“Well…” He stands up and walks around the table to his plush leather swivel armchair.
“It appears I’ve offended your fiancé.” He smirks toward Maverick who is scowling so deeply I’m sure his face is going to break in half.
“Beth, the law doesn’t quite work like tha-”
I stand and grab my backpack. The leather seats have telltale dents of my presence in the room.
“I may not be a law school grad, but here’s what I do know.” I pause for effect, watching as their eyes shift to me. “This entire arrangement does not constitute a legally binding agreement. You cannot force me to marry you nor can you stop me from returning your fucking money.” I point at Maverick who is now glaring at me.
“If I want to walk out of this entire arrangement, I can and so help me God, I will!” Maverick is on his feet and crossing the room towards me. “Stop! Don’t you freaking touch me! I’m so sick of all you rich people and your self-absorbed shit!” My tears surprise me, and I roughly wipe my eyes so I can see, but I’m not done yet. “I don’t owe you anything that can’t be returned with the press of a button, Maverick, and it would do you well to remember that!”
I storm out of the office, slamming the door behind me.
10
Suzanna’s long toned legs dangle out of my new deep red Aventador, adding the final stroke to my ego. After Beth’s stunt at Collin’s yesterday, I was inspired to get a new ride. Burning money cures all ills, not that Beth would know anything about that, but she surely made me sick.
That impoverished brunette is nothing short of ungrateful and I plan to bend her arm until she cries uncle.
“This is a hot ride, Maverick.” Suzanna fawns over the interior, slowly trailing her bony fingers along the Lamborghini dashboard.
“Yeah. She is a beauty,” I drawl, opening the wings and getting out in time to see Beth shuffling toward the building, wearing what appears to be a clean uniform. By my count, that may well be the last one.
When I glance over at Suzanna, there’s a wicked smile on her face as she watches Beth head for the steps.
“Is it going to be a good day, baby face?” I ask and she blushes like a puppy being told it’s a good girl.
Suzanna is anything but good, and I find that spunk entertaining, to say the very least.
“Do more than just the uniform today. She can always get a new one at the office welfare,” I instruct, and she beams.
“I love it when you go dark.” Suzanna grins, taking my arm as we stroll by the other students who willingly move out of our way.
I can see Beth fumbling with the padlock on her locker, making no effort to respect the social order of things. I recall her stunt from yesterday and my jaw tightens.
“What do we have for her today?” I ask, keeping my head straight, despite seeing Beth cast a sideways glance at Suzanna’s skirt.
“Something colorful,” she smirks, flipping her glossy hair over her shoulder.
“Looking forward to it.”
“Remember to pick me up after school so I can come by later. Putting snooty outcasts in their place makes me hot and very bothered.”
I stop at my locker and Suzanna lingers. “I can’t later.”
“Why not?” She asks, but I shut her down with a stare.
She pouts, but thankfully remains quiet. She wants an excuse, and though I know I don’t need to, I bend a little, just to appease her.
“Don’t pout,” I whisper playfully into her ear, “it’ll ruin your makeup.”
“Maverick!”
I’ve spent months doing push-ups to the bellowing of that voice. I turn around to meet Coach’s stern stare beneath his ball cap.
“Gotta go, sweat pea. Don’t touch the mutt without me being there.” I wink at her playfully and watch as she struts away to go meet her friends. Girls like her are the worst kind of girls. They’re needy, impulsive, and way too damn easy to please. Still, I’d take all of that over Beth’s stubbornness any damn day of the week.
Suzanna and I part ways and I follow Coach’s path all the way to the already opened door. His office is as musky and cluttered as it usually is. There are hockey sticks lining the wall and jerseys in a pile behind the door.
“Sit down,” he commands.
I do as I’m told, taking my time to slouch down in the one available seat across from his packed desk and fixate on the trophy perched on the shelf behind him.
“How is your...umm...immigration status?” he asks, and I ball my fists and roll my eyes in response.
“You left out a ton of details man. Collin filled us in, and she walked out after bitching about illegality and a two-year period. I don’t think I can do this with her.”
Coach rocks back into his green stiff leather squeaking monstrosity of a chair and clasps both hands in his lap. His eyes disappear behind his heavy lids for a moment and he nods.
“Maverick,” his voice is low and grating, “I got a call from Coach Byron this morning.”
My ears perk up immediately. Coach Byron is an elite recruiter with all the right teams and expert connections.
“Can you guess where he was calling from?” I press my lips together, knowing better than to answer a rhetorical question. “Madison Square Garden,” he continues, enunciating the words with the reverence they deserve.
“What did he want?” I ask, trying to play it cool. I’d bloody well love to be a Ranger, but I’m not about to grovel to get in.
Coach’s eyes open slowly. “He wanted to come to one of our upcoming games with a few of his friends to check out the local talent.”
“That’s great! He wants to see me.” I grin. Local talent is my pseudonym.
“Your name was not on the list.” Coach grunts with a sarcastic chuckle.
“What the hell do you mean my name wasn’t on the list?” I lean forward, moving a directory on his desk out of the way.
