"We're going to get in on the other side!" my brother Camden yells at me with hurried breaths. "Move your ass."
Right this very second, the two of us are being chased by a pair of rent-a-cops. Stadium security. They caught us trying to sneak in to watch the first playoff game of the season. This series is a big deal to us and to the city, and we want the bragging rights to say that we were "there" for at least one playoff game for our hometown team.
We've been running from these two bozos for what seems like forever, because we're not trying to leave the stadium, we're actually still trying to find another way inside. We're counting on the strong probability that eventually these two fat fucks will give up running after us. They don't carry guns and they're not paid enough to put forth the effort. It's just going to take them a minute to realize it.
"Five more minutes and they're going to quit. They're already slowing down." My brother laughs as we continue to sprint around the corner of the massive building. "Let's split up, and I'll meet you inside at the spot."
I turn my head to take another look and notice that one of the men is severely out of breath. Holding his palm to his chest. His body hungry for oxygen. The other guard also notices his partner is in distress and slows down to assist. Camden was right. They're done.
I keep moving and try jiggling a few door handles until I reach a blue painted steel door that's open. It's probably a staff entrance, because it's close to something called the Omni Lounge. Some private area the ball players probably chill in after the game. I get a couple of looks from people walking by but not suspicious ones. That's when I know I'm finally safe. I'm smiling from ear to ear in triumph, not paying attention, when I run into something or rather someone.
"Ouch!"
I run right into her. The most beautiful girl in the entire stadium. The girl I'm going to marry (if I ever do something dumb like get married).
She's definitely my age if not a little younger. Her hair is pulled back into a shiny, jet black ponytail and it shimmies playfully against her honey colored flesh. She's wearing braces, and she's tall and sort of gangly, but her eyes are the shapes of almonds and they dance when she speaks. They brighten her entire face. In fact, they brighten this entire building.
"Watch where you're going, meathead," she says with what I suppose is her angry face. Eyes still sparkling but mouth really serious.
I'm not used to girls talking to me the way that she does. I'm tall for my age and not bad looking at all. Girls usually act goofy, lost for words, and giggle around me. Definitely not this.
"My bad." Is all I manage to respond with while staring at her glossy pink lips. Wondering what section of the city she lives in. Where she goes to school. If she has a boyfriend. If she's ever had a boyfriend.
"Eww, you're all sweaty." She points out the obvious with her face squished up.
I laugh out loud.
"What's so funny?" she asks. Perhaps afraid that I'm laughing at her. I'm not. I'm just amused by her spunk. Most girls find me intimidating. I'm really big for my age. She apparently could care less.
"What school do you go to?" I ask.
"Definitely not yours," she says.
"Can I get your phone number?"
"For what?"
"To call you."
"I'm too young to date."
"I just want to be friends," I lie.
"I don't need any more friends."
"You're hurting my feelings," I say giving her my biggest smile.
"I think you'll be okay." She smiles back.
That smile.
It's like sunshine.
I want to talk longer. I want to ask her a thousand questions. But before we can finish talking, two men walk over and move together to stand in front of her. Forming a human shield with serious "don't fuck with her" looks across their faces.
I've had my share of fights in school and with kids in the neighborhood, but I've never gone toe to toe with a grown man before. Not to mention two. I don't want to look like a pussy in front of her though, so my suicidal ass actually considers throwing my hands up for a moment until I hear my name being bellowed from behind me.
"Cut!"
My brother is flying around the corridor toward me at record breaking speed. At first, I think it's because he's still being chased, but then I quickly realize it's because he thinks I'm in trouble.
Crap.
Cam and I are practically carbon copies of each other. When we run, people notice. Something which isn't a good idea if the plan is to sneak in here and watch the game.
"It's cool." I try throwing my hand up to stop his approach, but it's a little too late. The two beefy dudes get into a defensive formation in response to Camden, and thanks to that we've gotten the attention of too many other people as well.
Including security.
"Is everything all right over here?"
"Dammit, Cutter," my brother mutters only loud enough for me to hear.
"What?" I whisper angrily. "You're the one who came barreling over here like someone had a gun to my head, big goober."
"Everything's fine, sir," I say in an attempt to salvage our evening, although I don't know what we're going to do if the guards ask to see our tickets. We don't have any. "My brother here misread the situation and thought I was in some sort of trouble, so he rushed over. Everything's all good."
One of the beefy dudes standing in front of my dream girl interjects.
"Actually, you both seem to be in some sort of rush. Your brother running through a crowd of people toward us like he was on the attack, and you almost knocking over this young lady rushing to wherever you were headed as well."
"There's no law against running is there?" I smile and say before Camden opens his big mouth, because if he does it's probably going to be something adversarial and then we'll really be up shit's creek.
Then she speaks.
"Oh my God, Percy, it's not a big deal. I'm fine. They didn't do anything. Can't we just go to our seats now?"
The stadium security guard's eyes enlarge. He seems to suddenly recognize the girl and now seems super concerned.
