Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 81083 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81083 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
“No,” Ella said immediately.
“There’s no way,” Nora added. “This is full proof of the saying if he wanted to, he would.”
I bit my lip, going over every exchange we had Friday night, wondering if my passion for helping the school bled over the socially acceptable norms and transformed into begging.
No, there was no way he’d interpreted it that way, right? I mean, I knew he had money even before I found out about him being the owner of the Hurricanes—his car and his immaculate suits were clues enough. But I would’ve never asked for this. And I’d told him his status wouldn’t earn him any special treatment from me, so this couldn’t be a bribe either.
That meant he’d done it purely out of the goodness of his heart.
The same man that I’d watched knock a fan out cold when I’d Googled his name last week.
“I can’t believe the mystery man from the burger place ended up being Ethan Berkley,” Ella said.
“The owner of the Charleston Hurricanes, and your client,” Nora added.
“I can’t either.”
“How did you not recognize him that night?” Ella asked.
“How would I? I watch the games, not the owner's box.”
“He’s all over social media,” Nora said, then tilted her head to the side. “Which you’re not on.”
I swallowed hard, nodding. I hadn’t been on social media since a video went viral a few years ago that showed my then fiancé explicitly with another woman. And now that he had been drafted into the NFL, it was hard to not accidentally see him if I was on social media.
An old, throbbing pain radiated over my body at the memory, but I shoved it away. I would never be that girl again.
“You know I don’t have time to keep up with all the social sites unless it’s necessary to research a client,” I said, and they flashed me equally sympathetic looks.
Ella scrunched her brow. “You did do your research on him, right?”
“Yes,” I answered. “A little,” I said. “I didn’t get much farther than the hundreds of videos of him hitting that fan. Do you know of any more viral videos of him?”
“I saw one the other day,” Ella said, swiping on her phone, pulling up her app and typing Ethan’s name into the search bar. There was an older video underneath the trending ones, and she selected it, scooting closer to me so I could see properly.
It was a Hurricanes game, and Ethan was stomping onto the field, dressed in a casual pair of athletic pants and a Hurricanes T-shirt, his muscles bulging as he curled his hands into fists while he yelled at an umpire.
Heat built beneath my skin, pulsing through my veins as I watched the muscle in his jaw tick while the umpire spoke. I’d seen this scene play out dozens of times during games, but it was usually with coaches, not owners.
The video did some fade transition, showing Ethan stalking back toward the player dugout, scooping up a stray bat off the ground and swinging it—
“Oh!” I gasped as he smashed the thing so hard against a pole the bat cracked in half.
“Why did that sound like you liked it?” Ella asked, laughing.
I shook my head, lips parted as the clip started over. “I…”
I couldn’t deny it.
Not even a little.
Not when flames licked down my spine as the clip showed him breaking that bat again.
Clinically, I knew that meant Ethan had a hard time regulating his emotions and that he clearly expressed his anger physically, which wasn’t the best sign. Clinically, I filed the scene away, noting that two of his outbursts had occurred during Hurricanes games.
Personally?
Personally, I didn’t clock the reaction as a giant red flag I should stay away from, client or no. Because Ethan didn’t give me the abusive vibe, and I knew abusive pretty damn well.
Ella scrolled through a few more videos, most publicity shots of him and other sports franchise owners attending red carpets events, and good God Ethan wore the hell out of those suits, but nothing compared to the way he’d looked on the Hurricanes field.
“Omigod,” Nora said. “He knows the owner of the Carolina Reapers!”
“And the Cougars and Raptors too,” Ella said, and I was suddenly grateful the NFL team my ex had been signed to hadn’t popped up in Ethan’s friend circle. “Wow. No wonder he could send the iPads over without a second thought. He runs with billionaires.”
We all burst out laughing at Ella’s joke, and she pocketed her phone as we finished up our morning dish session which included a rousing debate about which apps she’d be able to convince the school to allow Nora to put on the tablets for her students, and a twenty-minute discussion on Ella’s newest celebrity crush and the TV series we were all watching. By the time they were leaving to get to school on time, my heart was full and the tension revolving around Ethan as a client had lessened.