Lessons in Letting Go (Study Abroad Book 3)

by Jessica Peterson

  Laura’s done up, sure, but she rocks the look with increasing confidence. She was a bit wobbly—literally and figuratively—when we first stepped out onto the red carpet.

  “You’re gorgeous,” I murmured in her ear, hoping to put her nerves at ease.

  “Not as gorgeous as you are,” she replied.

  I ran my finger over the strong slope of her shoulder. She drew a small, tight breath through her teeth. “Hardly. How bloody lucky am I, that my lucky charm is so easy on the eyes?”

  “You are a lucky bastard,” she said, eyes teasing as they met mine. “Your lucky charm could’ve been…I don’t know. A wart. Or a mangy cat. Maybe a stinky pair of socks you’d have to wear every game without washing them.”

  I laughed. So did she. Her shoulders fell back from her ears, just a little.

  I knew Laura would get a lot of attention. Not only because she’s hot as hell, but also because I rarely, if ever, bring a girl with me onto the red carpet.

  I didn’t expect she’d get this much attention, however. The photographers and reporters ask her for her name, where she’s from, how long she’s known me. She looks to me before answering, her gaze flashing with uncertainty, but I just nod my head, keeping my palm firmly on the small of her back as she responds to their questions. After a bit of a slow start, she handles the attention with aplomb, composed and classy, until the questions get a bit more personal.

  “Is your relationship with Rhys serious?” a reporter, American by the sound of her accent, asks.

  Laura looks at me again.

  “Um,” she says, rolling her glossed lips between her teeth.

  “We met recently,” I say, swooping in. “But I already know she’s my good luck charm. Lovely, isn’t she?”

  Laura smiles. The cameras keep clicking.

  I’m a lucky bastard indeed. Back before things like social media and multi-million dollar sponsorship deals, it was enough to be just a really great footy player. You won games, wowed the crowd, and got paid decently enough. But in the age of the Kardashians and reality TV, it’s all about attention. Attention is where the money is. And heaven knows I need that money.

  My family needs it, badly. Seeing those kids today at the rundown playground at Santa Caterina was an unwelcome reminder of my people back home and what they still need—what I still haven’t been able to give them, despite my best efforts. My cousins and I used to play at a playground like that, some of us running from fathers with a mean left hook, others because there was no other place for them to go.

  They still have nowhere to go. That’s what I want to give them. I want to give Mags Oxford; I want to give Aunt Kate’s daughter all the therapy she needs, the tuition to special schools and access to the best doctors. I want to give mum and my aunts homes, real homes with more than one bathroom for eight people and a roof that doesn’t leak.

  So, yeah. I court attention, because attention equals huge bucks if you do it right. And big bucks equal saving my family from squalor.

  It works like dominoes: I get attention by being photographed at events like this, or being photographed on a yacht, or by posting pictures of myself driving a car worth half a million euros. The flashier and more aspirational the picture, the better. The more attention I get—the more people know who I am—the more Instagram and Twitter and Facebook followers I get. And the more followers I get, the more paid sponsorships I get, too.

  Like I told Laura, sponsors want celebrities with big followings. It makes sense; if I have a lot of followers, a lot of people are exposed to sponsors’ brands or products when I do a sponsored post. A lot of people recognize me in a commercial or on a billboard. The more followers I have, the more I get paid to do those posts, too.

  On the surface, it doesn’t make sense why being photographed by the paparazzi coming out of Harrod’s, or driving a Lamborghini, pays off. But all that glitz and flash is worth its weight in gold. There are millions of people on Instagram who post selfies with their dogs; but there’s only a few of us posting selfies with supermodels on private jets. “Aspirational marketing”, as my publicist calls it. People want a glimpse of the glamorous lives of the rich and famous; they want to own a piece of that life, whether it’s the shaving cream I hawked from a bathroom on a yacht or the silk bowtie I’m wearing tonight.

