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?
24
Allie
I wanted to be mad at him.
I wanted to look at him across that empty conference room and feel angry, self-righteous fire in my veins simply from the sight of him. But I didn’t.
What I felt was soul-shriveling embarrassment because now I was being dissected, my old pictures being thrown up on new stories as some sort of proof that the way I’d lived before should have given a hint that this would happen.
The shot of me on the rocks in Aruba was a particular favorite this morning on the entertainment sites, maybe because my arched back and skimpy red bikini made me look more like the kind of person who slept with someone who worked for her. Like it reinforced whatever narrative they’d chosen for the juicy tidbit Luke and I had just handed them.
There was no regret for what I’d done months ago, years ago, because I looked damn good in that bathing suit, but it was that in a matter of weeks, I’d turned into a punchline. Fodder for some late-night TV anchor who wanted a quippy top ten list.
Luke wouldn’t be a punchline. Who could blame him? was something I read on Twitter before Paige ripped my phone out of my hands
And in his eyes, I could see the devastation. He’d rip down every word, every picture, every comment with his bare hands, if he could.
But it was impossible. This was something he had no control over.
What people said. About him, or me, or us together. What it looked like to the outside world had absolutely no bearing on what it looked like between us.
And even that was subjective because not once had Luke given me verbal clues as to what was going on in his head. Now all I knew was that he was sorry. That he wanted it to be gone, but he had no way to make that happen.
I knew that because that was what I saw on his face when he looked at me with apology screaming from the depths of his dark eyes. I had to close my own eyes against it because as much I wanted to be mad at him over this, my heart was shredded to ribbons in my chest over how I felt that very morning in his bed.
Ava gave me a sympathetic look, but her tone was all business.
“You’re in agreement, Allie?”
With my back still against the door, I nodded. My fingers knit together tightly at the pulse of silence that came with my decision. Even if it hurt to hear Luke say that I wasn’t his girlfriend, it was the truth. Something I couldn’t argue with. To stand in front of the media and try to spin something sweet and innocent would feel like plucking glass shards from my skin.
I wasn’t capable of it at the moment. Just convincing Paige to smuggle me into the facility, past a waiting horde of news vans, took enough of my energy. But sitting at home wasn’t helping. Amazing how hiding under your covers and crying didn’t actually make your problems go away.
“Okay,” Ava said in a crisp voice. “We’ll issue a press release from the front office, saying that you and Luke had private lives outside of the Washington Wolves, and they’ll remain private, considering that you’re both consenting adults and there’s nothing in Luke’s contract that prohibits a relationship between the two of you.”
It was a scrubbed-clean version of the truth.
The bare facts boiled down to a sanitized version that would provide little for the media to work with.
I hated it.
Neither Luke or I spoke, and Ava glanced at us briefly before directing her attention back to her phone.
“We’ll talk to the team at the meeting that starts in”—she looked at the clock on the wall—“twenty minutes. Let them know that outside of these walls, they’re strictly on a ‘no comment’ basis, and if anyone utters a word to the media other than that, they’ll get a stiletto up their piss hole.”
Her attempt at a joke had me smiling slightly, but Luke only dropped his head down so that I couldn’t see his face at all.
The smile fell when I imagined facing the team again. Just like that, it was as if someone lit a match behind my eyes, igniting the short, thin fuse on my emotional leash. What would they think of me?
I cleared my throat, just to make sure I would not cry if I spoke. “Do ... do you need me at that meeting?”
Even though vomiting seemed like an appropriate response to the thought of attending, I’d do it. I’d face them and look in their eyes, accept whatever judgment they’d have for me. Risk being able to put a tangible moment to the loss of respect that I might see aimed back at me.
But Ava shook her head. “No, unless it was something you’d normally attend, I think it’s better if you don’t. But after we issue this press release, I think it’s best if we return to business as usual. On game day, you do whatever you’d normally do.” She paused and held my eyes when my breathing increased audibly. “If you’re comfortable with it.”
I chewed on my bottom lip and risked a glance at Luke. He’d lifted his head and was watching me carefully. A muscle in the side of his jaw popped when he clenched his jaw.
I wish you could’ve kissed me out in the sun.
The thought came from nowhere, and then it was my turn to drop my head so I could shackle my emotions down with iron chains. When I’d willed the tears back with clenched fists, I looked up again.
