by Violet Paige
“Canton!”
I whipped my head around. “What ?”
“Coach wants to see you .”
I glared at the tight end assistant coach. “Tell him I’m doing a cool down .”
He shook his head. “Doesn’t care. Wants your ass in his office now .”
“Damn it,” I muttered. I considered refusing to leave, but the assistant coach waited in the doorway. I pulled one icy leg and then the other out of the tub and dripped across the tile. I wrapped a towel around my waist, tucking the corner against my hipbone and pushed through the locker room door .
I knocked on Coach Applewhite’s door and walked inside .
His eyes pinched together. “Luke, you couldn’t put any clothes on ?”
I stared down at my body. There was a puddle of water at my feet. “I was in cool down, but was told you couldn’t wait. This is what I had on. I can come back,” I offered .
To his right was Mr. McCade. I straightened my back. I had been too pissed at Coach to notice that the owner of the Warriors was in the office .
It was no secret that Coach and I didn’t agree on much. We tried to stay out of each other’s way off the field as much as possible. It usually worked. Until now .
“Since you’re here, why don’t you sit?” Coach nodded toward the couch .
Mr. McCade was easily in his seventies, but none of us knew for sure. What we knew was he was a cheap bastard. He wanted the best team in the league, but wasn’t willing to pay for the facilities or the equipment we asked for. He wanted high dollar players, but negotiations could drag on for weeks. I didn’t have a lot to say to the man. He was my employer, but I wasn’t a fan .
One sweep around Coach’s office and you could see what the McCades thought about funding the management offices. The place looked like it hadn’t been updated since 1985. A row of play manuals lined the bookcase above his desk. There were a few framed family pictures scatted on the top shelf along with a team photo from three years ago. They all needed dusting .
“All right. What can I do for you, Coach? Mr. McCade ?”
“I’m going to skip over the inspirational coach’s speech and get to the point .”
“Sounds good to me.” I stared at both of them with eyes just as cold as theirs .
Applewhite sighed. “We’ve got a problem on the team .”
“Yeah, guys are passing out left and right because they’re out of shape, it’s one-hundred twenty degrees out there, and rookies don’t know their routes,” I snarled. “What’s the status on the new indoor practice field ?”
“Luke, we’re not here to talk about facility expansion. I’m not talking about the other guys. I’m talking about you .”
I sat there in my towel, waiting to hear what league infraction I had collected this time. Because it wasn’t the first time they had drug me in here with threats about my behavior. I’d gotten the speech fifty times to stop drinking. To stop picking up women. To stop speeding. To stop using my celebrity status to get favors. The thing was I didn’t give a shit. I lived my life the way I wanted and as long as I gave them results every Sunday, they could fuck off .
Mr. McCade cleared his throat before reaching into his suit pocket and retrieving a photograph. “Do you know this young lady?” He slid it across the coffee table .
I picked it up. Pretty girl, but I’d never seen her before. “Nope.” I tossed it on the pile of sports magazines covering the flimsy white wood table .
“That’s not what she claims. She accosted me this morning outside of my home. It was a surprise, especially to my wife .”
If McCade wanted me to feel sorry for him, he didn’t know what it was like living with paparazzi. I couldn’t buy gas without reporters asking for a statement. No sympathy here .
“So?”
“So,” Coach intervened. “She claims you got her pregnant .”
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C opyright © 2016 by Violet Paige
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One
Luke
S ometimes people are wrong. They’re wrong about what the score will be at the end of the game. They’re wrong about what route to run. They’re wrong about who they can trust. And fuck it, they’re wrong about people. Wrong about love. I used to be one of those people. Cynical. Egotistical. Selfish. But all it takes is one second. One split second of your life when you think you’ll lose everything. And suddenly it comes into focus. Faster than I take a snap. Faster than I read the defense. I can see all of it. I can see it being ripped away. In a split second all of it can be ruined. There could be a life where she doesn’t exist. Where the mistakes push her away .
They are wrong about me. And the thing about me is I love to prove people wrong .
* * *
I t was hot as shit on the practice field. The September sun beat down on everyone. It didn’t discriminate between million dollar players or the trainers who took home fifty thousand a year. It was brutal and unrelenting, reminding all of us what it meant to play football in Texas .
Ownership promised we would have an indoor facility soon with air conditioning, but that didn’t do a damn bit of good when my linemen were cramping up on the field and I could barely see from the sting of sweat rolling in my eyes .
I gripped the ball between my fingers, digging into the leather with my nails while the sideline crew ran out to squirt water in the players’ mouths. I didn’t see what good an ounce of water was going to do in this heat, but I waited anyway .
Our rookie tight end, James, walked up to me. “What did you think of that last play ?”
“I think it sucked.” I held my helmet under my arm and squirted water on the back of my neck .
I could see him huffing as hard as the rest of the team and he was twenty-two—the youngest guy out here .
“I’ve been asking for pointers since July,” he started .
