Page 32 of More, Daddy (Bluebell Bruisers #3)
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
“Fuck,” I groan, swiping at the dark spots marring my pressed white dress shirt.
“I’m really sorry West,” Denae says quietly. I look over at her, finding her eyes wide and Leah lingering in the door.
“You’re not being a grouchy asshole to Denae, are you?” Leah asks, and my eyes slide to Denae, who gives me an awkward smile.
I return it with as much energy as I can muster. “I’m sorry Denae. It’s not the coffee—I’m sorry,” I apologize and look up, over her head, to where Leah lingers. “We collided and–”
“I spilled my coffee on him,” Denae says, reaching past me to grab her empty mug off the top of the copy machine.
Leah crosses the room. “Bummer.” She looks between me and Denae. “But look at it this way, now you have a reason for Starbucks.”
I swipe hastily at the dark stain that is not at all budging. “I thought you were concerned for my white shirt and,” I lift my boot, looking at the ground. “The old carpet.”
She wrinkles her nose as Denae collects her things. “Sorry again West.” She slips out, leaving just me and Leah.
Leah looks at the spill between my feet.
“Last time I checked, this was a functional copy room at a high school, not my grandma’s living room.
The district needed to put tile in here ages ago.
” She steps on the spill, pushing her foot down until coffee bubbles up around the shiny patent of her pump. “Gross.”
I take my papers from the machine. “I have a spare shirt in my office.”
“Ah,” Leah says, on my heels. “So you didn’t need my concern anyway.” She plops down in the chair across from my desk. I think she’s sat there more often than anyone else combined. “Ready for the staff meeting?”
My hands make a vertical line down my shirt, opening each button.
My white T-shirt underneath is stained, too, so I pull open my drawer and dig for my spare.
Working with sweaty athletes is something that has you storing clean outfits everywhere.
You only drive home covered in a fifteen year old’s nosebleed once to remember the importance of spare clothes.
I nod toward my office door. “Close it.”
She kicks it closed with her purple heel. Reaching behind me, I tug off my T-shirt by the neck, and fish my arms through the new one. Next, I feed each arm through the clean dress shirt, then work on the buttons. Leah files her nails, analyzing her cuticles as I dress.
“You know, I was gonna call these things off. Switch it to quarterly. But when I floated the idea, it got squashed,” Leah says of the staff meeting, which we all know is 90% gossip and 10% talking about the cafeteria menu.
I tuck in my shirt and shrug back into my blazer, then swipe my hand over my hair, opting to leave my hat at my desk.
Leah gets up and pulls open the door, and I follow her into the large conference room where we hold our staff meetings. I nearly cause a pile up at the door when I stop in my tracks. I grab Leah by the elbow and drag her back to me, hissing quietly into her ear, “Why are junior coaches here?”
She yanks her arm from my grasp and scowls at me. “They’re staff members, too. The only reason they didn’t come to the last few is because they were running class for other staff to be here.” She smiles. “Now we just put the students in an assembly. Makes more sense.”
Leah walks away, moving to the head of the table where she always sits. Though I’m certain she thinks of me as her consigliere, and I know she wants me to sit near her, today I decide to sit somewhere else.
“Hey, Mr. Dupont,” Dallas nods, giving me an ear to ear grin.
He seems excited for the staff meeting and truth be told?
Today? I am, too. I take a seat next to Sarah Vicks, the oldest of the junior coaches and new teachers.
She is the women’s water polo junior coach.
Sarah’s blonde hair is always slightly purple from her chlorine-fighting shampoo, and she definitely smells like a pool.
Still, I sit next to her, angle my chair toward her, hold her eyes with mine and greet, “Good morning, Sarah. How have you been?”
The room fills in around me, teachers coming in, chatting, some yawning, most of them with tumblers of coffee from home. I pretend to listen to Sarah tell me all about whatever it is she’s talking about, all the while tracking Briar’s movements. Initially, she was sitting across from us.
Now, though, she’s moved to sit next to Austin Reeves. Leah calls for our attention and starts the meeting, and when I finally let myself fully glance at Briar, I find her eyes already on mine, gaze narrowed, a defiant, bratty expression twisting up her face.
“Now, I’ll pass these out. Everyone give it a thorough read.
If there are any mistakes, email me by the end of the day.
