Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 59445 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 297(@200wpm)___ 238(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59445 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 297(@200wpm)___ 238(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
Usually Brynn would’ve already tapped out by now, electing to meet me at my house before I’d even woken up the next morning. But things had changed since I’d made her the head of marketing.
“How are you handling having her focus more on the firm than you?” Hendrix prodded.
“Just fine,” I lied. “I don’t need her attention twenty-four seven,” I continued, shifting in my office chair behind my desk. I’d claimed a smaller office at the marketing firm when I acquired it, knowing I wouldn’t spend all of my time here but wanting a space for myself all the same. “I am capable of functioning as an adult, you know.”
Hendrix burst out laughing, shaking his head. “You keep telling yourself that,” he said. “Wasn’t it Brynn who always brought your books to class because you constantly forgot them?”
I rolled my eyes. “What are you getting at?”
“I’m just saying, you’ve always gravitated toward her in any capacity. It’s not a surprise you’re hanging around while she works late even though you could’ve easily left. It’s not like she needs you to do her job.”
“Whereas I need her to do mine?” I grumbled the question, but we both already knew the answer.
He wasn’t wrong, the over-confident prick, and I appreciated him even more for always calling me out on the bullshit. That’s why our friendship had lasted so many years in the first place.
“Definitely,” he said. “Pretty sure you’d be out at least a billion if she hadn’t stepped up as your personal assistant. No way you’d be as successful without her.”
Couldn’t deny that either. She’d saved me more times than I could count with her brilliant mind and her ability to take a step back and offer non-biased advice on one prospective deal or another.
Brynn had saved me in more ways than she would ever know, starting with the first day I met her.
She’d been a freshman while Hendrix and I were juniors in high school, and I’d already earned an established label of hot jock with daddy’s money—which I absolutely hated. I had girls tripping over me left and right, always saying exactly what they thought I wanted to hear just so they could get a chance to ride in my father’s Porsche to prom.
Not Brynn though.
She worked one of the concessions stands at school games, and the first time I went to buy something—boasting that I could buy the whole stand in a way to try and impress her—she’d rolled her eyes and skimped me on the popcorn. “You don’t get special treatment just because you have money,” she’d said. “You have to earn it. If you don’t, then you’ll never know what’s fake and what’s real.”
Her words had struck something vital in me. Not only had no one ever spoken to me like that before, but she was right. She’d cut to the quick of me because I’d been lamenting about my role in life for years before she came along.
We’d been best friends ever since.
And the second I realized I couldn’t live without her was the second I put her strictly in the off-limits section of my mind. Did it stop the fantasies I had about getting my hands on her body? No. But it kept me in check well enough the past decade.
“How’s the poker game?” Hendrix asked, jarring me back to the present.
“Fine,” I said. “Doyle is still an asshole, but there is no getting around that.”
“I can’t believe he has the balls to cross Gareth at the games like you say he does,” Hendrix said. “I only see Gareth when he comes to the games or the occasional locker room drop-in, but he’s a scary motherfucker, even to me.”
“That’s why I like having him on my side,” I said. Gareth was intimidating as hell with his sleeves of tats and the predominantly pissed off look he boasted on the regular, but he was a smart-as-fuck businessman and an even better friend.
“You talking to Weston?” I heard Savannah’s voice off the screen, and Hendrix looked toward the source of the sound.
The shift in him was immediate, his features completely transforming into a love-struck man with eyes only for her.
“Yeah,” Hendrix answered, and then a flash of red hair popped into the screen right before she leaned over Hendrix so I could see her face too.
“Hi, Weston!” She smiled at me.
“Hi, Savannah,” I said. “How’s my asshole friend treating you?” I asked. She was the contract manager for the Charleston Hurricanes, which my friend Ethan Berkley happened to own.
“Oh stop,” she said, waving me off. “He’s not an asshole.”
Hendrix looked up at her, cocking a brow. “A video of him went viral not two weeks ago because he broke a baseball bat when one of the umpires made a bad call.”
That sounded like Ethan all right, but I hadn’t seen the video. Normally I kept up with as much media coverage on myself and my friends as possible so I could try and stay on top of things, but the last two weeks had been madness. With Brynn transitioning into the new role, we’d worked past dinner almost every night. Not that I had to stay with her, but I wasn’t about to leave her hanging when she’d done the same for me for years.