My masseuse, a square-shaped guy named Ivan, who was in his fifties with fists the size of boulders, told me that he’d had to work extra on my shoulders than usual.
No shit.
Waking up with a warm, soft body curled around mine, knowing that I’d need to talk to her tonight and explain why we couldn’t do this anymore, was definitely giving me a few knots over my already weighed-down shoulder blades. I left the treatment room feeling loose and warm after almost two hours of Ivan’s expertise. It was the only reason I didn’t feel more banged up than I did at this point in the season.
The hallway was empty, but heavy footsteps jogging in my direction had me turning.
Jack’s face was red and sweaty. “Pierson, holy balls, dude, I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
I hooked my thumb over my shoulder at the room I’d just exited. “I had a session with Ivan.”
His normally carefree face looked grim. “Ava isn’t far behind me, but I didn’t think you’d want to hear it from her.”
I squared my shoulders, sliding into the leader role that came naturally. “What happened?”
“You got your phone on you?” he asked warily.
I shook my head. “It’s in my locker. Jack, what happened?”
His cheeks puffed out as he expelled a slow hiss of air, and he handed me his phone.
My heart chugged a heavy, awkward beat as my eyes struggled to comprehend what I was seeing in front of me.
I mean, I knew what I was seeing.
I’d been there.
My thumb scrolled, and I sank against the wall. The article blurred, my tongue turned into sand, and I couldn’t figure out how I was still standing because my heart was frozen solid in my chest, prickling my veins with ice all the way to my fingertips.
“What the hell?” I whispered.
Oh God, Allie. My stomach turned over dangerously.
“Dude, I never saw this coming,” Jack said quietly.
My eyes pinched shut. Tell me about it, was what I wanted to say. I should have known. I should have listened to my gut. The moment I realized that it couldn’t continue, I knew it was because of shit like this.
The selfish, weak moment I’d allowed myself, touching her before we were inside because I couldn’t not touch her, allowing myself just one more night with her, turned out to be me loading the weapon that I’d never want to be aimed at us. At me. At her.
“Pierson,” Ava’s voice barked from down the hallway. The sharp click-clack of her heels on the linoleum sounded like bullets being fired. “A word, please.”
Jack gave me a grim smile, which I wanted to return, but my face was numb. Dread had me moving sluggishly even as my mind raced with feverish intensity, a revolving door that I couldn’t jump out of.
Me.
Allie.
What I knew I should have done.
Doing what I wanted instead.
Taking her to my bed.
Waking with her head on my chest, her hand over my heart.
Not wanting to leave her there because I didn’t want to leave.
Faith.
How I’d explain this to her because unless I hid her away for a couple of weeks, she’d hear it from some idiot kid at school.
Doing the exact thing I promised myself I’d protect her from since she was a baby—putting her in the middle of a media storm.
My stomach twisted and churned, empty except for a growing pile of disappointment that was sitting like rocks.
I’d failed.
Failed.
Failed.
Funny how just a few hours earlier, I only imagined failure as not winning more games. Not winning another Lombardi trophy. Now, I just wanted to get home to make sure I didn’t have a flock of vultures with cameras and microphones camped out in my driveway, shouting questions at my home.
Ava perched her hands on her hips and watched me carefully as I walked into the empty conference room.
“Care to explain how this happened?” she asked as soon as she cleared the doorway.
Instead of answering, I stared at the nondescript table, trying to decide if I would injure my arm if I were to pick it up and hurl it across the room.
Not worth the risk, so I sat on it instead, hanging my hands between my open legs and staring at her for a beat.
“Not really,” I told her.
Ava growled under her breath. “Of all the stubborn men on this team, you are without a doubt the biggest pain in my ass. You and Logan. I’d have a better conversation with tree stumps than you two.”
I lifted my eyebrows but didn’t respond. She wasn’t wrong. I had about as much use for PR as I did the media, so I’d never gone out of my way to make her job easier. I didn’t know what Logan’s problem was, nor did I particularly care.
I was just trying not to break furniture. Or have a heart attack.
My molars crunched together, imagining all the people seeing Allie and me like that. The headline had been something ridiculous, clearly a gossip site.
“What do you want me to say, Ava?” I spoke slowly, holding her eyes, daring her to get pissy with me right now. “We’re consenting adults, and some asshole out on a boat got lucky with his timing.”
She narrowed her eyes. “So it was a one-time thing?”
