“Fine old footy tradition. You bash the hell out of each other for eighty minutes, then you have a pint and a laugh and it’s all over. I know it may look a little bit scary out there, but there’s no point playing if you’re not going to give it all you’ve got.”
“Remind me never to actually do that boot camp with you, then. You’d kick my butt.”
“Nah. I wouldn’t kick it. I’ll tell you some more about that tomorrow, though.”
“See you then.” She hung up the phone, still smiling, looked at Talia and sighed. “He’s pretty great, isn’t he?”
“Yeh,” Talia said. “He is. He’s the best. And I’ve never talked to him after a match before,” she added impulsively. “Thanks for that.”
“Really?”
“I’m the youngest. And he’s the oldest, and he’s the—well, he’s Will.” The star, she didn’t have to say. “He talked to me heaps more last week than he ever has.”
“Some of that didn’t go all that well, I know,” Faith said. “But if it helps—I know he cares.”
“I know he does, too,” Talia said. “Now.”
Rumors and Revelations
Will shoved the last of his things into his duffel, moving a little slowly as you always did on the day after the match. When the adrenaline of combat had long since drained away, and with the hurdle of the journey home still to overcome before you could climb into the spa pool or onto the massage table and start getting your strength back for Tuesday, when it would all start again.
Yeh, Sundays were a bugger, but today, he was happy to be sore. There was nothing like playing, and no anesthetic like a win. And this afternoon, he’d be seeing Faith. Another pretty good anesthetic.
The niggle tried to poke its nasty head through the surface at that. The reminder that tomorrow, she was leaving, because, as she’d reminded him over and over, she needed to get back. But they would deal with that. He could go back to the States for a week in October, maybe, during what he devoutly hoped would be his brief break between the Southern Hemisphere Rugby Championship and the Northern Tour to Europe, because he would be busting a gut to be selected for the All Blacks for both of them. He’d have the offseason as well, all December and January. She could come out here again, maybe. And then they’d…see.
She’d wait for him, he was sure she would. Another niggle at that. Well, almost sure. He should have talked to her about it before, he knew that now. But it had all happened so fast. And anyway, they would talk about it today. They’d have this afternoon, and tomorrow as well. Heaps of time to hold her, and kiss her, and remind her why she wanted to wait for him. He hoped. They could make a plan.
He heard the chime of his phone and dug into his pack to find it. Ian.
“That may have answered a few of the critics,” he told his agent without waiting for a hello. “Back in business, I hope.”
“I hope so.” Something in Ian’s tone had Will standing up a bit straighter. “But who knows, now. Can’t believe you didn’t tell me. Can’t believe you still don’t get it. I’m this close to dropping you, and that’s the truth.”
“What?” Will sank onto the bed. “What are you on about? I haven’t done a bloody thing.”
“Nothing but not tell me that your pretend-girlfriend is publishing porn about you. When that gets out, everything’s going to hit the fan and no mistake. Not much we can do about this one, not at this point. Public breakup, sure. That may help. Maybe. But if you’d set out to do the most avoidable thing possible to torpedo your career, something there was no way in hell you had to do, I’m not sure you could have managed any better. Addiction, all right, I’ve had that. Anger management issues? All that. But this? Why? There’s no twelve-step program for stupid.”
“Wait.” Will finally got a word in edgewise. “What? What porn?”
He heard the sigh down the phone. “Bloody hell. She didn’t even tell you. You know how to pick them, don’t you?”
“Tell me.” He was up, pacing, because he couldn’t help it. “Shut up about the rest and tell me.”
“She’s got a pen name. Calista Flowers. And five episodes out of Bound to You, with the exciting conclusion coming soon. You’ll recognize them. They’ll be the ones with your photo on the cover, looking dirty as hell. She wasn’t content just to publish on that website, I guess. She had to sell the story—what everybody is going to think is your story, I can guarantee you that—to the whole bloody world. She had to make money off you.”
Will had his phone shoved between ear and shoulder and was pulling his laptop out of his backpack, his breakfast turning sour in his stomach. He chose an online bookstore at random and hit the search button. “What was the name?”
“Calista Flowers.” Ian spelled it. “Go on, look it up.”
Will did. And sure enough, up came five titles. He clicked on one at random. Its cover showed him, his face in shadow, his white shirt open all the way. He was staring down at Gretchen, on her knees in front of him in a pale bra and undies. All black, gray, and white, except for one splash of color. The red ribbon tying her hands behind her back.
“That’s not…you’re saying those are Faith’s?” he said. “I don’t believe it. She’d have told me. They’re stock photos. For sale everywhere, to anybody. And of course people are writing stories. That was the point, wasn’t it? Somebody told you this Calista Flowers is her? They’re lying. Trying to make more trouble for me, maybe, or just stirring the pot.”
“Oh, really? What if I told you that the person who told me that got it from the model?”
“Right,” Will managed to say. “Tell me the whole thing. Now.”