  A couple of players on my squad make more from sponsorships than they do from their contracts with the team. I’m not there yet—not even close—but one day I hope to be. I’ve got to stay in the press’s good graces to do that. The second they turn against me—the second they catch me doing something unworthy of Madrid’s most promising player, something uncool—there’s a very good chance this golden spigot gets turned off.

  A good performance out on the pitch always garners attention and pleases the press, too, especially here in Spain, where fans and the media alike take what happens on the pitch personally.

  All the more reason to keep Laura close.

  The cameras click. We smile.

  ***

  Laura

  Later That Night

  “Oh my God,” I say, leaning over my lap in an attempt to quiet my wildly beating heart. “Oh my God, that was ridiculous! Amazing, but ridiculous.”

  Rhys rev the Lambo’s engine once, twice, three times, and with the squeal of tires we dart into the night. My hair flies into my face, tugged upward in a sudden surge of wind. I let out a giggle.

  “You all right?” Rhys half-shouts above the scream of the engine.

  “When I’m with you?” I straighten in my seat, holding my hair back, and grin. “Never.”

  “They loved you,” he says, shifting into second gear with an authoritative thrust. He took off his jacket; he’s just in his white tuxedo shirt, the loose ends of his bowtie flapping in the breeze. “And you handled them like a pro.”

  “Thanks,” I say, tugging at the hem of my dress. It’s so short that when I sit down, you can practically see my junk. “I’m sure this very tiny dress had absolutely nothing to do with all that attention.”

  Rhys turns his head to look at me. His eyes flick over my body, a palpable perusal. The heat that’s been simmering between my legs flares to new, white-hot life. This car isn’t helping; the engine is so powerful and so loud it makes everything vibrate, including my seat.

  He smirks, reaches over and grabs my hand. “Don’t touch that dress,” he says, gaze moving to the tops of my thighs. “The view is quite lovely from here.”

  Rhys drops my hand to shift again. Then he sets his hand back on my thigh. The gesture is familiar. Intimate. My pulse spikes.

  “You have fun?” he asks.

  “I did. I mean. It was overwhelming. A little weird I got so much attention when all I really did was stand there and look pretty in a really expensive dress.”

  “The heels cost more than the dress, actually.”

  I roll my eyes, still grinning. “Of course they did. The shoes might actually be bigger than the dress, so that makes sense.”

  Rhys glances in the rearview mirror and smiles.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Looks like we have an audience.”

  I glance in the side mirror. A moped or two emerges from the darkness. A second later a bright flash reflects off the mirror, blinding me.

  “Paparazzi,” I say. “Did you tip them off?”

  “They knew we were at that event. They probably hung out behind the building, waiting for us to leave.”

  “And then they saw this car and knew it was you.”

  He looks at me, swiping his thumb gently across my thigh. “Smart girl. Yes.”

  “Do they always follow you around? Or does it only happen when you want it to?”

  “I’d like to think I have some control over it, but…” Rhys shrugs. “I don’t really know, to be honest with you. For the past couple years I’ve been trying to establish my career, build my brand, that sort of thing. So any press has been good press, you know? I feel lucky they’re paying any attention t
o me at all.”

  I nod my head. “I get it. Although I’ve heard the press here can be pretty intense.”

  “It can be,” he says. “I don’t really know how the media works in America. But Europeans—Spaniards and the British especially—are mental about their football. The appetite for news is voracious. And I’m not just talking about coverage of the matches or trades or whatever. I’m talking everything and anything about the players. Our families, our holidays, our sex lives. Especially our sex lives. I’m sure you’ve heard the term ‘WAG’?”

  “You mean the super hot ‘wives and girlfriends’ of super hot footballers like you?”

  “Yes,” he grins. “We all get a lot of press when it comes to our WAGs. Most of it is harmless. The lads like a good brag every now and then, showing off pictures of their girls in magazines wearing nothing but lingerie or whatever. Some of it, though, can be quite awful. The press is powerful here. They can make or break your name, depending on how they feel about you. One guy—he stopped playing football a couple years ago, but he was big, really big here in Madrid—wasn’t very friendly with some reporters during an interview. He basically told them to piss off. So they went and printed a story alleging he had an affair with some shop girl. I don’t know if it was true or not, but it destroyed his marriage. Almost destroyed him, too. He lost quite a few sponsors and a good bit of his income.”

