Chapter16
The knock at the door came pretty late. Aaliyah was lucky that the nurse was still there to answer for her. Not many people came to her apartment ever, only nurses, Eli, and Caroline really, so someone knocking on the door was unusual. Unless it was a delivery man of some kind, everyone else sort of came right in. So her curiosity was piqued when she heard the nurse in the other room inviting the person at the door inside.
She could only hear the murmur of voices, but she recognized the sexy cadence of who her mystery knocker was.
Aaliyah’s heart began to thud wildly in her chest, and she could feel her palms begin to sweat. The nurse had thought she was sleeping when she’d been shutting everything down for the night, so she could certainly play sleep and he’d leave.
Wouldn’t he?
Or would he stay and wait until she woke up again?
Other than sending a whole lot of stuff to her house, a few phone calls and texts, he hadn’t tried seeing her himself at all. Not once. So what in the world was he doing there?
She pushed herself up on her bed and did her best to smooth her hair and swipe any runny makeup from under her eyes. A soft knock on the door, and her heart nearly stopped when it swung open to reveal his tall, strong frame in her bedroom doorway.
God, he was sexy. Had it really only been a week since she’d seen him last? Her eyes took him in like a man would drink in water in the desert: thirsty, desperate, and needy.
She shook her head, attempting to dislodge that train of thought.
He didn’t care about her the way she cared about him. She knew that, and that mantra needed to keep running through her head before she got any hopes up that he did.
“Can I come in?”
Even his voice could make her insides flip with excitement and longing. But she kept her own voice even and passive. “Sure.”
“I don’t know exactly what to say or where to start.” He was standing in her room now, so close to her she could smell his soap, but she’d never seen him like he was. Shifting from foot-to-foot, uncomfortably rubbing the back of his neck, unable to meet her eyes.
She couldn’t watch it any longer. This strong, confident, sexy man looked like someone she didn’t even know anymore, and it was too hard to see him with his hang-dog expression.
“You have nothing to worry about, Max.”
His eyes finally reached hers, and something flickered in them that made her curious. But she tried not to pay attention, not to focus on them, and instead, pushed through with her words.
“I get it. We were simply a contract. Maybe we became friends out of that, but you didn’t owe me anything.”
“Friends?” he asked. His tone was something she couldn’t match, and this was all becoming too much for her.
“Or maybe we weren’t, and you were just being nice all this time. If I was just a contract to you, I can handle it. There’s nothing you need to worry about. I’m not going to trash you to anyone, especially the press.”
“But I don’t want…”
Tears were welling up inside of her, and she would be damned if she’d let them fall. She wasn’t sad anymore—she was angry, and she needed to remember that. She refused to go back a step in getting over him. Moving past the hurt was hard enough the first time; there was no way she could do it again.
“Listen, Max, I know ending the contract looks bad for you, and I’m sure you don’t want to. I know that it’s going to hurt your chances at staying on the team. But I can’t do it; I can’t continue with it. I’m sorry.”
“But that’s what I’m trying to tell you, I don’t want the contract anymore.”
The tears were now rimming her eyes, making it hard to see him. At the very least, she thought he cared enough about all of this to still want her around, but it was clear he didn’t even want that anymore. He needed to leave. She needed him to leave before she broke down in front of him. There was no way she would let him see her fall apart; she needed to be stronger than that.
“I’m pretty tired. I think I need some sleep now.”
Aaliyah made sure her words left no room for confusion that he needed to go. But for a moment, he stood there looking at her, unsure of what to do, almost like he was battling something inside of him. For a moment, she thought he might argue with her, try to convince her to stay on the contract with him and save his career. And God help her if he did because looking at him there, his hair falling down into his eyes, she actually thought she might consider doing that. Staying on the contract with him, just to be near him, just because him being around made her feel lighter and happier.
But she couldn’t do that. Desperately, she needed to stay strong and hold true to her plan to leave the deal. Being near him wasn’t worth risking what little of her heart hadn’t shattered because it was clear that he didn’t want the same things that she did. Thankfully for her, he didn’t say another word. Just turned to walk out of the room. The moment he turned away from her, she swiped frantically at her eyes, willing the tears to go away and not run rivers down her cheeks. One last time, he turned around and looked at her, something pleading in his eyes, but he turned back around and walked out of the door.
Max Connors was officially out of her life.
When that thought shot through her mind, there was no amount of will that could stop the pain from taking over her once again, where her tears leaked out to relieve some of the hurt. She thought about texting Caroline, just so there would be someone there as she fell apart, but truthfully, she didn’t know if she could manage talking about what had happened. That might actually kill her.
Survive a horrible car accident, get destroyed by Max Connors.
No wonder everyone had warned her so desperately about him.
The night nurse came in, uncertainty clouding her face.
“Is there anything I can do for you? I’m supposed to leave now, but if you need me to stay…”
“No,” Aaliyah cut in. “I’m fine. Thank you.”
Everyone knew so much of what had happened between her and Max. She couldn’t take the pitying stares from the nurse. She really just needed to be alone.
“If it helps at all, I really think it is his loss, and I’m so sorry for what he did to you. You’ll bounce back and be on your feet again in no time.” The woman gave her a warm smile before turning off the lights in the apartment and leaving, locking the door behind her.
Aaliyah was now officially alone.
But something the woman said rang true. Not that it was his loss or anything like that. But that she’d be back on her feet. That was exactly what she needed to do. She needed to get back on her feet, not just figuratively but literally. Just like she did before her night out with Max, she was going to work double hard to get her body working again. And once she put her body back together again, maybe she’d be able to do that with her heart, too.
In the weeks that followed, Aaliyah focused solely on one thing: getting herself better. She doubled her physical therapy and made herself move and work all throughout the day. It was tiring and painful most of the time, but day by day she started moving with less trouble than the day before. Focusing completely on her rehabilitation meant that she left little time in her thoughts for anything else, especially Max.
