Rumor Has It (Jock Star Book 1)

by Caterina Campbell

  “No. Gosh, no. I just wanted to have a word with you if you’re available? I won’t take up much of your time.”

  I nod. “We can step outside.”

  Bristol makes a move to come with us, but I shoot her a look and she reluctantly backs off.

  Outside, I direct Camille to one of a few open tables. I’m leery of being in public with her because I’ve been stalked for weeks by reporters trying to get a feel for me and my lifestyle, which they quickly surmised was well-beneath Vance’s. It’s just one of many adjustments I’ve had to make since meeting Vance and pissing off Bristol. And now that things are getting back to normal, Camille Hatfield shows up on my community doorstep.

  She sets an oversized purse down on the ground beside her feet and adjusts her body for comfort, laying her forearms on the black iron table as a final adjustment. “You’re exactly how I pictured you.”

  I can’t relax, and my feet bounce nervously. I’m sweating in places I can’t wipe without encouraging or offending someone. She’s not at all what I expected. She looks nothing like her Amber Dietrich persona in the tabloids. She’s wearing baggy white Capris with a loose-fitting shirt that hangs off of one shoulder, and the only thing sparkling on her is a band of gems on her sandals. Curiosity about her motives wins out over decorum, and I blurt out, “Why are you here? As usual, the tabloids exaggerated Vance’s relationship with me. We’re friends, nothing more, and I can’t really even say that we’re still that.”

  She frowns. “Vance doesn’t know I’m here. He’d be mortified, no, back up—he’d be murderous.” She smiles, tilting her head to the side like she’s studying me, a quirky habit she shares with her brother. “May I be upfront with you?”

  I trace the diamond pattern in the table with my index finger and pointedly look at her. “I’d prefer that.”

  “Vance doesn’t usually do what’s best for him unless it’s for his career. He’s notorious for shutting people out, and I think maybe he’s done that with you.”

  “What would you know about that?”

  She smiles. “When we spoke about you the other night, he sounded like maybe things were unfinished. I thought maybe I could see if you felt the same way?”

  The diamond pattern I’m tracing is now two fingers wide and repetitive. “I was never given a choice, and he sure didn’t take long to make his.” I get to my feet, fully intending to have the last word, but she stands up too.

  “Brenna, did Van tell you about Amber Dietrich?”

  I nod.

  “Did he tell you that we haven’t seen each other since they reported us to be dating?”

  I shake my head, surprised.

  “As soon as Candid ran the stripper story, Van cut himself off from everyone. I had to communicate with him through Chip, and if you know Chip Pervis, you know it sucked. He probably had a hard-on from so much power.”

  “I didn’t know, but Vance did tell me that he felt responsible for protecting you and Jacoby,” I offer, in hopes that whatever residual hurt she may have from his handling of things might be eased a bit by his concern for them.

  “I know,” she says, rolling her eyes and smiling at the same time. “He doesn’t half-ass anything, and this time maybe he should have. The photographer for Candid recognized me from my show in Vegas, not as Van’s little sister. He didn’t care about my real name. I was a stripper with Van Hatfield, for God's sake. What else did he need?”

  “So, why cut you out then?” Without the diamond pattern to trace, I twirl my hair around my finger.

  An exaggerated eye-roll precedes her reply. “I’d like to say it was Chip. He doesn’t let anything, not even family, get between Van and his career, but Van makes up his own mind, and once Jacoby was at risk, bam! Decision made. I think that’s what he’s done with you too.” She clears her throat and speaks deeply, mimicking Vance’s tone with a nice added head shimmy, “You know, ‘just to be safe.’”

  “Uh, I don’t think our situations are the same. I have a lot less to lose, and he and I don’t have a history.”

  Camille shrugs, and the boobs I wish I’d been born with follow with her shoulders, tempting my eyes to stray to her chest. “I know my brother, and I don’t think he wants it to be this way. I know he misses me and Jacoby. I know if things were different, he’d be a part of our lives every second he could. But I need you to know that too. Vance didn’t let you go because he doesn’t want you, Brenna. He let you go because he doesn’t want to be the one who upsets your world.”

