Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 115308 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115308 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
“That was last year. Your behavior has changed since then.”
“Is it mandatory?”
Whatever he heard in my tone made the gaffer huff, “Nope. For now.”
Without a word, I strode out of his office. Every single one of my team members looked at me expectantly, like they’d known I was walking to my possible doom. I grinned, spreading my arms wide. “Since you clearly all find me so pretty you can’t look elsewhere, you’ll be pleased to know you’ll be looking at my sexy mug for the foreseeable future.”
A few good-natured “fuck offs” were sent my way, but I saw the genuine relief on their expressions.
On Callan’s and John’s too.
But I also saw their worry.
Since I couldn’t deal with it, I winked at them and marched over to my locker to get changed for training.
CHAPTER THREE
MAIA
My gut seemed to be in a constant state of churning. For a month. It had been a month since my breakup with Will and the churning wasn’t just grief. It was from lying and evading.
The truth was I was ashamed by our breakup.
Those old insecurities and fears about people’s perception of me felt like bedbugs crawling all over my skin.
Being rejected by a fiancé who paid out thousands of dollars for an engagement ring surely revealed the truth about my worthiness. Years I’d fought to shed the shame I’d felt because of my mother. The shame piled on me by schoolmates who didn’t care I was already living in hell and decided to make every day worse by reminding me who my mum was and who I was by association. Then there was the shame I felt about leaving her behind after years of parenting her. Layers and layers of shame.
I wished I could wrap myself in my dad and Grace’s love and pride and let everything else be washed away. Yet I couldn’t. When Becky was the first person at work to notice I wasn’t wearing my engagement ring, I lied and said it was being cleaned. Then Beth noticed, and I fobbed her off with the same lie.
For a month.
The only people who knew the truth were Grace and Dad, and I’d sworn them to secrecy until I was ready to explain the situation. Because I didn’t fully understand. I felt at once heartbroken and relieved, and I didn’t know how to make sense of the relief just yet. But there was this feeling of one weight being lifted from my shoulders, only to be replaced by the evasion of truth.
I was now single.
Will and I had broken up.
The future loomed uncertain and not very safe at all.
I was so unbalanced and lost in the chaotic dichotomy of my emotions.
Perhaps that’s why I lost my shit at Baird this morning. After our swim, I’d hurried back to my flat to change into my work clothes. I was shaken by my anger at Baird’s behavior. I hadn’t realized until that moment how attached I’d gotten to him. For weeks I’d been plagued by guilt for not telling him about my breakup because he was one of the few people in my life who seemed to notice the change in my demeanor. It had been on the tip of my tongue to tell him when he’d revealed the whole tabloid fiasco.
Baird McMillan was one of the most frustrating men I’d ever met.
He presented this carefree, jack-the-lad persona to the world, and he was endearing, funny, and charismatic. I loved that about him. He’d kind of pushed his way into my life with his gregarious affection. I couldn’t deny him. It was like telling a golden retriever you didn’t want to be friends. Will hadn’t been all that excited about my burgeoning friendship with Scotland’s hottest Professional League goalkeeper.
Yet Baird had hidden depths that only those close to him ever got to see. He was deeply loyal and would do anything for his friends. He was protective of women, probably because he was raised by a single mum and his big sister. And he was currently spiraling after his head injury. I could see it happening and I didn’t know how to stop it, and he didn’t want to talk about it.
Experimenting with hard drugs was crossing the line, though, and I’d taken it personally when I shouldn’t have. But I also … as much as it would hurt to walk away from a friendship that had quickly become important to me … I couldn’t have that specific kind of chaos in my life.
I couldn’t go back there.
Ever.
Not even for Baird.
With that in mind, my melancholy was multiplied by a hundred that morning as I walked into Pennington’s. I took the lift to the top of the Edwardian building, my heels clacking on the marble-tiled flooring. Smiling at colleagues and murmuring good mornings, I was hoping to get to my office and bury my head in our winter budget. We were always two seasons ahead, so our summer and autumn products were already well underway in terms of ordering, shipping, and merchandising.