Eli had offered that she work from home a few hours a week, that they would set her up with everything she needed, but she adamantly declined. It was going to be far too impossible to work for a team that still held Max Connors. She didn’t really know why the team had kept him on, actually she didn’t really know much about anything that was happening with Max. After his photo-op had been seen around the world, he hadn’t been in anything. No pictures, no gossip columns, not even activity on his social media accounts. Not that she was checking or anything.
She tried not to bother herself with anything that had to do with the past few months and pushed ahead to the future she was looking at. Hopefully soon, she’d be able to walk without assistance and at least make it down the street, and she was looking at starting her own business. It didn’t take much money to freelance for companies who were looking for a social media guru or someone who knew how to blog some great articles to boost a company. Basically, she was beginning the ground work for starting her own freelance PR business, and she was even starting to see a bit of money rolling in from it.
With her mind and body so busy, she had little time to focus on anything else, so when Caroline forced her to go out one night, she was completely unprepared for what the bar was showing on TV.
They both ordered their glasses of wine before either one of them noticed the announcers or the players on the team. But as soon she heard the sportscaster start to talk about Max’s team, both of their heads snapped to attention.
“Connors hasn’t been the clutch player that he used to be. After his big blow out a while back with his girlfriend, he just doesn’t even seem to have his head in the game anymore.”
“You know, Rick,” the other announcer started, “Connors was almost not going to get a contract renewal. It was looking like the team was going to let him go, trade him off, but they kept him on anyway, and you’ve got to wonder if they are regretting that decision.”
“Agreed, Tom. Connors’ average points are just dropping drastically, and half the time, his body is dragging along the court. It looks almost like he can’t even keep up anymore. He’d better pull himself together if he plans on playing any longer. With the way he’s going downhill, even if he gets dropped by the team, no other team is even going to want the train wreck that he’s becoming.”
The cameraman panned down from the announcers and settled right onto Max’s face. Aaliyah’s heart leapt into her throat. Why was he doing so badly? She watched the screen for a few minutes as she saw that the announcers were right. Max looked terrible on the court, nothing like the man she’d been watching as she dated him. Not at all like the guy she knew.
“What do you think is going on with him?” she asked Caroline as she sipped her wine.
“I don’t really know. No one has heard much from him since, well… you know. But they kept him on the team, so what does he have to be complain about?”
Aaliyah couldn’t help but wonder that herself. What did he have to worry about? He wasn’t the one with his heart broken, he got to stay on the team, and he hadn’t seemed to lose anything—where she felt as if she’d lost everything.
“Can we change that channel?” Caroline sweetly asked the bartender, leaning over just enough to show her ample cleavage and get his attention.
“Are you crazy? Everyone in the bar is watching this game,” he argued. But Aaliyah saw that the bartender was now far more mesmerized by her cleavage than he was by the game.
“Yes, but we’re not big fans of Max Connors, and we would really like to watch something else,” she pushed again. This time leaning far over the bar. The man tore his gaze away for only a moment to look at Aaliyah, and she saw the moment he realized exactly why they were uninterested in watching. He took another longing look at what Caroline was offering and then nodded.
“Yeah, all right. You ladies win. Ladies always win in here,” he said and finally got rid of the game, at least on the TV in front of them.
Through the night, Aaliyah did her best to stay in the conversation. Caroline gossiped about her office drama and how the politics were completely unfair. Yet she fully admitted that she was hardly working as much as she was flirting constantly with the new guy in another department. Aaliyah talked about her freelancing and how she was actually enjoying it and possibly going to form a full business out of it all, but even though her mouth was moving, she couldn’t seem to get her enthusiasm to match it. The more wine she drank, the harder it became to keep Max Connors from swirling in her head. She couldn’t let it go that he had the world in the palms of his hands and he was letting it all go. Again.
“I’m going to take a separate cab home,” Aaliyah announced when the two had made their way outside.
“And how are you supposed to get yourself into your apartment and settled? No. I’ll take a cab with you and get you inside and into bed.”
Aaliyah shook her head. “No, I texted one of my night nurses, and she’s on her way already. She’ll be there by the time the cab arrives.”
Caroline looked at her friend skeptically. “Are you sure about this?”
Aaliyah was definitely sure, and when the first cab arrived, Caroline helped load her and her walker into the car.
“Call me tomorrow, okay?”
After she promised she would, Caroline shut the door, and the cabbie started to pull away from the curb. She gave him her address but waited until she was firmly out Caroline’s view before she told the driver that she had a change of plans and gave him the address to Max’s house instead.
Over and over in her mind, she practiced what she was going to say. She’d leave the cabbie running her tab as she told Max that whatever was going on, he’d be a fool to throw everything away after he had everything he wanted. Selfishly, she didn’t want to have gone through all the pain and heartbreak just for him to blow it all anyway. Once she had all of her words out, she’d get back into the cab and go back home, where she’d put everything behind her.
For good this time.
When the cab finally arrived, her hands were shaking, and she was desperately wishing she had just one more glass of wine in her. But she was going to do this. When she opened the back door, the doorman recognized her immediately and jumped to help her. Both the cab driver and the doorman helped her with her walker, then they helped her stand out of the car.
“I’ll call Mr. Connors,” he offered and hurried away as she shuffled toward the door.
She wished she didn’t need the help of the walker to steady her balance. It would be far more effective to tell him off if she were back to her old, strong self. The self that had more of a backbone when she was around him just because of being around him. She’d liked that new side he’d brought out in her. It had been missing ever since he broke her heart, but apparently, seeing his face and putting a little wine in her had infuriated her like he used to, and here she was.