Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 100060 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 334(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100060 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 334(@300wpm)
To be one of three, instead of her only one.
I don’t know if the instinct to edge out my competition for her attention will ever fully go away—winning is too deeply ingrained in me—but the edges of that instinct are dulling in the face of what she clearly needs.
We converge on her in the middle of the street, our hands everywhere. Whispering comfort to her. It’s insane. This behavior, this relationship. All of it. But I’ve never experienced anything better in my life. Not when I was named the head coach of the Flare. Not when we won our first championship. Not ever. Nothing compares to her going limp in between us, confident that we won’t let her fall.
She buries her face between Gabe’s pecs and he immediately begins crooning to her, petting her hair. Her fingers slide into mine and squeeze. Tobias, of course, has her rear end parked in his lap—but he doesn’t appear as smug as usual. No, we lock gazes over the top of Elise’s head and I can see he is clearly shaken, like me. Like Gabe.
“Who fucked with you?” Gabe demands to know. Then to us, “Who fucked with her?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out,” I say, bringing her hand to my mouth and kissing her knuckles. “Did you meet with the police?”
“Yes.” A muscle ticks in Tobias’s cheek. “But nothing was missing, so they left rather quickly.”
“Nothing was missing?” Gabe echoes. “I don’t understand.”
“Actually…” Elise takes a deep breath. “Something was missing.”
Across the street, one of the neighbors is watching the three of us comfort Elise with his mouth open, garden hose forgotten in his hand, water splashing all over the sidewalk. “We should go inside.”
“Tram Fam is on the move,” Tobias says into a fake headset.
We remain crowded around Elise all the way to the front door, like a pack of security guards protecting a Kardashian. When we get inside, Gabe’s house is exactly as I expected it to be. Cement and paint splattered work boots are discarded in the mud room. The sound of television sports emanates from the back of the house, the furniture is beat up, functional brown leather. It smells like a combination of microwave meals and aftershave, the latter of which is so fresh, he must have splashed it on right before he got here.
Fair enough. I reapplied deodorant while speeding over the Queensboro Bridge.
I’m sure Tobias checked his hair eighty times in the rearview.
We’re all fucked for this girl.
“Gabe…” She bestows an incredible smile on him. “I love your house.”
“Move in,” he blurts, his face immediately turning the color of a stoplight.
She laughs and my reaction to her amusement is like having the wind knocked out of me. I forget how to breathe for a second. I’ve been hit with her being in danger and that laugh, all in the space of a couple of hours, and it’s leaving me unbalanced.
In need of her balance.
I swallow a croak of her name.
But it’s almost like she hears it anyway, her eyes tripping over to me. “I want to explain now. I just need to get it out, okay?”
Tobias sits down on the couch and pats his knee for Elise to sit, but she shakes her head.
He frowns and falls back into the cushions.
“You three remember that morning you showed up at my place of work to see me again, a totally inappropriate thing to do?”
A chorus of hums from us men. Gabe hangs his head until Tobias kicks him, gesturing for him to stop slouching. What are we becoming?
“Well. That morning, I told you I was following a story about Gabe’s union boss, Jameson Crouch, right?” We all seem to watch with rapt attention as her throat moves in a swallow. “He’s in a feud with the mayor. You’ve all seen it in the paper, right? On the news…” She tucks some hair behind one ear and my fingers flex in response. “Well, I started to notice that the accusations against the mayor were so specific. I wanted to prove myself to Karina, so I…I pursued my hunch that there was a mole feeding Crouch information. I started with Deputy Mayor Alexander and it turned out to be the right lead. I followed him to a meeting with Crouch that evening on Roosevelt Island.” She looks at me, wetting her lips. “Banks, when you asked me if I’d dropped the story, I should have told you this part. At the Local 401 party, I overheard them making plans about leaking those emails about the governor.” Heavy seconds go by. “And I took a picture of them speaking, exchanging a thumb drive. A picture that is now missing from my apartment, but still on my phone. They might have been looking for my laptop, maybe to see what I knew? But I brought it with me to the rugby game. I have it with me now.”