  My eyes briefly stray to the traffic behind her. “I think that’s an awful lot to assume.” I look back at her, noticing for the first time that she’s no longer smiling.

  Camille’s relaxed demeanor shifts. “Is it?”

  “I asked him if he’d let me go if things were different. He couldn’t say no.”

  Camille takes a deep breath. “Vance isn’t always the best with communication, in case you haven’t noticed. Well, unless he’s pissed, and then he has no trouble expressing himself. He hasn’t talked to our brother, Eric, in a year. Can’t say as I blame him, but it’s Eric. If Vance didn’t care about you, he’d take what he wanted. I don’t think he’d sacrifice his wants for your needs.”

  Vance’s motive to end things with me could have been anything, the least of which is sacrifice. “Camille, Vance made his choice—twice. And after the past weeks I’ve been through with the tabloids, I can’t say that he was wrong.”

  “Do you really think that? Is what people print about you so much more important than what someone feels for you? You don’t strike me as someone who caves under pressure.”

  I open my mouth to protest, to give her the almighty Sloan speech about how she doesn’t know me and she isn’t in my shoes, blah, blah, blah, but she holds up a hand to stop me before I can rant, and I clamp down my lips, curious.

  “I have two tickets for tomorrow’s home game. Come with me? See for yourself what he’s like. I think you’ll see what I’m failing miserably to express.”

  Seeing Vance again in living, breathing, inked-up color, would not be good for my heart. It barely withstood seeing him on television tonight. “I can’t.” Again, I wish my answer were different. I wish I had balls like I have camel toe, but I’m taking my lumps and calling it a day. I’m not chasing a guy who doesn’t want me just to prove his sister wrong.

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  Holy shit, are they the cynical siblings or what? Vance said that the last time he invited me to a game too. “Won’t,” I say this time, feeling no shame in the confession.

  Camille reaches for her purse and pulls it up by its straps. The damn thing is big enough to place in an overhead bin on a plane. She reaches in, grabs something small, and though part of me expects a Mary Poppins coat rack, instead it’s a ticket. “Here.” She shoves it at me, holding it between us like it’s worth fighting over. “In case you change your mind.”

  I look at it but don’t reach for it. My mind wars with the wants of my heart, but my head knows that for all of us, distance is better. “I won’t.”

  She inhales and pulls her hand back to place the ticket on the tabletop. Apparently, she has plans to leave her date up to fate, because if I don’t take the ticket, someone is bound to, and she might end up sitting next to Toothless Tony, the guy who smokes cigarette butts out of boardwalk planters. “My number is on the back. Come with me, Brenna. At least you’ll know one way or another.”

  My throat involuntarily swallows. “It was nice to meet you,” I say, ignoring the ticket but tossing around the possibilities in my head. “I mean that.”

  She smiles. “You too.” Camille walks away, and six or so spaces down, she gets into a black Mercedes.

  I’m not a total shitbag, and I pick up the ticket so that Toothless Tony doesn’t happen across it when he’s stumbling home later. I thumb the corner of the ticket until it has a nice floppy edge. I don’t even make it into the bar before I’m accosted by a team of two, led by Bristol barreling he
r way outside, with Tori tripping over herself to keep up.

  The warpath Bristol’s on pinks her cheeks and narrows her stare. She’s all business when she opens her mouth, which should have an explicit language warning slapped over it. “That cu—uh . . .” she catches herself, chomping down on the second half of the cuss word like Uncle Rodney is protesting from her shoulder. He thinks the C-word should only be used on Colette’s mom and the person who invented colonoscopies, so we don’t use it—ever. “If that C-word harmed a hair on your head, I’m going to kick her ass. Her beef should be with Van. He’s the one who cheated on her, NOT you!” She scans the sidewalk and Ocean Avenue with her eyes, her head doing most of the work. “Where’d she go? She and I are going to have a little chat, and by chat, I mean a fist fight.”

  Confused, I blink several times. What does she mean by “he cheated on her”? Never mind, I don’t want to address any of it out here. We’re probably on TMZ already. “You’re not going to fight anyone.”

  I shove past them, hoping to avoid a conversation, but Bristol grabs a hold of my upper arm and pulls me back. “That wasn’t Camille Hatfield, Brenna. That was Amber Deerdick.”