Just the fact that she dared ask me about it, that I’d put myself in a position where she was required to in order to do her job had me walking a razor-thin edge of keeping my temper in check. My voice was quiet and dangerous when I answered. “That’s none of your business.”
“It is my job, though, Pierson,” she explained patiently. “You want to screw each other five ways every day, I don’t give a shit, but the moment it ends up on every gossip site, every entertainment channel, then I am allowed to ask you questions about it. There is a picture of you groping the new owner, and she is in your yard, wearing your jersey and not much else.” With each word, her volume increased, her stance got taller, and I was breathing like a bull ready to charge. “So help me, Pierson, you will make this right somehow. Do you understand me?”
Like a dog trapped into a corner, I felt the hair stand along my back. A visible warning to whoever might approach, but if Ava saw it, she ignored it.
I leaned forward and pinned her with a level look. “I will make this right with the people who are directly involved, and I don’t need you to tell me how to do that.”
Ava threw her hands up in the air. “Pierson, I am not asking you for much here. Part of your job is dealing with the media, which you have known since you were in college and you had to deal with them. They don’t go away simply because you will it to happen. This story will not go away quietly unless you address it head-on and tell them what happened and why they need to move on. You’re smart enough to know that, aren’t you?”
With a clean, almost audible snap, I felt the muzzle drop.
“And do what?” I yelled. “Go stand in front of a podium and tell them that every Sunday night, I was screwing the new boss because that was the arrangement we made? Do you think that would help anything?”
She wasn’t amused. “Well, not if you phrase it like that. But how you phrase it is my job. All you have to do is read from the paper and walk off the stage. There will be no questions from the media, which they’ll know beforehand.”
I laughed under my breath. There was no way I was doing that.
Clearly struggling with her own temper, Ava took a minute and paced the front of the room. The silence had my shoulders sagging. What a giant clusterfuck.
And I could have avoided all of it if I’d paid attention to my instinct. I’d be on my way into a team meeting like usual. Allie would be off doing whatever she normally did on a Monday afternoon.
What did she do on Monday afternoons? I’d never asked her. With shame, I had to own up to the ugly truth of how I’d treated her.
That I couldn’t be bothered to ask her something as simple as how she spent her time during the week because I was afraid of knowing too much beyond how her body fit against mine.
That knowledge was dangerous enough, anything beyond that felt like I was tempting fate. Getting in too deep with Allie, trying to imagine how her presence in my life would rock it to its core, was the single most terrifying thing I could’ve imagined.
Before this.
Now I’d exposed her to the entire world.
Ava spoke, and until I heard her words, I was relieved at the interruption to my thoughts.
“We can say it in a respectful way, okay? Because it’s not just about you. She’s the owner. We are in a tenuous time right now, Pierson, where workplace indiscretions are being shoved under a microscope of consent and power and manipulation.” She smoothed a hand down her hair while I chewed on what she’d said. It tasted bitter as only the truth can.
She was calmer when she spoke again. “You and Allie began a romantic relationship at the beginning of the season, you were neighbors before any of this started, before you had any idea who she was. Leave it at that. Let them infer the rest.” She stopped and tipped her head forward. “It could work. If nothing else, the press will eat up a romance between you two.”
“Absolutely not.”
Her head snapped up. “Are you serious?”
Ava wasn’t around when the media feeding frenzy of Cassandra’s death was circling around me, their sharp gray fins clear everywhere I looked. She had no idea how absolutely, one hundred percent serious I was about not tossing them bloody chunks of the story just to slake their appetite.
“There’s no way to romanticize this,” I said in a low voice. “I won’t stand up there and say that Allie is my girlfriend because she’s not.”
“He’s right,” a quiet voice came from the doorway.
My head snapped around, as did Ava’s.
Allie stood inside the entrance to the room, her hair pulled up into a messy bun, her face covered with mirrored sunglasses, her clothes simple and dark.
As if she’d just come from a funeral.
I stood. “Allie …”
She pulled off her sunglasses, and I felt like I’d been sacked.
Her eyes were rimmed red, her face pale and drawn.
Because of me. I wanted to go to her even though I knew that I shouldn’t. And definitely not in front of Ava. For a long, horrible, frozen moment, we just stared at each other.
I’m so sorry, I tried to tell her with my eyes, not willing to give anything away while we had an audience. There were enough people watching us as it was.
Allie blinked, then turned and closed the door behind her.
“Now what?” she asked, her voice scratchy and raw.
At the sound of her voice, I dropped my head into my hands.
Now what indeed?