Otherwise, these are what’s going in the SAT prep course packets.
Speak now, people, or forever hold your peace,” she says, shifting her readers to the top of her head as she passes Denae a stack of green papers to pass out.
Chatter begins quietly, as people wait for their handout.
I refuse to look at Briar. She wants me to look. She wants me to be jealous.
What? The same way you wanted her to be jealous of Sarah? Because you sat by Sarah and not her?
I ball my hands into fists in my lap as I stare at Leah, tuning her out completely.
Briar says none of it was a lie. That the only thing that wasn’t true was her being Cadence.
For the sake of argument—not because I’m giving her any chances or the benefit of the doubt—let’s say she only lied about being Cadence because she thought it was the only way I’d consider her. Let’s say that’s true and that everything else, as she said, was true, too.
Filtering through all the things she told me on Veiled , a particular memory comes back. Her dating history. She said she’s only had one serious relationship, and it was her high school boyfriend. She said they dated her junior and senior year .
Briar graduated last year. She still wears her letterman jacket on game days.
That means she and her ex must’ve broken up last year.
And he must’ve attended Bluebell. I narrow my gaze on Austin Reeves, wondering now—is he her ex?
They’re the same age, and Austin graduated last year, too.
And I guess if I think about it, Austin and Briar have been together at fundraisers and pancake breakfasts.
He leans over, and it happens in slow motion as he reaches out, dropping his palm on her shoulder as he curls her body toward him. He brings his lips to her ear, and his Adam’s apple bobs as he whispers something that makes her smile.
I think of the way she begged me not to stop on the training table yesterday, and the way her cheeks flushed when she called me daddy.
Austin leans back, but he’s slow to take his hand off of her, and I find my eyes locked on him.
He gets to casually touch her because they’re the same age, and no one finds him inappropriate when he whispers something in her ear.
It’s not his fault, but hate irrationally blooms in my veins when I look at Austin Reeves.
Not just that he gets to touch her and talk to her casually, but he can be with her.
The two of them can actually fucking be together if they want.
No one would bat an eye.
Dean bumps his leg into mine, and it’s the first time I’m realizing he’s there. With Leah talking, he drops his voice to a whisper so we don’t get in trouble. “You gonna kill Reeves or is that murderous look for the wall?”
I force the tension out of my shoulders as I let out a forced sigh. Chill the fuck out, West. I lean toward Dean, and ignore the way Briar glances back at us curiously. “Didn’t sleep well last night.” The back of my neck grows itchy, and not because I’m lying—I didn’t sleep well last night.
I don’t like being in this room with Briar.
She lied. There is no us.
I thought moving past this would be easy, but this conference room feels like it’s closing in around me, and if I don’t get out, I’ll be smashed alive. I don’t know if I can work around her. I don’t know if I can just move on.
Do I want to move on?
She lied, I remind myself, like a broken record. I don’t need to keep repeating it. I know she lied. I’m living in the aftermath of her goddamn lies, in the ash of her dishonesty.
Pris lied. She said she’d keep an open mind. She said she’d try. She said a lot of things that weren’t true, and hurt me in ways that I never thought was possible. She made me feel bad about who I am, and no matter how fucked up I can get about myself, even I know that was wrong.
I don’t want to go through that kind of heart ache again.
I can’t.
But if she isn’t lying about the rest of it… if how she feels about me, if what she shared with me about her needs and wants—if that’s real…
My heart starts to beat so fast just then, Leah’s voice growing distant as I focus on deep, slow breaths in through my nose and long, controlled breaths out my mouth.
A beat passes and no amount of good breathing or counting out of order is staving off this impending anxiety attack, so I tell Dean I’m not feeling well, and slip out.
A few minutes later, the entire meeting is out and I find myself cursing up a storm under my breath when Briar slips into my office and annoyingly does not lock the door.
Hands splayed against the door, she blinks up at me, her nipples hard behind her navy blue polo. Her blonde hair bounces in another perfectly manicured ponytail, only this time, on top of the ponytail, is a little white satin ribbon, tied into a bow.
I blink at the satin ribbon and finally find her eyes. “You can’t be in here,” I say hoarsely, trying to remember that cheerleaders wear ribbons, that she didn’t wear that to tap into my carnal daddy side, to remind me of that other forbidden thing that lingers between us.