Page 45

I don’t know what the hell that was, but it can’t happen again.

It can’t.

I happen to run into Justin as I get off the escalator at the second level and turn into the concourse.

Literally.

“Oof,” he grunts when I spin around the corner. He pulls back and grabs my biceps to steady me. “Whoa, girl. Are you okay?”

I shake my head, and he links his arm through mine and walks me through the concourse and over to one of the Club Level suites.

We collapse into two of the chairs there.

“What’s going on?” he asks quietly.

“I lied,” I say as I stare down at the field. I study the place where Cooper will stand for all the home games, all the practices, all the events. Third base.

Maybe telling Justin the truth is a mistake, or maybe I can finally unload some of this and have someone to lean on when I’m here at the ballpark.

I wonder if Cooper has told anyone.

“About what?” he finally asks after waiting for me to go on.

I draw in a deep breath and exhale it loudly before I answer. “Cooper.”

He presses his lips together. “What about him?”

“My friends took me out for my twenty-first birthday.” It feels like ages ago even though it was literally less than a month ago. “I sat at a blackjack table next to a hot guy who offered to teach me how to play. I spent the whole weekend with him, and we decided to start seeing each other despite the almost twelve-year age gap between us.”

“You spent the weekend with Cooper Noah?” he asks, his tone absolutely incredulous.

“That I did. And then he invited me to his place in San Diego, so I went there for the weekend,” I admit.

“You went to his place in San Diego? Wait a minute…and you didn’t know who he was?”

I shake my head, my eyes still focused on third base. “My friends looked him up, but he’d been long retired and I never paid attention to baseball anyway. How am I supposed to know every player who ever retired? And how was I supposed to know he was planning to un -retire?”

“Because he’s Cooper Fucking Noah, Gabriella. He’s one of the most gorgeous men who has ever played the game. That is how you know,” he says, and I roll my eyes.

“Right. Anyway, we spent some blissful time together, I fell in love with him, and then he showed up as my dad’s houseguest and told me he couldn’t be with me because he’s friends with my dad and blah blah blah.”

“Oh, sweet baby Jesus,” he mutters. “And now Joanie’s making you shadow him.”

“He broke my heart,” I admit quietly.

“I’m so sorry, Gabs.” He reaches over and grabs my hand in his, and he squeezes tightly. “All the more reason to fake it until we make it, right?”

I share some more details about the time Cooper and I spent together. We talk quietly in case someone was to walk up behind us.

“Please don’t tell anyone,” I beg.

“You have my word,” he says. He reaches around my shoulder and draws me in a little closer, and I rest my head on his shoulder, glad I seem to have found a new friend.

He leans down and presses a soft kiss to my temple. It’s nothing more than a friendly gesture—one friend comforting another—but to the man clearing his throat behind us, it must have looked like more.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’m going to walk the one hundred level to see if there are any places where mini centers might fit in to try to get people up to the Spade Level.” Cooper’s voice is flat, emotionless, and if I didn’t know him better, I’d even venture to say it’s a little uncaring. But I know him, and I know that’s not the case.

He just admitted to me when he had me tied up, when his lips were on my throat, that he’s hurting, too. That this is hard on him, too. I’ve been so wrapped up in my own broken heart that I haven’t really stopped to consider that this might be painful for him, too.

And the reason why?

Because he’s the one doing this to us.

If it were up to me, we’d sneak around a while and we’d figure out how to handle my father. I’d find some way to make this work. Instead, he’d rather give up at the first sign of trouble.

I lean over toward Justin and plant a kiss right on his cheek. He gives me a little bit of a warning look that goes undetected by Cooper behind us.

“I’ll talk to you later,” I say to Justin, and then I stand and turn around to face Cooper.

His clenched jaw works back and forth as anger vibrates off him.

“Ready?” I ask as sweetly as I possibly can.

He spins and takes off, and I practically have to run to keep up with him.

“Will you slow down?” I ask, but he ignores my plea as he keeps going, maybe even picking up speed a little.

We make it down to the one hundred level, and since I’m his shadow, I trail a little bit behind him. He doesn’t talk to me at all, doesn’t indicate what he’s thinking or what ideas he has as we walk the entire loop of the Heart Level.

I look around to try to see what he’s seeing. I spot the Vegas Heat logo everywhere. I spot restaurants that have already started building out their booths with their own logos and customizations. I see some empty booths not yet filled by sponsors, and I see other areas where I could imagine a mini circuit or even just one or two of the platforms we were talking about upstairs—a trampoline, maybe, with an attendant or a sign letting people know there’s more stuff like this up on the third floor.

We head down to the field and walk through to the weight room, and I pull my phone out of my pocket to film some footage for the social channels as requested by Joanie. Cooper stops to chat with some guy sitting at a desk in the weight room, still completely ignoring my presence until the guy nods at me and asks who I am.

If not for the question, Cooper would have been completely silent, his jaw still clenched, still working back and forth the whole time. Clearly whatever has gone down between the two of us has struck a nerve with him, and you know what? It struck a nerve with me, too.

Now if I could just get him to talk about it instead of running around ignoring me, maybe we could actually get somewhere.