  “Dietrich.” Tori corrects Bristol’s butchering of Amber’s last name, and though she gets a brief side-eye glare from Bristol to tell her she’s not helping, she shrugs unapologetically and shows me her phone with a Google photo of Amber on the screen.

  Bristol’s cheating comment makes sense now, but I’m still not discussing it with her in public, or ever.

  “Dietrich, whatever. Doesn’t matter. Did she threaten you?” Bristol asks.

  “No,” I grumble out and try once again to get past them.

  “Brenna, she wasn’t here to make friends. You get that, right?”

  “I get that it’s none of your business.”

  “None of my business?” she shouts, drawing looks from patio dwellers. “Like hell it’s none of my business. She walked in here and tried to pass herself off as Van’s sister. She’s his fucking girlfriend, Brenna, and if she’s a girlfriend like mom is a girlfriend, she’s going to eat your eyeballs right from their sockets.”

  “Maybe we should do this somewhere else.” Tori’s suggestion and unwelcome grasp on Bristol’s arm draws a death glare and an exaggerated shrug-off, to which Tori responds by letting go and taking a precautionary step back. “Maybe I should leave the two of you to work it out.”

  When neither of us disagrees, Tori takes her leave, forsaking her beloved gossip for safety inside The Seam. Bristol doesn’t see Tori go because she’s studying me.

  “Wait. You’re not surprised, are you? You knew? You knew when you went outside with her that she was Amber. Are you fucking cracked? Strippers are scrappy. And Van isn’t worth losing your eyes over. Hell, he’s not worth losing an eyelash over. Why in the hell would you do that?”

  “Let it go, Bristol.” I once again try for the bar’s entrance, but Bristol, in fighting mode, is quick and reaches a hand out to grab me. Her grip is tight, her eyes tighter as she narrows them on me.

  “NO! What the hell are you hiding? I will make a skin suit out of her before she or Van hurt you.”

  “Stop it. No one is hurting me.”

  “Fine. Lie to me. I’ll find out for myself. One way or another, someone is going to pay for her showing up here uninvited.” She pulls her phone from her back pocket and stabs her finger into the screen, pulling up a number with two stabs of her pissed-off finger.

  “Who are you calling?”

  She puts the phone to her ear, her determination not changing to respond to my question. I grab the phone, scratching her hand in the process, and for my persistence and unplanned brutality, I get a curse and the explanation I asked for.

  “If you won’t let me control his girlfriends, Van damn sure better.”

  “NO!” I grab again for the phone, but she dodges me, and before I can stop them, words are tumbling out of my mouth with the consistency of baby oil. “Amber Dietrich and Camille Hatfield are the same person. She’s not his girlfriend. She’s his sister.” It’s out as swiftly as my regret. The phone falls away from her ear, her bottom lip drops from her top lip, and she stares at me while Vance’s phone still rings on the other side of hers. “Hang up!” I screech, even though the damage is done with the registered missed call he’ll have.

  Bristol fumbles, trying with anxious fingers to end the call, and when his voice on his voicemail comes to an abrupt end, I relax a fraction, but not enough to stave off the stress sweats.

  Marginally recovered from my bombshell, Bristol thrusts herself toward me, gripping my hand with a strong one of her own. “Get the fuck out. You’ve got to spill the tea now.” Bristol beams, her eyes alight with info that a week ago she would have sold her soul for.

  “You have to promise me you won’t say a word. I wasn’t supposed to say anything.”

  “I won’t say a word. I promise.” She exudes joy, the outrageousness still tickling her thoughts, but something in there suddenly shifts and she becomes softer. “This. This is what I’ve missed, Brenna. We used to talk shit out. We used to plan. It used to be me and you against the world. I’ve missed knowing everything about you.”

  I didn’t think my guilt could deepen, but somehow Bristol manages the impossible. I have obligations to her and Vance that directly contradict each other. It was all so easy before I had someone else’s secrets to keep. Neither of them seems to understand how small the space between the rock and the hard place truly is. I groan, feeling the space tighten even further as I’m now relieved she’s happy, but also feeling forced into damage control.