"Sorry to hold you up, miss. Please go take your seat. We can handle this."
I know this means we're about to be thrown out of here. Maybe even detained in the back office if he realizes that we don't have tickets.
I decide to look at her one more time. Commit her pretty face to memory. When I do she blushes and looks away. Before he died, our father taught us a lot about reading body language. He said it was a skill that would save our asses one day, but it's also a superpower I can use to read girls, and I like what her body is saying.
Cheers ring out in the stadium.
The starters on the home team are being introduced onto the stadium floor.
"Come on, Percy. Dad will kill me if he notices that I'm not in my seat."
She glances up at me one last time, whips her silkened ponytail around, and walks away. I continue to watch her as her narrow hips sway behind the two.
"What the hell was that?" my brother asks as we exit the stadium with a security escort and long faces. "Was she someone we were supposed to know? What was up with those two goons guarding her?"
"I'm not sure what that was."
"You should have just said excuse me to her and kept going to the meeting point."
"I know."
"Well I hope you realize that you've just blown our chance at watching a playoff game live. Now we've got to watch it at home like all the other suckers. I've never seen you act like that. She couldn't have been any older than fourteen."
"Probably."
He snaps his fingers in front of my face.
"I don't know what she said to you, but she must be one hell of a girl to get your undivided attention."
"I think she is."
"Well shake it off. It's not like you're ever going to see her again."
I have a feeling that I will though.
It's just a matter of time.
&
nbsp; Two
Sloan
My heart, my liver, my lungs.
My heart, my liver, my lungs.
Every one of my internal organs seems to pulse in tandem with the beat of the song playing inside Lotus. An instrumental, bass heavy, dance song that is as familiar as apple pie on a Friday night in Philadelphia. The energy is so thick inside of the club tonight, that I could cut it with a knife and spread it on a piece of toast.
Endless bodies are winding and coiling around each other on the dance floor. Writhing to the beat in a sexual tango. A prelude of what's to come at the end of the night for some. It's quite a hypnotic experience. Even if you're just watching.
I'm a party girl by nature, but I come to this club specifically for the unique experience, the stunning ambience, and the beautiful people. Working the room of a place like Lotus gives me the most incredible high.
I usually go clubbing with a girlfriend or two, or sometimes with a group of coworkers, but I never stay with them all night. That's no way to meet a man. I'd rather fly solo. I think it was one of my mom's nutty friends who taught me that dating strategy.
I dance to be seen. I dance to sweat. Then I walk around on a complete euphoric high to the music and see who's inside. Stalking my prey much like a lethal predator. Hoping I spot someone worth dancing with, then perhaps exchanging phone numbers with, and maybe even sleeping with. But believe it or not, those kinds of men are very hard to find nowadays. Especially in this city. Talk about six degrees of separation.
I think I personally know or at least know someone that knows almost every single, professional, man between the ages of twenty-five to thirty-five in Philadelphia. It's a smaller pool of men than you would think. Tonight though, I'm not here for any of that. Tonight, I'm planting myself at the bar strictly for the alcohol. After the crappy day I've had at work, all I want to do is get blitzed, because my sales numbers are off.
Way off.
I ran my monthly sales statistics at work a ridiculous total of fourteen times, but the end result was still the same. Disappointing and well below last month's numbers.
Several years ago, I graduated with a degree from the prestigious Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Regretfully, I didn't get into Penn on my own merit, but because my father's fame and wealth bought me a spot. While I was able to keep my head above water academically, I'm actually amazed that I graduated in four years. I was mostly a partier or the type who would rather Netflix and chill–not study. After graduation, I stupidly thought that the school's reputation and the last name on my degree would be enough to land me a sweet position at a Fortune 500.
Boy was I naïve.
When it came time to secure a job after graduation, HR professionals didn't care that my dad was a basketball legend, all they cared about was my skillset–which wasn't that impressive. I was twenty-one years old, with no real job or solid intern experience, and my daddy was paying my rent. All I had was a fancy degree and a pretty smile. No one would hire me.
It was at that moment that I'd finally seen the light. I realized that I had been leaning on my family name like a crutch instead of a ladder. My dependency on my family was stunting my growth, and I didn't like who I had become. It was time to make a change. To stand on my own two feet. So I accepted the first decent job I could land, without my father's help, which was in the pharmaceutical industry. Specifically, pharmaceutical sales.
Drug companies are big in Philadelphia. I'm not exactly sure why, but a lot of big pharma companies have large offices or are headquartered here. I started working as an entry level sales representative for my company a couple months after graduating and have worked my way up to sales manager–leading a team of five. As jobs go, I haven't been working there that long, but I've been working there long enough to know that this low numbers thing isn't going to bode well for me.
When I first started out as a sales rep, it was easy, or at least it was easy for me. Selling pharmaceuticals (in my opinion) is all about being personable, looking your best, and building trust with physicians so that they feel comfortable ordering from me and not someone else. It also doesn't hurt that I get to sell the most popular drug on the market.