Ian’s sigh came down the phone. “Simple chain of events. A reporter calls the photographer to get more of the story. Human interest. Photographer gives him the name of the girl. Reporter calls the girl. Girl tells reporter all about how lovely you were, what a gentleman, what a ‘sweetheart.’ All very heartwarming, all very helpful, and if it had stopped with that, we’d be nothing but good. But it didn’t, did it?”
“I don’t know.” Will was having a hard time getting his breath. “You tell me.”
“No, it didn’t, because then the reporter asks about Faith. About the two of you falling in love and all. And up the girl pops and tells him all about Faith’s wonderful stories, and he calls me for your reaction, and I tell him I’ll get back to him. There we are, and that noise you hear? That’s the sad sound of your image deflating. I doubt this one will keep you from playing, not if we throw her under the bus, which I sincerely hope you’re willing to do. If she really didn’t tell you about this, you’d bloody well be willing to do it. But it isn’t going to do you any good at all, and you can forget about any product endorsements for the next year or two. I don’t think the All Blacks are going to be rapt about you doing condom adverts, and that’s about the only industry that’s going to touch you now.”
Will had heard enough. “I need to talk to her,” he said, “and I need to think. I’ll ring you again when I’m in Auckland.”
“Not soon enough. I need to start damage control now.”
“Well, you’re not going to. You’ll wait until I tell you what to say.”
“That’s not how this works,” Ian said. “I tell you.”
“Not this time. Not anymore. I need to get on the bus in—” Will held the phone away from his ear to check the time. “Twenty minutes. And I need to talk to Faith. If the world’s going to blow up in the next few hours because somebody wrote naughty stories about me, it’s going to have to blow up, because I’m not doing anything else without thinking about it first, and talking to her. Could be this whole thing was a misunderstanding, or even a lie. I’ll ring you when I’m in Auckland, when I’ve got a bit of privacy. I’ll tell you then what I want to do.”
“Mistake,” Ian warned.
“Then it’s my mistake. Because that’s what’s happening.”
He rang off, then thumbed through for Faith’s number. His fingers, he noticed i
n a detached sort of way, were shaking. He took a couple deep breaths, the same kind he took to steady himself for a tough kick. And then he pushed the button.
Attitude Adjustment
Faith climbed the stairs to the bedroom. Not “her” bedroom, she reminded herself. Will’s bedroom, that she would be leaving today for the last time, because their time together—her job, which was all this was—was over.
She needed an attitude adjustment. She’d been so excited last night, had let herself feel, for just a little while, that Will was really hers, and she was really his. But it wasn’t true, he’d never pretended it was, and if she were going to see him today, if she were going to stay with him tonight, and most of all, if she were going to be able to leave tomorrow without doing or saying something she’d regret, she needed to get her head on straight.
A run around the lake, that was the ticket. A long run, because she didn’t have to leave for the airport for more than two hours, and hanging around here, waiting to go—that was just going to make her feel worse.
She pulled her workout clothes out of the drawer. She’d gotten into her capris and bra, had her shirt in her hand when the phone rang. She tossed the shirt onto the bed and dug her phone out of her bag. It had to be Will. Or her mother. She looked at the screen and couldn’t help a happy little sigh. Will.
“Hey,” she said, feeling unreasonably better just because he had called, and that he didn’t want to wait until this afternoon to talk to her. That was exactly how foolish her demanding, undisciplined, irresponsible heart was. “I was just thinking about you, big guy. How are you feeling today?”
“I was feeling better before I heard the news.”
Something in his voice sent a chill straight down her back, and she sank onto the bed without even realizing what she was doing. “What? What’s wrong? Did something happen? The team? Your family—”
He cut her off with none of his normal courtesy. “Are you Calista Flowers?”
No. How could he know? The blood was draining from her head, and she felt a little sick. “Wha—what?”
“You heard me. Have you been writing books about me?”
“Not—not about you,” she said. “But I’ve been—” She had to stop and get her breath. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I have. I’ve written a serial. I wrote episodes for the website, and they were received really well, so I published them. And I’m selling them.” If she were going to have to tell him, it was better to say it all at once.
Silence, for a long moment. “Will?” she asked tentatively. She wanted to explain, wanted to say something to make it better. But she couldn’t think what it would be. And there was still nothing but silence on the other end.
“Right,” he said at last, the word an exhalation. “Right. And you didn’t think this was something you should tell me about.” He wasn’t shouting. It was so much worse than that. He was…defeated. “That you were writing porn about me, and publishing it. When you knew what my life was. You knew what those pictures did to me, and you did this anyway, something that’s going to make it all so much worse, and you didn’t even have the grace to tell me you were doing it so I could protect myself.”
“It isn’t—it isn’t porn,” she tried to explain. “It’s erotic romance. And it’s not about you. It’s about my character. It’s about Hemi. Remember? Hemi.”
“Who looks exactly like me. And who was written by you. By my girlfriend, the woman I’m sleeping with. Do you think anybody is going to believe for a second that that isn’t me, doing…whatever you have him doing to her? That it isn’t some kind of memoir?”
“What?” She actually laughed, she was so startled. “How could anybody think that? He’s a tortured multimillionaire CEO. Nobody who knows you could think you’re him.”