“Apparently he got wind of your immigration status from a friend. He won’t say who. He doesn’t think you’re a,” he pauses and my knuckles crack as I clench and unclench my fists.
“He doesn’t think I’m a what?!” I yell at him, standing up.
A small smile creeps onto his lips and he looks up at me with a pity. “He doesn’t think you’re a worthwhile investment.”
What the hell? Not a worthwhile investment? Do these people want to win or what?
“Are you sure he was talking about me?” I ask, “Because I’m the only worthy investment in this shithole of a school.”
Coach laughs. “To you, perhaps. But what are you worth to anyone here, to any team here if you’re back in England at the beck and call of your Queen?”
Because they couldn’t recruit me and sponsor me the way Dean Hamm should have still been sponsoring me? Pile of fucking shit.
“My Queen,” I huff.
“Maverick!” Coach barks, standing up suddenly, his full height eclipsing mine by a few inches. “I’m kicking you off the fucking team.”
“Nice try, Coach. You can’t do that.” I chuckle, but his beet red face only gets redder. Something tells me that he isn’t joking.
“You’re joking. Tell me you’re joking. Coach! You can’t do that! This team is nothing without me. You would be a fool to think otherwise. Who is going to carry the team? Henriquez? Are you kidding me? Are you seriously, fucking, kidding me?” My fingers are in my hair, raking the shit of my scalp. To say that I’m nervous, frustrated, on the edge of all edges, would be the understatement of the whole damn year.
“You won’t be here. You won’t do what’s required to be here. You don’t care. We covered this yesterday. We gave you a solution, yet here you are, sitting down before me, whining about the only solution you seem to have because it doesn’t fit neatly into your box of preferences. Well, Maverick, I hate to break it to you, but you don’t fit neatly into anybody’s box of preference right now. Not the teams’, not the school’s and not the country’s. I do hope you’ve packed your bags, Maverick, because
you’re on your way out of here.”
“Bullshit! I don’t know what kind of mind games you’re playing, but it’s not going to work.” Who the hell kicks their star player out of the country? Who the hell turns their back on the one person who is a fucking guaranteed paycheck? It’s not my ego talking. The stats are the stats for a reason, and they say that I am worth the investment. None of this makes a lick of sense. None. Of. It.
Coach pulls a clipboard from the locker and walks over to where I’m standing. He shoves it at me, and I read the official line up for the upcoming season.
“I’m not on it,” I growl.
“This team was selected by our investors. These are the players they want on the ice.”
“So you’re benching me for an entire season? Nobody will get to see me play. How the hell do you see that working out?”
“Perfectly for the players who get drafted,” he says, taking his seat. I toss the clipboard onto his messy table and head for the door.
“Maverick…”
“What?” I spin around and grunt through gritted teeth with my nostrils flaring.
“It didn’t have to come to this. Get yourself sorted and I’ll see what I can do for you. You’re the best we have, yes. But you’re also a ticking timebomb. Nobody wants to invest in a ticking timebomb.”
I slam the door shut and walk out into the hallway where I’m greeted by a throng of giggling school girls. Now is not the time for flirting. I don’t have the energy to be the center of their worlds right now. Not when mine is spinning on its head.
I need to go find this moron so we can go fix my life.
The giggles turn to laughter and it doesn’t take me very long to realize that they aren’t actually giggling at me. When I turn the corner, I spot Beth frantically running to the restroom with bright green slime dripping all over her. Suzanna and her girls are all having the time of their lives. Didn’t I fucking tell her not to pull anything without me?
Shit.
Fuck.
“She’s going to have to cut her hair to get it all out,” I hear Monica chuckle, giving Emily a high-five. Ordinarily, I’d be pleased with such a display of creativity, but I’m too pissed to see the art in their work – in work I set into motion.
“Move,” I growl at the redhead making eyes at me in the bathroom doorway.
She scampers away and the girls snickering by the sink squeal when they see me.
“Get out.”
I’ve never been inside the girl’s restroom before and I never imagined that I’d be chasing after Bethany when I made my big debut. But here I am. Leaning against the sink with my arms across my chest, watching Beth’s poorly dressed feet bounce as she tries to stifle sobs.
“Come out and let me see the damage.”
“Maverick?” She sounds angry enough for murder. “What the hell are you doing in here?”
“Get out here, Beth.”
“This is your fault!” She barks the words at me. She’s not wrong. Of course, she’s not. But I’m not exactly going to admit that, am I?
“Listen, Beth. I don’t have time for all this. You’re either coming out or I’m breaking this door down and coming in.”
Her feet stop bouncing and she goes quiet. I give her a few seconds to decide her own fate because I intend to keep my word.
Lucky for her, she opens the door slowly and emerges, a slime covered mess.
“Cute,” I mutter dryly. “Clean this mess up. We have a shoot later,” I inform her, taking no interest into how exactly this mess would actually be cleaned.
“What?”
I can’t see her expression through the grime, but I can hear in her voice that she’s gawking at me.
“Your little rant yesterday? We’re just going to pretend that didn’t happen.”
