Page 72 of Forever Enough
I covered my face in my hands and groaned before dropping them and looking back at my pet.
“Wait until you find the perfect male goat and he runs off with his agent.” I put air quotes around the last word.
My head suddenly began to pound. I looked at the wine and decided what I needed was a few Tylenol and maybe a nap. I never took naps, but I was suddenly exhausted.
“Come on, let’s go crash Mr. Whiskers’ space and all take a nap.”
Chapter Fourteen
BRADLY
I pulled out my phone and checked it again for a text from Mackenzie.
Nothing.
Crystal sat at the kitchen island, talking my mother’s ear off. Mom kept smiling as she stirred the batter for the cake she was making. Every now and then she would glance at me and frown.
“Bradly, is everything okay? You seem a bit…off. Was lunch okay?”
“Lunch was great,” I replied.
“What did you do for lunch?” Crystal asked with that fake smile of hers.
“He had a lunch date with his girlfriend,” Avery said with a wink in my direction.
Crystal’s smile faded for the briefest of moments. “Girlfriend? Bradly, you don’t have time to be dating anyone. I mean, she’ll never see you with your PBR schedule.”
“Is that really any of your business?” Avery asked.
I shot a look in Avery’s direction, and she shrank back and mouthed sorry. It was clear Lewis hadn’t told Crystal that I was thinking of leaving the PBR. Which made sense. And even if I was walking away from my career, I still had a few contracts with sponsors that I had to fulfill.
“My personal life is none of your business, Crystal.”
Mom glanced up and looked at me with a surprised expression. I’m sure it was because of the tone I’d used with Crystal.
I could not have cared less. I had other things to worry about. Like why Mackenzie wasn’t responding to my text. I knew I should have explained why my mood had changed. But how do you tell the girl you’d just started dating, the one you’d almost slept with hours earlier, that the woman who was staying at your parents’ house was more than just your agent? That she had been your fuck buddy? That is, until I ended it almost eight months ago. Crystal had started to talk more and more about being exclusive, something she’d known from the start I wasn’t interested in.
Had it been in poor taste to sleep with her? Yes. But the first time we slept together, she hadn’t been my agent. She was someone I’d known for as long as I could remember. Her father, Lewis, was my agent. He ended up taking a step back so he could start to think about retiring. When he has said Crystal was going to be taking over a majority of the work for me, I should have stopped sleeping with her then and there, but fuck if it wasn’t easy to just bury myself in her after a long weekend, enjoying sexual release with no strings attached when the mood struck. We’d both used one another in the same way.
Sensing the tension, Crystal let out a soft laugh. “This is grand. I knew you taking some time off wouldn’t be a good thing.”
“Why is that?” my mom asked, seeming more agitated than I’d ever seen her. “Do you often ask your clients to work themselves to death?”
“Merit, you have to know that any distractions can be potentially dangerous for Bradly. If his mind isn’t in the game, well, he could get hurt. Seriously hurt.”
“He won’t get hurt.”
The new voice came from my father, who walked into the kitchen.
Crystal frowned. “You don’t know that.”
“I do know that because I’ve been in the same situation as him.” He glanced at my mother, and they exchanged a secret smile. “Bradly knows what he’s doing, Crystal. He deserves to have a private life away from his public one.” Then Dad looked at me and raised a single brow. “I think you have a conversation that needs to be had.”
Crystal cleared her throat. “Well, I’m aware…very aware…of Bradly’s private life. We’ve shared many nights together talking about it in his hotel rooms.”
My head snapped around and I stared at her in disbelief.
“Have you?” Mom asked, as she gave me a look that made me want to crawl into my own body. “Our earlier conversation makes sense now, Bradly.”