“But the people I’m talking about, they don’t know me. That’s the point. All they see is an image. Haven’t you realized that by now? And do you really not get that my image matters?”
“But I haven’t hurt your image. I haven’t.” She didn’t know how he’d found out, but she needed to make him understand. “Because nobody’s ever going to have a chance to make the connection. Because I’m not your girlfriend, and I’m leaving tomorrow, and anyway, I have a pen name. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”
“Really.” His voice was soft now. Deadly. “Then how do I know?”
“I…I don’t know,” she said, the hand holding the phone trembling a little, because it was getting the message before her brain did. “How?”
“Gretchen,” he said. “You told bloody Gretchen. And she told a reporter, and any minute now, he’s going to be telling the rest of New Zealand.”
“Oh, no.” It was a breath, about the last breath she had.
“Oh, yes. And what I want to know is,” he said, his voice finally rising, “was all this just part of a…part of a plan? Were you planning to leak it once you’d got safely back home? Was Gretchen going to do it all along, just maybe sprung it a bit early, or was it going to be you? Was that the real reason for the new hair, the new clothes, the…the new body, so you could go on some chat show and talk about it? And being with me. Was that all just a way to sell more books, too?”
“No!” She pressed her knees together to keep them from shaking. Oh, no. “No. Will, no. You have to believe me. I don’t know why I even told her. I didn’t tell anybody else. I never dreamed—I never imagined it would get out. It was just—” She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead with a couple of fingers, trying to think. “It was when I first…when the stories were first going up on the site, after the first couple weeks. When I was getting votes, and I logged on and saw I was number one, and I kept looking, all day. I was so excited that somebody was reading what I wrote, that they liked me. And I was having lunch with Gretchen, catching up, and…and I told her. It just…slipped out. She was the one person I could tell, because I was still a little…a little embarrassed, but I knew she wouldn’t judge. And I had to tell somebody. I just…I had to.”
“And you didn’t think,” he said, “that the person you should tell was me?”
“Well, no.” Suddenly, she didn’t feel quite so horrible. Not about this part. “How would I even have done that? You were gone. It’s not like you’d kept in touch. It’s not like we had some kind of relationship. You were just some guy I’d known for a little while, once upon a time. I started the story before I’d said more than twenty words to you, when all I knew about you was that you had muscles and a tattoo. We both did this, and we both made some money at it. And then you called me, out of the blue, and offered to pay me to come over here and pretend to be your girlfriend, and you said that was all it would be. Pretending.”
“Except it wasn’t, was it?” he asked, taking the wind right back out of her sails again. “Or was it? Was it all just pretending after all?”
“No! No. Of course it wasn’t. How could you think that? And I should have told you, but then I thought, no, don’t, because it’s only for a few days.” She was pleading now, she could hear it, but she couldn’t help it. “I thought you might feel this way, that you wouldn’t understand, and I didn’t want to wreck it. It was so good, and I didn’t want to ruin the little bit of time we had together, don’t you see?”
“Except that something can’t really be good if it’s not real. If one person’s still pretending after all.”
She sat there, the guilt a leaden lump in her stomach, because she didn’t have an answer for that.
“You should have told me, Faith,” he went on after a minute, sounding so…sad. So final. “You should have given me the choice. I gave you the choice to get involved. You should have given it to me.”
Her chest was aching, the tears trying to come. Because he was right. And it hurt so much.
“I’m sorry,” she said, feeling all the inadequacy of the word. She wanted to crawl into a corner and hide. She’d done so much damage. She hadn’t meant to, but that didn’t matter. “I’m sorry if it’s going to hurt your i
mage. If it helps, I’ll…” She fought to keep her voice under control while she cast around for something. Anything. “I’ll…tell people I wasn’t writing about you. I’ll tell them you didn’t know. That will help, won’t it? Maybe?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I need to go. I need to get on the bus. When you come, we’ll plan a story, I guess. Figure out how to pretend some more. One last time.”
“All right.” Her voice was so small, because that was how she felt. Small. “I’m sorry,” she said again.
“Yeh,” he said. “I’m sorry, too.”
They Always Leave
He had gone through the motions of getting on the bus, riding to the airport, going through check-in, just following the back of the fella in front of him. Not that anybody else was too chatty either. It was always quiet the day after a match.
He needed to think, but he couldn’t think. Too much anger. Too much disbelief, still. And too much…too much something else, that he didn’t want to examine too closely, because it might look like pain.
When he was in the Koru Lounge waiting for the flight to be called, the men around him thumbing over their phones, reading, or listening to music, he started to think that he should know. If he were going to talk to Ian about it, if he had to decide what to do, he needed to see for himself what was in those books, and exactly how bad it was. Because if she had written anything too far out there, if she had Hemi hurting Hope…that could be very bad indeed. Ian could call it fiction all he wanted, and still, people would wonder how much of it was true. If she could really have made all that up.
Anyway, he had a choice. He could sit here packing a sad, or he could do something about it. At least he could read what she’d written. At least he could face the truth.
So he pulled out his laptop, went online, and bought all five stories, hating that he was giving Faith yet more money, paying her once again for the privilege of ruining his reputation, and began to read.
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