Focused: A hate to love sports romance(26)

I laughed. "Remember when Logan flipped the board because he thought we were cheating?"

"I sure do."

"Okay fine," I conceded. "He won't quit. But Amazon could decide he's not worth the film they're wasting on him. I don't know whether Beatrice would be upset at me about that or not. I don't know her well enough."

She sighed. "Wouldn't it be nice if we could read our bosses’ mind?"

The way she said it had me looking at her twice. "What's wrong with Amy?"

Even though I'd just pulled the car into the driveway, neither of us made a move to leave. Isabel unhooked her seat belt and shrugged as she thought about the longtime owner of the gym she managed. "Nothing that I can pinpoint, per se. But she seems ... scattered. Like she's not as present when she is there. In some ways, it's fine because she's definitely not micromanaging me, but our membership is dipping more than usual, and I don't feel like I can put that onto her plate."

I hummed. "Well, maybe it's just a phase. Everyone goes through them."

"True. And maybe Noah is in a grumpy loner phase, which is not your responsibility to fix." Her eyes, just as blue as mine, stared unblinkingly in my direction.

"I know," I said on a groan. "I know it's not mine to fix."

"Just remember that when that alpha asshole thing turns out to be some emotional wound that you desperately want to take care of." At my eye roll, she clucked her tongue. "Don't even deny it. Women go stupid over that bullshit, when, in reality"—she punched a finger in the air—"they should take their asses to therapy."

"Didn't you think therapy was a waste of time?"

"Yes, but I'm not the one taking on the responsibility of someone else's happiness." She laid a hand on her chest. "I happen to think if Noah is bored and lonely on his too-small couch, then he should take his millions of dollars and buy a dog and a new couch. He doesn't need you to kiss his boo-boos."

A sister's logic was so wildly ill-timed, pretty much at any given moment. I was about to tell her what she could do with her opinion when Lia knocked on the driver's side window.

I rolled it down.

Lia grinned in at us. "What are we doing?"

"We are about to come inside," Isabel said. "Because we have nothing more worthwhile to do with our time than to eat a family dinner and focus on our own issues."

Lia's pretty face scrunched in confusion. "A little heavy on the subtext, are we? I feel like I'm missing something."

Because that was not something I felt like getting into, I waved at Claire and Finn, Lia’s best friend, who were hanging back while Lia leaned next to my car. Finn, tall and lanky and the kind of nerdy cute that always made me hope that he and Lia would hook up, waved back.

"Gawd, when are you two gonna do it already?" Isabel muttered.

Lia's face blazed red. "He is my friend," she whispered, just shy of a hiss.

I grinned. "He got bigger over the summer," I mused. "Didn't he, Iz?"

"Someone's working their arms, that's for sure."

Lia's face stayed even, which was annoying, because if you lost the ability to bait your little sister, were you even living your life right?

"I'm hungry," Claire yelled from the driveway. "Can we go in, please?"

"Oh, did your legs stop working when you got out of the car? No one is making you wait," Lia said over her shoulder. Finn tucked his hands in his pockets, but I saw his cheeks lift in a wide grin.

Isabel ignored the exchange between the twins. "He's got that Clark Kent thing going that I am not mad at."

"Don't think I won't make you suffer if he hears you say that."

I dropped my head in my hands. Probably good Noah didn't come. The front door of the house opened, and Emmett whooped loudly.

"Hey, Finn! I saved you a seat by me! We can almost beat the girls in numbers now!"

Isabel climbed out as Lia, Claire, and Finn made their way to the door. I took a second to watch them shuffle into the house. Chaos was so ingrained into the normal ebb and flow of my life in various ways. It was hard for me to understand it any other way.

Even the apartment I shared with Iz, small and cute and tucked in an affordably safe building downtown, was never quiet. We always had music playing, the TV on, or an audiobook going while I cooked. If we were home more, we probably would've had a dog or two that I could take on walks and snuggle on the couch with.

Maybe that was why thinking about Noah made me sad for him, causing a slow, unfurling ache in my chest that I wanted to rub at until it went away.

I didn't want him to be sitting alone in the dark, and it wasn't because I wanted to heal any emotional wounds.

Liar, a voice in the back of my head whispered.

I didn't want that man sitting alone in the dark because I liked him, and there was no earthly reason I should've. He was snappish and grumpy. His moods shifted faster than the weather, and for some reason, he refused to acknowledge that there was another side to him than The Machine.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

This was my curse, apparently. Something that made me good at my job when my own feelings weren't on the line, but horribly inconvenient when they were. Without trying all that hard, I had a sixth sense that jangled like a bell when it came to the people I was forming relationships with.