Free Agent

by Catherine Gayle

  “Why are they all talking about us?” Blake murmured in my ear.

  That was when I knew that it wasn’t all in my head, and it was really happening. Blake wasn’t terribly perceptive about these things. If he was picking up on it, then it was far worse than I’d initially imagined.

  I shook my head, shrugging.

  “Do you want to leave?” he whispered. “You look miserable.”

  I wanted to leave, but I couldn’t. “Let’s stick it out awhile longer,” I insisted. “At least until the cake.”

  “You’re not going to eat any of it, though.”

  “No, but you can.” I angled myself away from him, determined not to draw any more attention our way, and watched Paola swing at her next piñata.

  A faint buzzing sounded from the general vicinity of Blake’s pocket. He took out his cell phone. And then, “Fuck,” he muttered beneath his breath, but it still carried through the ballroom. Dozens of eyes turned in our direction. I wanted to sink beneath the table and disappear. I wanted to be invisible again, like I had been when I’d weighed more than three hundred pounds. But wearing a dress like this, and with a man like Blake at my side, there was no chance of invisibility.

  I steeled my spine and tried to ignore the whispers and stares.

  “I have to go make a phone call,” Blake whispered in my ear.

  “What? Now?” My voice was sharper than I’d intended. More heads turned to stare in our direction.

  “I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.” And in truth, he sounded absolutely devastated. “Sorrier than I can ever say.”

  “Is it your grandma?” I asked, but he was already halfway to the exit. I couldn’t get up and follow him without creating a huge scene and drawing Paola’s attention in the bargain.

  So I stayed put, watching her swing at her seventh piñata, and worried.

  But the whispers and pointing only increased in Blake’s absence, and my feet itched to book it out the door behind him—more due to my own discomfort than worrying about him, though.

  When Paola started on her eighth piñata, my brother sat in Blake’s empty seat, his expression a combination of fury and concern.

  “What?” I demanded in a heated whisper.

  Instead of speaking, he wordlessly passed me his cell phone, with the screen open to one of the photos from the shoot I’d done with Blake and Mia—me wearing a sexy negligee, the strap falling off my bare shoulder, Blake in nothing but his briefs, his tongue darting out to lick my bare skin.

  “What? I don’t—” My throat swelled closed, and no more words would come out.

  “It’s all over social media—Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. Blowing up as we speak. He’s been tagged in them, and they’re trying to figure out your name.”

  “But I don’t understand. Those were supposed to be private.” My eyes burned with unshed tears—both because of the betrayal and the fact that if the school board got wind of this, I’d lose my job faster than I could blink.

  “Probably why he just booked it out of here,” Miguel groused. “If I get my hands on him…”

  I didn’t want my brother to get his hands on Blake, though.

  That was all for me.

  Or at least it would be, as soon as I could pull myself together again.

  “Tell Paola I’m sorry,” I said with as much composure as I could muster. Then, with a modicum of dignity and a pinch of get-the-heck-out-of-Dodge, I slipped out the side exit of the ballroom and burst into tears.

  “YOU’RE THE ONLY person I sent them to,” I shouted into the phone.

  I’d never yelled at a teammate’s wife before, but neither had I ever felt so much panic before. This could ruin everything I’d built with Bea, everything I’d been working toward.

  “You never sent them to me,” Brie Burns insisted again. She’d already sworn the same thing twice, but I didn’t believe her. How could I? No one else had access to them, so it had to have been Brie. “Keith said you were going to,” she said, “but I never got them. I never got anything from you. No text. No email. No phone call. Nothing.”

  “Bullshit. I texted you the link as soon as he brought it up and Bea gave me the go-ahead.”

  “Well, maybe you should check your phone, then. Did you send them to the right number?”

  In my fury and panic, that thought hadn’t crossed my mind. I put Brie on speakerphone so I could scroll through my messages. Shit. Nothing there. But then I remembered I’d forwarded her an email. I pulled up the email client on my phone and found it in my sent messages. “It was an email, not a text message.” I rattled off the email address I’d used.

  “My email address is Brie dot Burns at mail dot com, Blake,” she said calmly. “There’s a dot between my first and last names.”

  Fuck. While I still had her on speaker, I checked the address I’d sent it to, again. “So who the hell has that email address without the dot?”

  “No idea, but I’d guess they’re your leak. Just call Jim and let him know so he can get the PR team on it ASAP. It’ll be okay. They managed to dig Harry out of whatever mess he found himself in last year, so they’ll dig you out of this one, too.”

  “I’m not worried about me. I don’t care if people see me like that. I’m worried about Bea. She didn’t want anyone else to see them. No one. And now the whole world is seeing them, and it’s all my fault. Or at least she’s going to assume it is.”

  “Oh,” Brie said. “Ouch. Yeah, that’s a bit touchier.”

  “She’s going to kill me. She’s going to murder me.”

  “I’m sure she’ll understand it was an honest mistake,” Brie insisted, but she didn’t sound overly convincing.

  “Maybe she will, but will her school district? She could get fired over this.” Holy fuck. The thought of Bea losing her job because of something stupid I’d done burned in my gut. She loved her job. She adored those kids. And she was fucking good at it, too.

