“I’m talking about your dad emailing me hours before a game to tell me that he knows I’m being blackmailed and my endorsements are going to dry up.”
I hear her grunt, a curse bursting from the back of her throat. “Okay, that’s a new one.”
“You didn’t know?”
“No. I didn’t know he knew. I just talked to Tish and got her to recant her story. She’s not going forward with it. I was about to remind David that he has outstanding warrants in Washington for vandalism and he might want to shut his mouth if he doesn’t want cops at his door, but before I could get to him I got a million messages telling me to call you ASAP.”
“How’d Brad find out about any of this? I thought you were keeping it quiet. I thought you were handling this.”
“Trey, it’s his agency. He has eyes and ears everywhere. I did the best I could,” she says calmly. “I’ll keep on it, I’ll put the fire out, but right now I need you to chill.”
“I can’t. Fucking. Chill.”
“You have to. You have a game to play.”
“You think I don’t know that? This is my job. All of it. I can’t lose my endorsements over this lie.” I pound my fist against the shelf as the world shifts sideways, threatening to drop me to my knees. “I can’t have someone fucking with my life like this!”
Sloane is silent for a long time. I’m worried she’s hung up on me or I’ve gone deaf when I hear her voice, low and even. “Drive me.”
“What?”
“Get out of the passenger seat and drive me. You’re in charge. You’re in control. Tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it.”
I laugh bitterly, shaking my hand out. “You don’t want to know.”
“Tell me. I’m listening.”
“I want you to get on a plane, get down here, and make me forget all this shit.”
“How? How would I do that, Trey?”
Get naked and let me eat you alive for hours.
“Jesus, I can’t do this right now,” I groan in frustration. “I’m in a locker room surrounded by guys, all of them listening. All of them have already heard me say your name.”
“Do you want me to take care of this for you?”
“Yeah, of course I do.”
“But you don’t want me to tell you it’s going to be okay, so you need to tell me. You need to be in control,” she insists. “Imagine we’re on the field, we’re in the huddle. Tell me what route to run and I’ll run it. What’s the play, Domata?”
I step back, swiping my hand over my mouth. “Clean up this Tish shit. Make it disappear, I don’t fucking care how.”
“I will, baby,” she promises softly. Submissively. “I’ll do it for you.”
I’m floored by the tone of her voice. By the term of endearment. She’s never used it before, but there’s something about it. Something that sets me off because when she says it, it’s like sex. It reminds me of her under my hands, under my body. Under my command.
“What are you doing?” I ask roughly.
“Giving you what you need. Tell me what to do. What else do you want me to do?”
I take a slow breath. “I don’t want anything to do with Brad. Get me the hell away from him,” I tell her, not a clue how she’d ever be able to make that happen.
Still she coos quietly, “I’ll get it done.”
And still it calms some raging part of me.
“Anything else?”
“Find a way to be my agent without being my agent.”
“You want me to get an alter ego? Be Bruce Wayne in the streets and Batman in the sheets?”
I chuckle. “No, I seriously don’t want you to be Batman.”
“Catwoman and Selena Kyle?”
“Hell yeah.”
“I’ll shop for a black leather suit as soon as I get the chance. In the meantime, I need something from you. Just one thing.”
“Only if you use the B word again.”
“Can you help me, Batman?”
“Wrong B word.”
She laughs lightly. “I need you to give me something, baby.”
“I’ll give you anything.”
“I need to know who else knows about your attacks.”
Part of me wants to lash out. It wants to shut down, to tell her I don’t know what she’s talking about, but it’s a lie and I know it. She knows it. She just talked me down from an attack. How am I gonna go and tell her they don’t happen?
“Coach Reagan,” I answer immediately, not bothering to ask why she needs to know. I don’t have to ask. I trust her. “Head coach at UCLA. He’s always known.”
“I might have to call him.”
“You should. He likes you.”
“Let’s hope so. Now go kick some ass,” she tells me, her voice turning hard and familiar, the pit bull inside her rising up to fight. “I’m gonna go do the same.”
Ashford Agency
Los Angeles, CA
It’s a tall order, what Trey has told me to do. It won’t be easy. I’m going to have to throw everything I have into the fire and hope a Phoenix rises out of the ashes. I have to hope I’m smart enough, cunning enough, to pull all of the right strings that will untangle Trey and I from this mess. Whether we win or lose, by the end of this day my world will look decidedly different than it does right now, but it will be better.