“Well it-”
“Shut up, Beth,” I snap, and am surprised in my success at silencing her. “I’m doing this. You’re going to do this and you’re not going to be late. I’m taking no shit from you today, do you understand?”
She wipes away the slime dripping down her forehead with the back of her hand, smearing her face even more.
I roll my eyes at her and through gritted teeth, continue, “You’re meeting me this evening after school at Neiman Marcus and you’re bringing your best smile. Don’t be late.”
My eyes haven’t left the top of her goo covered head despite her staring at me with a deep frown.
“And if I refuse?” She pouts and I lean forward, levelling my face with hers.
“Then you’ll return every last penny to my account before the end of the bloody day.”
11
A quick poke around in the university of Google told me that I had to go back home to get cleaned up. I’d waited inside the stall after Maverick’s humiliating visit for what felt like ages. There were scuffles outside and the snickering of girls who made no attempt to hide the fact that they knew I was in there.
On the bus, there were awkward stares from commuters despite my efforts to cover my head with a sweater. All of that to the side, Suzanna and Maverick managed to only take second place in the never-ending crap fest that is often my life.
I don’t feel any colossal changes in the atmosphere as I climb the steps of our rundown condo, passing old lady Jenkins in the passageway leaving food out for stray cats. Nothing seems out of place as I fight with the door handle of our rickety front door and kick it three times before it finally opens.
All of those things are normal.
What greets me when the door finally gives way, is not.
“Mom? Dad? What’s going on? Why are you home?” I ask, trying to keep the panic that’s rushing through my veins out of my voice.
“We should be asking you that. Why are you here, Beth?” I can tell from her swollen, red face and the creaking in her voice that she’s been crying.
I drag the sweater off my head to reveal the mess that lies beneath, but something tells me this mess before me will be worse.
“Your turn,” I whisper.
“We got let go today,” Dad speaks up when Mom starts crying again.
I’m still frozen by the doorway, surveying the room as if this entire space is new to me.
The old worn out carpet with the peanut butter stain looks foreign to me. The couch looks like something from a movie I’d seen a long time ago.
My knees buckle beneath me as I try to accept this news. My parents have worked hard all their lives...all my life. They’ve both given over twenty years of service to the same company and were just inches away from retirement.
I know how much Dad was looking forward to his pension helping him out, but with this massive dump, and from Mom’s reaction, I’m guessing there were no payouts.
“What happened?” I ask, my voice still an echo of its usual tone.
“The higher-ups came in and said that the company is about to go belly up and they have to make major cuts.”
Suddenly, the slime in my hair feels irrelevant.
What the hell are we going to do?
Mom has a wad of bills in her hand and a calculator and I don’t need to ask if we have enough to cover everything because I already know we don’t. We never do.
This seems terribly unfair. If anyone deserves to make it to retirement it is definitely these two.
“Don’t worry about it, Beth. Everything is going to work out fine, okay?” Dad nods at me, trying to muster up a smile but it doesn’t reach his eyes.
“We’re going to go back out there and start looking for jobs. We just need today to gather ourselves and do inventory,” Mom adds, making no attempt to smile.
“We need to figure out where we are. We had budgeted for this month’s bills with next month’s pay cheque so we need to see how much we can squeeze into that with what we’ve got.”
“Didn’t they give you guys a severance package?”
I already know the answer, but still feel the urge to clutch at straws anyway.
“No s
weetie. I’m so sorry. And with college not so far away-”
“Dad!” I gasp. Is he really worrying about that right now? “That’s not as important as keeping food on the table or a roof over our heads right now,” I assure him, but his glum features don’t change even fractionally.
The universe seems to have lost her fucking mind. This imbalance is not even a little bit justified. Somewhere on the other end of the city, there is an ego maniac with too much money and no human decency to note, wasting all the cash my family needs on meaningless crap, just to make himself look good and feel better.
“I’ll do what needs to be done. I’ll pick up more of the slack around here. You shouldn’t have to be working so hard. It’s not fair.”
I finally find the strength to walk over to them and sink down before them on the floor. “Everything is going to be fine, okay?”
Maverick’s words reverberate in my head as I watch my mother become a puddle of tears in my father’s arms.
I hate him and I hate that I feel trapped, but this isn’t just about me.
As I watch my parents console each other, I make up my mind to excel in this role. I’ll make the next two years of my life as tolerable as possible to make sure that these people sitting in front of me never have to suffer. Not if I can help it.
The money in my account is more than enough to take care of this month’s bills and if I keep doing what I need to do then we’ll be set for a while.
University will always be around, and I’ve got the grades to secure at least a scholarship or two. My mind frantically chases every new idea in search of a solution where we all wind up happy, but I’m coming up blank every time because happiness does not look like waking up next to Maverick every morning. And happiness sure as shit won’t be the look on my father’s face when he learns that I married a man to pay the bills.
But it’s either happiness or a roof over our heads.
Doesn’t seem like much of a choice.
Vile Intentions: A Dark Sports Bully Romance Page 6