  I probably just got Bea fired.

  “But can they prove it’s her?” Brie suggested hopefully.

  “You tell me,” I said. “The pictures are everywhere. What do you think?”

  “I haven’t met her,” she pointed out.

  Well, there was that. “Do they really need to prove it?”

  “To fire her? I’d hope they need to prove it.”

  “Hoping doesn’t do much good in the real world,” I said. Grandma’s health was enough proof of that. “Besides, aren’t school districts more concerned about the kids? They can always find another teacher.” Just like a hockey team could always find another player to fill a hole. Maybe someone with a different skill set, but there was always someone else coming along to take someone else’s place.

  Brie started to say something else, but Bea raced out of the building just then, so I cut my teammate’s wife off mid-sentence. “Got to go.”

  “Keith and I’ll get Jim and the PR team on it,” she said just before I hung up.

  I shoved my phone into my pocket and power-walked over to where Bea had flung herself down onto the curb, her arms wrapped tight around her knees, her head buried against them. Her shoulders were shaking, and I couldn’t fool myself into thinking it was due to laughter.

  “Bea?” I said cautiously.

  Her head shot up at the sound of my voice. She glared at me with red, wet eyes.

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t—”

  “Why?” she cut in before I could get another word out. “Why would you do something like this? I was right all along, wasn’t I? You were just using me for—”

  “I wasn’t using you,” I insisted. “I would never use you.”

  “Oh, sure, Blake. Whatever you say.”

  “I’m not using you,” I repeated. “I love you. It’s killing me that I did something to hurt you.”

  “Just stop, already.”

  I sat down next to her and tried to put an arm around her shoulders, but she tore away from my grasp, leaping to her feet. She was halfway across the parking
lot before she stopped, dropping to her knees on the pavement.

  “I sent the link to the wrong email address,” I called out, slowly inching my way toward her.

  “You really think—"

  “I thought I was sending them to Brie Burns, just like you said I could. But apparently I got a digit wrong.”

  “You seriously expect me to believe—”

  “It was an honest mistake, Bea,” I cut in again. I hated to keep interrupting her, but it seemed to be the only way I could get a word in edgewise. “I know you don’t want to believe it, but it was. Look, I can show you.” I held my phone out like a peace offering.

  “Why do you always think I’ll give in to you?” she shot back.

  “Why do you always assume the worst of me?” I countered.

  “Because everyone always gives me the worst.”

  “Not everyone.” I took a chance and crossed the parking lot to join her, dropping to my ass beside her. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. It’s killing me that I hurt you. You’ve got enough people in your life who’re doing that already.”

  “Don’t bring my family into this.”

  “I didn’t. You did,” I pointed out. “But are you seriously going to try to argue that they’re better for you than I am?”

  “You can’t—”

  “You’ve told me yourself that they want to keep you how you’ve always been. They’ve got you in a box and expect you to stay there, and they don’t like it when you do anything outside of the norm. I’m the one trying to help you bust out of that box.”

  “Yeah, by getting me fired.”

  “Have you been fired already?” I asked, my stomach sinking all the way to my toes.

  “Already got a call from my principal. I’ve been suspended pending a formal disciplinary hearing.”

  Fuck fuck fuckity fuck. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

  “Maybe it’s a good thing that it happened,” she said. “Now, I mean. Before it was too late. Before things got too serious between us.”

  “Things are already too serious between us.”

  “We can end it now without causing too much pain,” she continued, as if she’d never heard me. “It’ll be better this way.”

  End it? This was worse than I’d imagined.

  “Better for who?”

  “For everyone.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I think you should leave now,” she said. “You should go back to the hotel. I’ll stay with my parents tonight—”

  “Bea,” I cut in, tipping her chin so she’d have to look up at me. The pools of tears in her eyes nearly broke me. But then again, I was already broken. “Please,” I croaked.

  She blinked hard a couple of times, somehow keeping her tears from spilling over. “You should leave, Blake. I’ve got to go back in there and do damage control with my family.”

  BEA STAYED TRUE to her word, spending the night with her parents instead of coming back to the hotel with me. She sent her grumpy brother to pick up her things. I could only assume it was so she wouldn’t have to deal with me.

  He made it clear he wasn’t a big fan of mine. I had difficulty not letting him know what I thought of the way he and the rest of his family always treated her, but that probably wouldn’t help things any, so I somehow kept it in check.

  I wanted to say, See, Bea? Sometimes I can control myself! But that wouldn’t help anything. And besides, she was giving me the cold shoulder, so I couldn’t say anything to her at all.

  She arranged for the airline to switch her seat on our flight back to Portland so she wouldn’t have to sit next to me on the way home.

  She wouldn’t respond to my texts, no matter how profusely I apologized.

  I felt like enough of an ass already, but the way she was completely shutting me out of her life was enough to do me in.

  Grandma called me the day we got back to Portland, before I could make it in to the PR meeting Jim had informed me I was required to attend.

  “Just keep your head on,” she said. “You made a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes. Don’t say anything stupid.”

  “I always say stupid things.”

  “Not always. Not if you slow down and think. They’ll help you figure this out, Blake.”