Men define their manhood based on their virility. Their dicks. If they can't get it up or keep it up, their whole world ends. It's my job to keep doctors up to their eyeballs in my company's generic brand of Viagra, so that they can prescribe it to their patients, recommend it to their friends, and to give it out like candy. In fact, I'm pretty sure that some of those men think I'm doing the Lord's work.
You'd be surprised about the types of men who want a prescription even if it's under the generic name of Sildenafil. It's not just baby boomers suffering from erectile dysfunction who legitimately want to maintain healthy sex lives with their significant others. It's young guys too, and not because they medically need it. Some are single men who want the drug in order to be able to go all night, and the next night, and the next; and some are not single and want it so that they can keep up with the Mrs. as well as their chick on the side.
So the demand is there. That's actually the easy part. But now that I head my own team of sales reps, my job is much more complicated. It's all about making projections, meeting sales goals, and lots of team building. I'm not only responsible for my own results, but for the productivity of five other people as well. I'm a hard worker, and I want to climb the company ladder, but I'm learning the hard way that meeting productivity expectations isn't as easy as I hoped.
That's why I'm getting drunk.
"You're late tonight."
I turn around toward the stranger's voice and notice a man who looks unimpressively like many of the other men in here (average height, overworked, slightly buzzed) approaching me with a glass of wine in his hand. He's actually my type in a sad sort of way. I tend to go for the corporate shark types. The suit and tie. The man who doesn't look like he's ever put in a hard day of work with his hands. Not because I'm terribly attracted to them, but because I've decided that they are in my best interest.
I have my reasons for this, but if I had to sum it up, I guess I would say that I choose men like him because that's what grown women are supposed to do. Pick men who actually look like adults, act like adults, and not like overgrown kids. I've had enough of that to last a lifetime.
I grew up as the daughter of Dan Pearson. My father was a bona fide superstar in his day. A point guard for the Philadelphia 76ers back in the early 1990s. Some say the most underrated basketball player to have ever played the position. I grew up in a privileged world. Private schools. Expensive gifts. Elaborate summer vacations. That was the nice part. The not so nice part of our life was the fact that my father's antics often overshadowed any talent he may have had; and they especially overshadowed any illusions one may have had about us having the perfect family. We didn't.
My father was considered a "bad boy" of the league. He hated structure and didn't think the rules applied to him. There was plenty of drinking, drugs, gambling and lots of women over the years. I think my father was a plaintiff in at least five different paternity suits, and while not all of them were legit, one actually did result in the birth of my younger sister, Dawn. So, while bad boys may look and sound good in theory, in real life they're all smoke and mirrors. Style and no substance. Immature. Headaches. I avoid them at all costs. I will not waste my time on them. No woman should, although I think that my best friend Elizabeth may be a lost cause at this point.
"I'm sorry, what did you say?"
I'm not sure that I heard him correctly. The music is really loud, and I may have misheard him. I could have sworn he just said that I was late arriving tonight.
"You like Pinot, right?" he asks as he tries handing me the glass.
Okay, now I'm not sure whether to be flattered or freaked the fuck out. I give the head bartender, whom I know, Marco, a quick glance and he responds with a head nod. Letting me know it's safe to accept the glass from this perfect str
anger. Men often buy me drinks here, but I only accept them if I know the man or if Marco has poured it himself and watched it the whole time.
"Umm, yes and thank you." I take a sip. It's delicious. Guess I'm starting tonight's "get blitzed" mission off with wine instead of the hard stuff. "Have we met before?"
"We have not, but only because I haven't had the chance to introduce myself to you. You're quite the popular girl at Lotus."
"Uh, I guess." Not really sure if that's a compliment or not.
"As I was saying before, I notice that you usually come around nine on Friday nights, but tonight you arrived a little late."
I raise my eyebrow at his creeper-like observation.
"And before you run for the hills, the only reason why I know that is because I come here at the same time too. Pretty much every Friday night I stay late at work, have a drink with a few of my boys, then we head over here. I always see you when you're headed inside. You're kind of hard to miss. You're a very beautiful woman."
I smile with some reserve. "So I take it you already know my name too."
He looks a bit taken off guard by my bluntness, but there's no need for us to beat around the bush. I can see where this is headed. I'm pretty sure he knows who I am because of who my father is, not because I'm such a "beautiful woman." Puh-lease.
"Of course. You're Sloan Pearson." He extends his palm for a handshake. "Nice to finally meet you. I'm Cord Prescott."
I don't shake Cord's hand but instead take another sip of my wine and give him a long hard glare. I don't really like that he's been watching me for however long he has. It's weird. While my gut reaction is to say "thanks for the drink, Cord, but this feels forced," I won't–because I'm starting to think that the only reason I haven't gotten laid in eons is solely because of me. Coming to a club just to get plastered is stupid. The whole point of this place is to meet other people, isn't it? Maybe I've judged Cord a little too harshly and too quickly. Perhaps that's my problem. I'm seriously jaded.
The King Brothers Boxed Set Page 19