  “Wow.” I blink. “Wow, Rhys, that’s actually kinda scary.”

  “Doesn’t happen often. But it pays to stay in the press’s good graces. I scratch their back, and they scratch mine.”

  I unstick a lock of stray hair from my lip gloss and tuck it behind my ear. “Right. They scratch your back by getting your name out there. They make you famous, get you more followers and sponsors.”

  “Exactly. I’ve got to be seen on a regular basis. I’ve got to stay visible.”

  I close my eyes at another pop of bright light in the rearview mirror. My eyes smart; I blink back neon dots that blur my vision.

  “I’ll give them this—they’re persistent,” I say.

  Rhys turns his head. His lips twitch as his hand moves further up my thigh, his pinkie toying with the hem of my dress. “Shall we give them a show? Something worth photographing?”

  My mouth falls open. For half a heartbeat I just look at him, my mind racing to come up with a witty yet firm way of saying no fucking way do I want the world seeing pictures of you fingerbanging me in your car.

  “Don’t worry,” he says, laughing. “They really can’t see much—the windows are tinted.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Oh, ok—”

  I gasp when Rhys’s questioning pinkie slips inside my (seriously undersized) thong. He rotates his hand and hooks his index finger around the strap and tugs, hard, snapping it. As if by command, my legs fall apart, and Rhys glides the fingertips of his first two fingers around the top of my sex.

  His eyes go wide. “Holy shit, love, you’re wet. So bloody soft.”

  “What do you expect,” I slam my hand on the dashboard, searching for something to hold onto as sensation spikes through me, “when you’re dressed like that? Rhys, you looked so hot in that tuxedo I thought I was going to soak through my dress at the party.”

  “Christ.” His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, hard. “If I had known, I would’ve commandeered a bathroom and seen to you sooner.”

  Rhys presses a finger inside me. My head falls back onto the seat, my eyes rolling up to the night sky. Who the fuck am I? I ask the stars. The city lights dim their brightness, but I can still make them out against a purple velvet background.

  Who is this girl getting fingered in a Lamborghini while trolling around Madrid with a famous footballer?

  It’s too delicious to be real.

  But it is. The things I’m feeling right now are very real. Potent. Terrifyingly real and potent.

  My hair swirls around me, the night air a warm rush against my skin. I feel the rumble of the car in my breastbone; Rhys revs the engine, drowning out the sound of the wind, the sound of my breath coming and going in shallow gasps. His fingers work over and around and inside me. My legs start to shake.

  I know we’re putting on a show. Two car lengths behind us, a growing swarm of paparazzi gathers, eager to catch a glimpse of Rhys Maddox and the mystery blond who appeared at his side tonight, seemingly out of nowhere. Part of me is put off by it—put off by everything, the press and the party and this inane piece of stretchy fabric that some wackadoo designer called a “dress”.

  But another part of me is totally, overwhelmingly, irrevocably dazzled by it all.

  I tighten around Rhys’s fingers. The pressure between my legs closes in on me. It’s unbearable. It’s sweet.

  It will be the first time I’ve ever come with a guy.

  Who am I?

  I close my eyes, ready to surrender to my orgasm, when a white light flashes across the backs of my eyelids. Rhys curses and jerks his hand away, cursing again when he downshifts and the car veers sharply to the left.

  I grab onto the seat and open my eyes to see us zooming into oncoming traffic. My stomach seizes, and a wave of fear moves through me that’s somehow both ice cold and so hot I break into a sweat.

  “Oh my God, Rhys—”

  “Hold on!”

  I glance to the right. I see a pair of paparazzi taking up the right hand lane, where we should be.

  “Assholes,” I say. “They ran you off the road, didn’t they?”