“I’ll see how I feel on Sunday.” It was all I was willing to promise at that point.
She nodded. “Fair enough. Who knows, maybe this will have all blown over by then. Another Kardashian baby might enter the world, and believe me, that’ll distract them from just about anything.”
“Ava,” Luke said, still looking directly at me, “can I get a minute with Allie? I’ll be at the meeting before it starts.”
If she was surprised, she did an excellent job of hiding it. “Of course.” She touched my arm as I moved out of her way. “Let me know if you need anything, okay? I’m an excellent drinking companion.”
I gave her a weak smile. “Thanks, I will.”
With the click of the door being closed, we were alone.
Luke straightened, wiping a hand over his mouth. “Allie, I’m so sorry about all this.”
“It’s not your fault,” I answered.
He uttered a dry laugh. “Isn’t it?”
Our eyes held until my vision blurred.
“Allie, please don’t cry,” he begged quietly. A single tear dashed down my cheek, and I brushed it away, but I knew by the way his arms popped when he clenched his hands together that he saw it. His brows furrowed over his tortured eyes, but he didn’t look away. Like it was his penance, his punishment. I knew what he was remembering. I’d asked him to go inside. But he’d touched me first as though he couldn’t not touch me.
But that didn’t matter. Even if the only thing they’d seen was us walking into his house, it was damning enough to still make the headlines. Saying that to Luke would make little difference, though.
“I had plans,” I heard myself saying.
He took a deep breath and let it out through pursed lips. “What do you mean?”
“I-I wanted to start a foundation.” I didn’t brush away the tears that fell now. It was pointless. My heart hurt so badly, standing a mere five or six feet away from him, telling him the most personal, secret thing since the day we’d met. Now, when it didn’t matter and couldn’t make it better, I was showing him the most tender side of my underbelly. The thing that could hurt me the most. “Helping young girls learn to be leaders, how to make an impact in the lives of people around them when they’re not given the same opportunities as others. How not the waste the ones they are.” My throat thickened, and I had to stop, just so that I didn’t unleash some ugly, snot-filled sob. “Faith gave me the idea, actually.”
“God, Allie,” he said, leaning forward like he would stand.
“This was something I never knew I wanted,” I told him, suddenly unsure if I was talking about the foun
dation, about him, or about us. “But that doesn’t matter, you know? All the matters is that one day you wake up and you do want it. And now I feel like it was taken away from me,” I said angrily. “By some asshole with a zoom lens. I didn’t even get the chance to turn it into something amazing. Something special.”
“You still can,” he replied fiercely.
I let out a watery laugh, my cheeks wet with tears. “Would you send your daughter to me now? If you didn’t know me, know what happened, would you trust me to mentor her?”
His breathing picked up speed. He stood and paced in front of the table, his hands fisted by his side. “Fuck,” he yelled, then he kicked out the chair next to the table. It clattered to the side. He glanced at me. “Sorry. I really want to punch the wall or something, but ...” He held up his hands, worth millions, and shrugged helplessly.
“It’s okay,” I replied because even though it wasn’t okay, I really didn’t want him to break any bones.
“I knew that night that we couldn’t keep doing this,” he muttered, pacing again.
I froze. “You what?”
His nostrils flared out as he stopped and stared at me, unseeing. “I left the press conference and knew we had to stop. I’d said too much, that asshole had baited me too easily, and if anyone found out, shit, then this is exactly what would happen.”
That.
That was the piece I’d been missing in all this. The look in his eye when he turned and saw me sitting by his pool. He’d been preparing to end it.
I looked away and stared at the white wall until my eyes burned from the need to blink, but I would not let another tear fall until I was alone. That was why he brought me into his bed. Why he touched me that way, why he said the things he did because he knew it was the last time.
And I’d woken up, sniffing his pillows like a silly little girl.
Like a suit of armor unfolding, I shored up every side of my aching, tender, torn heart. Slowly, I nodded. With shaking fingers, I reached up and slid my sunglasses back down to cover my sandy, gritty eyes.
It never would have worked. Whatever visions had danced through my head that very morning would never have worked because he was too afraid of something going wrong on his watch. The idea that strangers could peer easily into his personal life was the worst thing Luke could imagine, especially when he couldn’t control the outcome for the people surrounding him.
The Bombshell Effect Page 20