  “It doesn’t even matter what the team does to me at this point,” I told her. I’d never sounded more morose before, not even to my own ears. “I’m just worried about Bea. Her family won’t take it well, but it’s worse than that.”

  “Worse how?”

  “She could lose her job over this.”

  “Well, if she does, she’s better off without them.”

  “She’s better off without a job? A job she loves?”

  “Teachers don’t get enough appreciation anyway. She could do a lot better for herself doing something else.”

  “But she loves those kids, Grandma.”

  “So…what are you going to do about it?” she demanded.

  “What can I do about it?”

  “If you want her back, you’ll think of something. If you want to make things right, you’ll figure it out. You’re a smart man, Blake. Always have been. You’ve got a brain between your ears. Time to use it.”

  “Not really helpful,” I said, and she just cackled the way she always did when the answer was staring me right in the face but I couldn’t see it.

  “FROM THE TEAM’S standpoint, there’s not a problem here,” Jim said the next morning, folding in the earpieces of his bifocals and setting them on his desk. “We know our players have lives outside of hockey. Those photos are clearly not pornography. There’s nothing indecent or inappropriate about the photos.”

  “But we still have a problem on our hands?” I asked, because I wasn’t quite following his train of thought.

  “We still have a problem,” Bergy said, crossing his arms in an intimidating posture. He and the other coaches were present, too, as well as about a dozen other bigwigs from the Storm’s front offices.

  “Our problem,” Mr. Sutter said, “is that Ms. Castillo is a teacher, and her students are young and also very impressionable—more so than many of their peers—and we don’t know how the school board will handle this.”

  A breath of relief whooshed out of my lungs. “You’re telling me that the team is going to help Bea with this, right? That’s what you’re saying?”

  “It’s made national news, both here and in Canada,” he said calmly. “If she’d done that photo shoot with almost any other man, it wouldn’t have been newsworthy, and it never would have become an issue for her. The only reason anyone cared about posting those photos online was because you were in them, too. The perpetrator didn’t know who Ms. Castillo is, or at least it’s highly doubtful. We have to treat this with the belief that they only made the images public because you’re a public figure. So we, as an organization, feel that we have an obligation to Ms. Castillo to help fight her case with the school board.”

  “You’re being serious? You’re not fucking with me—I mean screwing around with me?”

  “I’m being serious. Any chance you can find out when her hearing is scheduled?” Mr. Sutter asked.

  “She’s cut me off. I don’t—”

  “I can find out,” Webs interrupted. “Dani will know.”

  “Good,” Mr. Sutter said. “As soon as we know that, we can get our legal team involved and begin the process of moving forward.”

  Holy hell.

  I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve this kind of loyalty from Mr. Sutter and the Storm organization, but I was beyond glad I’d done it. Bea might have a teacher’s union that could help her, but getting the power of the Portland Storm’s legal team on her side was beyond anything I could have hoped for.

  Maybe, if we were able to help her out of this mess, she’d eventually forgive me.

  Maybe I’d be able to convince her I loved her, even if I sometimes fucked up.

  Maybe she’d eventually give me another chance
. And maybe I wouldn’t destroy it as soon as I got it.

  Maybe, just maybe, she’d believe that loving me was worth it.

  That I was worth it.

  Hell, maybe I wasn’t, but she sure as fuck was.

  WHEN I WALKED into my disciplinary hearing with the school board, I nearly fell over in shock. I’d been expecting the board, my principal, and maybe one or two other people from my school to be present. I was not prepared to find more than half a dozen men I didn’t recognize in the slightest—most of them tall, muscular men in expensive suits—alongside a woman in a dark gray power suit.

  One of the unfamiliar men, a graying gentleman with bifocals and a firm handshake, came over to me with a smile. “Jim Sutter,” he said. “General Manager of the Portland Storm. Blake filled us in on what was happening, so we thought we’d bring our legal team out to lend you a hand. This is Mattias Bergstrom,” he added, indicating a very intimidating gentleman next to him with sleek, dark hair with a silver streak on one side and a build that would rival Blake’s and any of his teammates’. “He’s the Storm’s head coach. The rest of these gentlemen and Ms. Farnworth work in our PR department, and Mr. Dalton, over there” —he indicated a blond-haired man in a dark gray suit—“is our lawyer. We’ll be assisting you today if that’s all right.”

  “Blake sent you?” I spluttered.

  “Not exactly, but since it was his mistake that led to your suspension and this hearing, we believe it’s right for us to get involved.”

  “With your lawyers?” I repeated, still trying to wrap my brain around it. I’d been preparing to argue my case on my own, and if necessary, I thought I’d ask the teacher’s union to provide me with legal counsel. That was one of the benefits of having a union, after all. I wasn’t sure their legal help would be of quite this caliber, though.

  Jonathan Grissom, the president of the school board, scowled and waved a hand toward an empty chair. “If we could get started,” he said impatiently. If I had to guess, I’d say he hadn’t been expecting half a dozen bigwigs to show up in my defense any more than I had been.

  I took the empty chair he’d indicated, and Mr. Sutter sat next to me, looking perfectly calm and in control of the situation.