Rex raises his eyebrows at the two of us. Man, I hope he and Brady have a good relationship, because we are not being subtle right now. “Uh, yeah, sure, I could sit on a yoga mat.”
“Alright,” Brady says, “I’ll go find that closet.”
And then, finally, he turns away from me, leaving my whole body on fire as he heads down the winding halls of the ranch house.
“I think I need some champagne,” I say, heading past Rex and into what looks like a mostly empty guest bedroom, where a blonde girl in a Kings cheerleading uniform is sitting up against the wall.
“I recognize you,” She says, narrowing her eyes at me.
I let out a nervous laugh as Rex hands me a glass filled to the brim with champagne. “Yeah, I uh, technically work for the team.”
“She’s Brady’s doctor,” He says, lowering his voice a little, “But she works on everyone. She’s the one who fixed my fingers back when I fucked them up on that guy’s helmet.”
A look of recognition appears on the cheerleader’s face. “Oh, right, that’s where I heard your name! You helped Rex!”
I smile and nod, taking a long sip of my champagne as I look back and forth between the two and trying to figure out exactly how much danger I’m in right now. Because when Brady gets back, I give it thirty seconds before both Rex and his lady friend instantly figure out what’s going on. Or, at least, what it looks like. I’m not sure if I know what’s actually going on.
I just hope these two can keep a secret.
“Yeah,” Rex says, “But Brady’s definitely her main guy.”
He winks at me, and both me and the cheerleader practically spit out our champagne.
“Wait, are you dating Brady?” She asks, her eyes wide.
“What? No!” I squeak, my voice hitting an unfortunately high octave, “He’s my patient. I couldn’t date him even if I wanted to; it’d be against the rules!”
Rex smirks in my direction. “Alright, but whatever the hell you guys were doing out in the hallway was definitely against the rules, so I’m not sure why that makes a difference.”
The cheerleader’s jaw drops, “What were you doing out there? Were you making out?”
“No,” I say, hoping that if I drink enough of this champagne, I’ll figure out a way to change the topic of conversation, “He just stopped suddenly, and I ran into him, and then we were just…standing really close together.”
Rex and the cheerleader share a look. “Hey Cassie,” he says, “Want to see something that’s really against the rules?”
He leans over and kisses the cheerleader on the lips. “We both signed the exact same contract that you did when the new commissioner took over. No inappropriate relationships. But see, the commissioner isn’t here right now. He doesn’t even live in California. And even if he’s so uptight that he’d try and suspend someone because he heard about a player-employee hookup at a party, he can’t do shit without proof.”
“Well, okay, I’ll keep that in mind if there’s anyone who isn’t my patient who—”
Chuckling and shaking his head, Rex fills his champagne glass up to the brim. “Hey, whatever you say. I just don’t want you to feel like you can’t get what you want with Brady because of the rules. Because you can.”
Looking down at my suddenly empty champagne glass, I reach it out towards Rex, taking a deep breath as he fills it up again. “But it’s not just the team. Doctors aren’t supposed to sleep with their patients.”
Rex laughs. “Okay, but you’re not his only doctor. He’s a football player with a whole medical staff in charge of taking care of him; he could go see someone else if he needed to. And besides, I happen to know that you met him before you ever saw him on the exam table. I remember seeing you at Club Royale right before you started showing up on the sidelines.”
I open my mouth to deny that I was ever at Club Royale, and that anyone he’s seen who’s ever shown more than a professional interest in Brady is probably just some random girl who looks like me, but instead, I let out another deep breath.
“I just…didn’t expect this to happen,” I say, looking down at the bubbles popping on the surface of my champagne, “I thought my life was on this super-defined track, and then all this football stuff just charged in and smashed all my plans into a million pieces. I guess I’ve been assuming that at some point, I’m going to wake up and realize that I fell asleep on the couch with a football game on TV, and that it’s time to go back to my regularly scheduled life. But every morning, I wake up, and I’m still here. And part of me finds that terrifying, like my whole life is going to spin off the rails, but another part of me…likes it better.”’
As he listens, Rex gets a distant look on his face. Then, after a couple seconds, he nods. “I get that. For me, football was the track my life was on. Then, once I went pro? It was like nothing I could have possibly imagined. My life still feels insane to me, every single day. And yeah, at first, it scared the shit out of me. But after a season or two, I realized that that was just a phase, and that other feeling, the part of me that liked it better than my old life? That’s all of me, now.”
He shrugs. “I’m just saying, maybe this thing with Brady isn’t as impossible as you think it is. And I know how it might seem because he’s always half naked on TV, but if Brady’s been into you since Club Royale, he’s not just going to dump you for the nearest cheerleader if you get together.”
Realizing what he just said, Rex nervously looks over at the cheerleader. “No offense. I’m just saying, I know the guy, I play football with him, and I think he might actually really like you.”
I look down into my champagne again, trying to process what I just heard.
After a couple seconds, the cheerleader speaks up. “I have a question. So, when you examine Brady, and he’s like, totally naked on the exam table, and you have to touch his dick, you know, when you’re examining him, does he get hard? Do you just have to deal with that?”