  “They did,” he grinds out. “They’re not usually this aggressive, but now that you’re in the picture…”

  Rhys shifts and slams on the gas pedal, the engine throbbing as he tries to pass the photographers. The force of the acceleration sucks me into my seat, making my stomach flip. I glance at the dashboard in front of Rhys; the illuminated needles there all jump to the red. We must be going well over one hundred. If Rhys loses control right now, or we ram head-on into another car, we are so, so dead.

  The oncoming traffic approaches; we have to get back into our lane, now.

  “Oh my God,” I say again, squeezing my eyes shut. This is too much, it’s overwhelming, I can’t breathe—

  The car jerks to the right, tires roaring, and I open my eyes to see that we’re back in our lane, decelerating to a nice, easy fifty kilometers per hour. A couple cars—the ones we would’ve taken out head-on—honk as they pass us in the opposite direction. One guy gives Rhys the finger. Rhys just smirks, smoothing back his hair as he checks his rearview mirror. The paparazzi are now keeping an unsafe but doable distance of one car length behind us.

  “Sorry about that, love,” he says, putting his hand back on my thigh. “I suppose I’m not the only one you’ve got all hot and bothered this evening.”

  I let out a sputtering breath. I feel dizzy.

  “You all right?” His brow creases. “I really am sorry, but there was nowhere else I could go. I had to pass them, and it was either the wrong side of the road or the sidewalk where loads of people were walking. Talk to me, love. I hate the idea that I scared you.”

  I glance at Rhys. His blue eyes are translucent in the darkness, and hopeful. The fear that gripped my heart two seconds ago loosens. He is unbelievably handsome, his strong, masculine profile outlined by the glow of the dashboard. He’s tied his hair up at the crown of his head, the breeze loosening stray tendrils at his temples and neck. The remnants of his smirk make him appear deliciously reckless.

  He is reckless, but he makes it look good. He handled this car with cocky assuredness, just like he handled the ball on the pitch last Sunday night.

  Just like he’s handling me.

  He’s looking at me—really looking—the kind of soft, sorry, interested look that turns me on and turns me inside out. This was supposed to be the semester where I avoided that look at all costs. This was supposed to be the semester of self-love and various Spanish cheeses. But here I am, wallowing in that look, soaking it up, the heady beat of longing between my legs to
o loud and insistent to ignore.

  I don’t know if I’ve ever wanted anyone as much as I want Rhys. He’s a lethal combination of athleticism and hotness and charm and oh dear those eyes. I’ve never met anyone like him. He was so kind and attentive on the red carpet. Even now I shiver at the memory of his hand on my back, his touch firm and gentle and reassuring all at once. I adored the way he beamed at me as I faced the press for the first time, like he was proud of me, pleasantly surprised by my poise and my patience with their questions. They loved us together.

  I love us together.

  As I look back at him, it hits me that I am scared. I know, in this instant I just know, I want more from him, of him, and I’m scared he doesn’t want more of me. I mean, come on—he’s practically a god, and I am all too human, especially now that I’m eating that cheese. Why would he ever be seriously interested in someone like me, even if I am his good luck charm? It’s only a matter of time before he realizes that little theory is bogus; it’s only a matter of time before some hot supermodel, or maybe a pop star, catches his eye and he moves on (and up) to a better, luckier, and all around more perfect “charm”.

  My crush on him was doomed from the start. It was sort of funny before, when I masturbated to him on TV. But now it just hurts.

  I turn away, swallowing my heart. “Keep your eyes on the road, cowboy.”

  “I did scare you.”

  “No you didn’t,” I lie. “I’m fine.”

  “Let me make it up to you.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not.”

  “It’s the dress,” I say after a beat. “It’s tight. Makes it kinda hard to breathe.”

  “Then let’s take it off.” He draws his hand up my leg, pushing the dress up around my waist.

  I grab him by the wrist. “Wait,” I breathe. “Wait, Rhys.”

  I feel sweaty and sticky between my legs.

  I feel overwhelmed. By what just happened. By the way he wants to touch me.

  By the way I want him to want me.

  I want him to want me. I want him to make what I feel real by acknowledging it. I want him to feel it, too—this wave of desire, of complete and utter awe.