  “After the shit you pulled with the baseball and the paparazzi, it was hard to want to share anything of importance with you. You seriously can’t tell anyone, Bristol. Not Toolbag, not Tracy or Tori. Not the tabloids. NO ONE.”

  Her shoulders drop, caving her whole body to a much more relaxed pose. A deep breath she exhales forcefully precedes her acceptance like I knew it would, but in true Bristol fashion, it comes with a price of its own. “Forgive me for Miracle Days and I’ll do anything you want.”

  A sigh too brittle to hide escapes. I’m trying. I truly am. Staying mad at Bristol isn’t in my DNA. She’s in the marrow of my bones. We’ve been through hell and back, and always together. She’s my one constant, and no matter how angry at her I might get or how many times she pulls shit I don’t agree with, I suck it up because that’s what we do.

  “I’m trying. You haven’t done anything as rotten as the paparazzi thing before. I need breathing room, and now I need a promise from you.”

  “I did promise.”

  “The whole thing, Bristol.”

  She sighs like I’ve asked her to recite the Declaration of Independence and holds up her pinky to give me the kind of promise I require. We kiss our own pinkies, hook them together, and she recites the vow made up forever ago. “My word is my bond, your trust is key, no matter what, you can count on me.” We kiss the knot our pinkies make to seal her oath. It’s so juvenile, but I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t required for serious things like the loss of virginity or now, because of my desperation, a secret that never should have left my mouth.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “Have fun today,” I call to Bristol as I head out the door. “Tell Toolbag I’m sorry for bailing.”

  She scoffs from the bathroom, “He’ll be fine. He knows we need the money. Good luck with the consultation.”

  Guilt at having lied to her about what I’m actually doing today seeps into my voice, and I wonder if she can sense my inner turmoil. I’m desperately holding back the urge to purge. The Silver Stallion’s keys are in my hand before I can reconsider spilling my guts, and I’m in the driver’s seat before I can do anything about it once I have.

  In the two-and-a-half-hour drive to San Jose, my guilt is chased away by my nerves, and in the additional half-hour bonus traffic out front of the stadium, I’m all but oozing them both. What the hell was I
thinking? I am not a liar, and I sure in the hell shouldn’t be lying over some guy who dumped me.

  I’m waved into the lot by a flashlight-wielding, safety vest-wearing teenager and directed to the most southern end of the parking lot, where I park in the farthest spot possible right as Bristol answers her phone.

  “So,” I start pathetically, nearly hitting the bumper of the Hummer in the space in front of me before slamming on my breaks, “I lied. I don’t have a side job today. I’m not making any money. I went to see Vance, so if Toolbag offers to buy lunch, take him up on it. You can be mad, but you can’t hold it against me, because I know you took the car a week ago.” I think about hanging up, but that’s a dick move, so I hold out for the lecture as I get out of the car.

  “You’re what?” The shriek is eardrum penetrable. “Are you in San Jose?”

  “Yes.” I fast-walk through the lot with others arriving on the tail end of fashionably late. “I’m sorry I spun the truth—”

  “You lied!”

  “I came clean, which is something you should understand having to do quite well. And now that I have, I have to go. Just wanted to get that off my chest. Love you, bye.”

  I shove my phone into my back pocket as it vibrates with Bristol’s return call, and speed-walk a little faster. At security, I adjust my Renegades ball cap, fully aware my anonymity is no longer guaranteed, and proceed without incident to my middle-of-the-pack, second-deck seat.

  Camille, barely recognizable in her floppy hat and sunglasses, stares at me slack-jawed as I take the seat beside her. “Brenna!” she squeals, grabbing me by the shoulders to negotiate a hug made awkward by our hats. “I’m not even going to ask why you changed your mind. I’m just going to appreciate that you did.”

  The crowd cheers Halsey’s base hit, and whatever she says next gets lost in the noise. Like her brother, Camille is flawless, and even in disguise, she is probably the prettiest person in the working-class section of the stadium. We’re behind third base, still close enough to hear the bat crack off the ball but not close enough to see nose hairs. It’s refreshing and a lot less likely we’ll be recognized by anyone on the team, much less the media. I start to relax until I’m reminded why I’m here.