“Why does everyone think I’m constantly examining Brady’s dick!?” I shout.
“Oh, she can’t fucking stop,” Brady says, standing in the doorway with rolled up yoga mats under his arms, “I tell her she doesn’t need to give me a full cock exam every single time, but she insists.”
“Well, sorry,” I say, rolling my eyes and taking a sip of champagne, “But it’s just so small that I want to make sure nothing’s wrong with it.”
Brady grins, tossing a yoga mat over to Rex and the cheerleader, then laying another one down at his feet and pulling me towards him as he sits down on it. My pulse races sitting this close to Brady openly, in front of other people, but after the conversation we just had, I know I’m probably not in any danger.
So as Brady wraps his massive, tattooed arm around my waist, I relax a little bit, and the four of us, two to a yoga mat, start drinking our way through the huge bottle of champagne between us. Brady and Rex tell the cheerleader and I about what the playoffs are like, and the cheerleader tells us the story of how she met Rex at the beginning of the season, but was too scared to go after him because she was worried about the new commissioner.
And the longer the night goes on, the more I think about how I’m probably not making it back to San Diego tonight. Not after what happened out back. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if we spent the night right here in the guest bedroom once the champagne is empty. It’s probably not what Coach Bradley had in mind when he sent me out here, but hey: if he’s focused on me, he won’t be out there getting in trouble with everyone else. If you think about it, it’s kind of like I’m still technically doing my job by having sex with Brady tonight.
Suddenly, my increasingly dirty train of thought is derailed by the door slamming open and two drunk partygoers stumbling in, interrupting a story Rex was telling about the time Coach Bradley made a spreadsheet to figure out the best way to ask out a woman’s basketball coach he liked.
“Holy shit, it’s Brady Mack!” The guy says, his jaw practically hitting the floor. H
e’s wearing a football jersey, but it belongs to a team I don’t recognize.
I inch away from Brady, still sober enough not to want to be seen all over him in front of completely random people.
“I told you this room wasn’t empty,” The girl with him says, “Now quit being a baby and let’s go back to the attic.”
The guy shudders. “I told you, I didn’t like the way that deer head was looking at me.”
The girl rolls her eyes. “Whatever, we’ll throw a blanket over it.” Then, she turns towards us. “Sorry for bothering you guys! Good luck in the playoffs!”
And with that, she closes the door behind her, and I look back and forth between Brady and Rex. “Was that our rival team’s jersey?” I ask.
Rex laughs. “Are you still worried about someone busting you two? Who the fuck would believe that guy, and how would he know you work for the team? That’s why the bouncer out front took everyone’s phones.”
The cheerleader sighs. “That guy sucks, though. He spent, like, twenty minutes looking at my ID before he let me in.”
I nod. “Yeah, he did that with me too. I guess he’s just trying to be super careful.”
“Yeah,” The cheerleader scoffs, “Except he let in a girl who doesn’t even work for the team anymore right after me, so he’s not that careful.”
The champagne glass practically drops right out of my hand. Rex and Brady both turn to look at me.
“Hold on,” I say, gently setting my glass down, “This girl who got in…she wasn’t a cheerleader, was she?”
“Fucking Alyssa,” Brady says under his breath, gripping his champagne so hard he practically snaps the stem off the glass.
The cheerleader looks confused. “Yeah, it was Alyssa…I don’t know why she came, no one on the team really likes her that much, but…she was here.”
Instantly feeling ten times more sober, I get up and bolt out of the room, pulling out my phone. Because if they let Alyssa in with her old team ID…then she probably got to keep her phone too. And that means…
Frantically, I type Brady’s name into the first social media network I can pull up, and I start to feel numb as I see the one thing I didn’t want to see on my phone screen.
Us. In the backyard. Kissing in front of the crowd. Photo credit: Alyssa Madison. The same picture, posted over and over, all over the internet, with me identified as Brady’s team doctor. I can practically feel my life falling apart in front of me.
The bedroom door slams open, and Brady steps out of it, rage lighting up his eyes. “I’m going to kill that fucking bouncer.”
He takes a couple steps past me, towards the front door, and then stops in his tracks. “But I guess that wouldn’t change a fucking thing.”
“What did I tell you was going to happen?” I shout at Brady. “This! This exact thing! Now we’re both totally screwed!”
I can see a glimpse of hurt cross his face, but it passes quickly, and Brady steps towards me. “We’re not totally screwed. We’ll just fix it.”
“How!? We broke the contract! We can’t just unbreak it!” Fat, hot tears roll down my cheeks as I yell at Brady. But really, I’m angry at myself. This was something I should have handled way before it ever got to this point. And now, it’s too late to handle. It’s over.
“There’s nothing we can’t fucking do.” Brady says, in a low voice. And even though some deep, buried part of me wants to believe that and run into Brady’s arms…I just can’t.
So instead, I run past him. To the door, throwing it open and sprinting out onto the front lawn. Thankfully, most of the people who were out here are gone now, with only a couple passed-out partygoers scattered across the grass. I run back towards the metal gate, and the bouncer, seeing me coming, opens it up for me.
