s Alex who scores it, and Randy who handles the assist.

I’m already at Darren’s place when he arrives home. For the first time in a long while, he picks out lingerie. I’m unsurprised when he chooses to