I didn’t want to hear his excuses or anyone else’s. If you played for the American Football Association, you better have the balls to back it up. James was a top draft pick. He was new to the league, the process, and me .
“You want advice? Get out there and catch the fucking ball when I throw it.” I slammed my helmet over my head, clamping it against my forehead. “Is there anything else you need to know ?”
He shook his head, running to the line of scrimmage. I didn’t take on projects, and I sure as hell didn’t take rookies under my wing. They had to learn just like the rest of us had .
This game wasn’t built on kindness. It wasn’t built on friendship. It was built on that scoreboard. When the clocked ran down to zero the only thing that mattered was what number was next to the Warriors’ name. Make catches. Block punts. Tackle the runner. That was their job. If they needed me to tell them how to do that, they didn’t belong on my team .
The Austin Warriors were one of the league’s original teams. You either hated or loved us. There wasn’t a lot of gray area with AFA fans. There were families in the stadium on Sundays who had handed their seats down for three generations .
We were a legendary team. A team with deep roots. A team with history .
Warrior football was everything to this town. And that made me the fucking general. The commander of this army .
I yelled, scattering the conditioning team. “If you want to get the hell out of this heat, let’s finish this practice .”
I could see I wasn’t the only one. The linemen weren’t tolerating the heat. Droplets of sweat beaded on their noses as they took their positions for the snap. We had two more plays to run. Only two. If I could make it through, I could soak in an ice tub for an hour and put thi
s hellish practice behind me .
I could forget the imprint the sun had burned on my forearms. Forget I practiced for the third day in a row hung over. There was too much bourbon last night. I could still taste it in my mouth. The way my tongue was thick. But that was part of the Luke Canton package. I did whatever the hell I wanted at night, but I performed on the field the next day .
I called out the next play, took the snap, and threw the ball long into the end zone. I nodded at James. He caught it square in the chest. It was a perfect spiral .
No one wanted to be out here. It wasn’t glorious or glamorous. It fucking sucked running drills in a hundred-degree heat .
Twenty minutes later I was in the practice facility locker room climbing into a tub of ice. The trainer added another bucket of cubes as I slid my feet to the bottom of the floor .
“How’s that, Luke?” he asked .
“Just keep dumping it in until I say quit .”
The ice was melting against the blistering patches of skin I immersed under the surface. It was both painful and a relief. It was the shock I needed to erase the last fragments of my headache .
I started to settle in, trying to adjust my huge frame to the confines of the tub. It was hard to fit all of me in this cramped space. My dark hair was stuck to my head. I scooped a handful of the ice water and dumped it on my scalp, and shook the water from my ears .
“Canton!”
I whipped my head around. “What ?”
“Coach wants to see you .”
I glared at the tight end assistant coach. “Tell him I’m doing a cool down .”
He shook his head. “Doesn’t care. Wants your ass in his office now .”
“Damn it,” I muttered. I considered refusing to leave, but the assistant coach waited in the doorway. I pulled one icy leg and then the other out of the tub and dripped across the tile. I wrapped a towel around my waist, tucking the corner against my hipbone and pushed through the locker room door .
I knocked on Coach Applewhite’s door and walked inside .
His eyes pinched together. “Luke, you couldn’t put any clothes on ?”
I stared down at my body. There was a puddle of water at my feet. “I was in cool down, but was told you couldn’t wait. This is what I had on. I can come back,” I offered .
To his right was Mr. McCade. I straightened my back. I had been too pissed at Coach to notice that the owner of the Warriors was in the office .
It was no secret that Coach and I didn’t agree on much. We tried to stay out of each other’s way off the field as much as possible. It usually worked. Until now .
“Since you’re here, why don’t you sit?” Coach nodded toward the couch .
Mr. McCade was easily in his seventies, but none of us knew for sure. What we knew was he was a cheap bastard. He wanted the best team in the league, but wasn’t willing to pay for the facilities or the equipment we asked for. He wanted high dollar players, but negotiations could drag on for weeks. I didn’t have a lot to say to the man. He was my employer, but I wasn’t a fan .
One sweep around Coach’s office and you could see what the McCades thought about funding the management offices. The place looked like it hadn’t been updated since 1985. A row of play manuals lined the bookcase above his desk. There were a few framed family pictures scatted on the top shelf along with a team photo from three years ago. They all needed dusting .
“All right. What can I do for you, Coach? Mr. McCade ?”
“I’m going to skip over the inspirational coach’s speech and get to the point .”
“Sounds good to me.” I stared at both of them with eyes just as cold as theirs .
Applewhite sighed. “We’ve got a problem on the team .”
“Yeah, guys are passing out left and right because they’re out of shape, it’s one-hundred twenty degrees out there, and rookies don’t know their routes,” I snarled. “What’s the status on the new indoor practice field ?”
“Luke, we’re not here to talk about facility expansion. I’m not talking about the other guys. I’m talking about you .”