“Cassie! Wait!” Brady bellows across the lawn from the front porch, but right now, I can’t even bring myself to look back at him.
“Everything alright?” The bouncer asks.
I look at him and nod through my tears, because even though nothing is alright, there’s nothing he can do to help me.
“Alright,” He says, “Have a…have a good night.”
I walk past him without answering, down the same lonely dirt road I came from. The massive fleet of team limos that lined the road when I got dropped off here is now just a few lonely cars running in the dark. I walk up to the nearest one and press my team ID against the window, hoping that the driver hasn’t got the memo about me yet.
He looks up from his newspaper and smiles weakly, cracking the window open. “Let me guess. Back to San Diego?”
“Back to San Diego.” I repeat with a sob.
Solemnly, he unlocks the doors, and I step into the back of the limo, looking out the window at the lit-up ranch house as the car turns around. Everything that happened on the other side of that gate already feels like a dream now, like something that could never happen in real life.
And as the party lights get fainter and fainter behind me, I start to wish Brady was here with me. But then, I shake the thought out of my head. After all, that kind of thinking is what got me here in the first place.
So instead, I just put my head against the window look through the black limo glass at the dark road ahead of me.
I wish I knew what was at the end of it.
Chapter 19: Brady
Man, it’s been forever since I’ve gone for a run out here in the desert. The sun beating down on the back of my neck, the sand getting kicked up behind my bare feet, sweat literally running down my shirtless body like rain…there’s nothing fucking like it.
Normally, I’ve got too many other workouts going on to do something this intense. But after that picture of Cassie and I got leaked to the entire fucking world, and I woke up this morning to a fucking army of reporters in my driveway and hundreds of news stories telling me I’m suspended for the rest of the season?
I just walked out the back door and started running, like I always used to do when I had a lot of shit on my mind.
I tried calling Cassie before I left, but her phone was off. I mean, fuck, if she’s getting even half of the attention I am, she’s probably keeping that shit off all week. I remember when it was like when I first got famous; you start to feel like there’s an endless army of people coming at you all at once, and they all want to control your life.
A sudden burst of anger floods my body and I speed up, pounding my feet against the sand and practically breaking into a sprint. I know I’m going to be sore for fucking days after this, but right now, all I want to do is take this fucking frustration out of my system out here in the middle of nowhere.
Suddenly, I hear a faint thrumming noise above and behind me, and I look up just in time to watch a black and white news helicopter fly overhead.
Shit, looks like they found me. I can’t help but smirk a little bit as the helicopter flies over and starts to fly circles around me as I run. When I was a kid, no one gave a fuck about this empty little stretch of desert that I called home. And now they’re literally flying a helicopter out here and showing it to thousands of people.
Reaching up towards the helicopter, I flash it the middle finger as I finish my usual running route, letting it film me as I sprint the last half mile. Then, I stop and stare at the horizon line, catching my breath as the chopper circles overhead.
Maybe Cassie was right. If I can’t go for a fucking run without getting put on live TV from the air, there’s no way I was ever going to be able to keep her a secret. If it wasn’t Alyssa snapping a picture at the party last night, it would have been something else. Maybe a hidden camera somewhere. Maybe even a helicopter.
So I guess it’s time to change the game plan. No more secrets. No more sneaking around. And if anyone tries to go after Cassie over this shit, they’re going to have to deal with me. Still breathing hard from the run, I turn around and break into a light jog, heading back towards the house.
The helicopter follows me all the way back, and when I get there, the number o
f camera crews set up around the perimeter has actually doubled. When they see me approach, a journalist and his camera crew run across the sand towards me, only to stop before they reach me and start gasping for air.
“Brady!” The journalist says as I pass him, looking like he’s about to pass out in the desert heat. “A lot of Kings fans are saying that the photo of you appearing to kiss Dr. Cassie Parker is digitally altered. Is that true?”
Walking past the journalist, I glance into the camera. “Oh, you’ll find out soon enough. In the meantime, make sure to drink some water so you don’t get heat stroke out here.”
And with that, I throw open the sliding glass of the back door and shut it tight behind me.
Then, I head down the hall into the kitchen, where I pour myself a glass of ice water and pick my phone up off the counter, filtering through the sea of people freaking out to see if I got anything actually important.
Huh. Coach Bradley sent me something.
Meet me at King Stadium at sunset. Tonight.
I just shake my head and laugh. Of course Coach has some kind of crazy plan. He’s probably going to make me memorize a spreadsheet of responses to media questions to maximize my chances of not getting suspended or something like that.
But hey, it’s not like I have anything better to do. And if I can get myself into San Diego without the media noticing, maybe I can see Cassie. Let her know everything’s going to be alright.
Stepping into the living room and looking out the window at the makeshift tent city sprawled out on the sand, I tap a couple buttons on my phone and lift it to my face, listening to it ring.
“Brady!” Says Hector’s voice on the other end. “Crazy week, huh?”
I shake my head. “Completely fucking insane.”
Hector laughs. “I knew that girl was going to get you into trouble! You have to watch out for the ones like her. If you fall for someone that can fix you when you break, there’s no going back.”
Savage: A Pro Football Romance Page 13