I sat there in my towel, waiting to hear what league infraction I had collected this time. Because it wasn’t the first time they had drug me in here with threats about my behavior. I’d gotten the speech fifty times to stop drinking. To stop picking up women. To stop speeding. To stop using my celebrity status to get favors. The thing was I didn’t give a shit. I lived my life the way I wanted and as long as I gave them results every Sunday, they could fuck off .
Mr. McCade cleared his throat before reaching into his suit pocket and retrieving a photograph. “Do you know this young lady?” He slid it across the coffee table .
I picked it up. Pretty girl, but I’d never seen her before. “Nope.” I tossed it on the pile of sports magazines covering the flimsy white wood table .
“That’s not what she claims. She accosted me this morning outside of my home. It was a surprise, especially to my wife .”
If McCade wanted me to feel sorry for him, he didn’t know what it was like living with paparazzi. I couldn’t buy gas without reporters asking for a statement. No sympathy here .
“So?”
“So,” Coach intervened. “She claims you got her pregnant .”
Two
Alexa
“K eep still,” my stylist ordered for the third time .
“I’m trying to send out an update,” I explained. It was hard to concentrate on hair, makeup, and social media obligations at the same time when I was in a contorted position .
“Don’t you have a PR person for that?” Helena twisted my hair above my ears .
I grimaced. I wasn’t going to the hospital benefit looking like Princess Leia. “I do, but I try to upload my own pictures when I can. Fans can tell the difference. This is more authentic .”
She clipped my blond locks into place. “I guess that’s why they call you America’s Sweetheart, because you’re just so darn sweet.” She pinched my cheek in a teasing gesture .
“If I hear that one more time…” I rolled my eyes .
“It’s true though. You can do no wrong. Fans love you. The press loves you. I love you.” She smiled at me in the mirror .
“Well, that’s mutual.” I blew her a kiss .
Helena had been with me from my first album cover. The label threw us together, but there was an instant click between us and I hired her on the spot. She traveled with me on tour. She went to all of my press appearances. Some days I had her come to my house before I went out if I knew the paparazzi was going to be snapping pictures of me, which was mostly a guarantee for anything I did .
The sweetheart image wasn’t my idea. The label thought they could sell more music if I was everything that was missing from today’s country superstars. Alexa Wilde, or Lexi, as they started to call me, was born from a list of attributes on a piece of paper and crafted from a manager, tour director, and producer .
When I started I was okay with it. I would do virtually anything to have my songs played on the radio. And if that meant a squeaky clean good-girl image, then I was willing to sign off on that. It didn’t seem like a bad idea at the time .
The crazy thing was that it worked. The label had been right all the way down to the song selections. I sold more albums the first year than any other of its debut artists .
But I was short-sighted. Now I had to watch everything I wore. Everything I said. Everyone I spoke to. It was a nightmare. I couldn’t sing the edgy songs. I couldn’t wear the tight short dresses. They had created the perfect formula and I couldn’t disturb the ingredients. I had to be a role model .
It was like an ironic joke. Me? A role model? What girl would want the life I had before I was famous? If only they knew. But Alexa Wilde was a creation, and no one knew who I used to be. And people seemed okay with that .
I wasn’t sure I was. I hadn’t forgotten where I came from or how my image was born. I wanted the memories erased. The pain. The humiliation. The
struggle to rebuild my life. I wanted every trace of the past to disappear. But that wasn’t reality. It was there when I closed my eyes. It was lurking when I fell asleep. I tiptoed through life, scared one day the truth would come spilling out and this dream would be over .
“Lexi, what if we do half up, half down?” Helena asked .
I shrugged, typing away on my phone. “Sure. It’s for the hospital. So whatever is going to make Jake happy .”
“Nothing makes Jake happy, so why even go there ?”
“True.” I looked at our reflections in the mirror. “Then do something that will completely piss him off.” I smiled .
Helena laughed. “I don’t want to get fired, but I have something in mind .”
I settled back in the chair while she went to work finishing my hair and makeup for the show tonight .
Jake had set up this charity event for me. It wasn’t often I was in Austin. My Texas tours usually kept me in bigger venues like Dallas and Houston, but this was another opportunity to show how involved I was with children’s fundraising. It was the cornerstone of my platform, and Jake never missed an opportunity to exploit my brand’s generosity .
If I wanted I could probably find another manager. It wasn’t as if I was that scrawny girl begging for nightclub gigs anymore. I didn’t have to beg for another thing the rest of my life. I was Alexa Wilde, America’s Country Sweetheart. America’s poster child for sweetness, virginity, and all things pure. I was the girl you wanted your son to date. I was the girl you wanted your daughter to grow up to be. I was the daughter you wish you had .
After three years of managing me, Jake wasn’t going to let me out of his clutches. Our contract was ironclad. I had it examined when he wasn’t around. I had five more years with him. Until then, I had to make the most of the partnership and ride out my pure and virginal image that sold millions of records .