CHAPTER 29 Miller Banks
Don’t Forget It
What a night. It was incredible, the stuff dreams are made of. The type of night I’ll think about when we’re apart in a few months when I’m at an away game and missing the hell out of her.
I’m not sure how we got here, but I never want to leave.
I realize I have to.
I have to get home tomorrow. I have to meet with my publicist and finalize our plans for summer camp, which is only two and a half months away now.
We need to start advertising it and getting the word out to fill seats.
Most of the back-end work is done thanks to her team, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still have plenty of shit to do to prepare.
And we have a wedding to plan. It’s mostly Sophie making those decisions with the wedding planner, but we have invitations to send and people to notify.
We need to discuss who we’re telling the truth to and who we aren’t.
There are tons of things to decide and not enough hours in the day to decide them all, so I bring it up over breakfast.
“So February twentieth, huh?” I begin .
She chuckles, and then she grabs her phone. “Oh! I saw this amazing tux that would be perfect. Let me just find it.”
She opens her email, and I wish she wouldn’t have.
“What the hell is this?” she asks. It’s an article from Page Six forwarded to her from a friend, and she clicks a link.
A picture of the two of us from last night appears on her screen. It’s grainy, but it’s definitely us. She’s sitting on my lap, her head leaning back against my shoulder, and it’s pretty damn clear what we’re doing.
We thought we were being so sneaky. We were also a little drunk, but that’s beside the point.
The headline reads, “San Diego Storm Running Back’s Wild Night Out in Vegas.”
“Oh my God, I am completely and totally mortified,” she says, and I study the picture for a second before she flips through the slideshow. There are others of us kissing in the booth, another of her probably when I was getting her off with my fingers.
There’s one of me where my head is tipped back. I look like I’m climaxing, and it’s probably when she was rubbing me over my pants, and I actually was coming.
“It’s not a big deal,” I say, trying to minimize her embarrassment. “As far as the press knows, you’re my fiancée, so there’s nothing wrong with what we were doing.”
“Miller,” she says flatly. “Come on.” She lowers her voice so only I can hear her. “We were having sex in public, and someone caught it. There’s a lot wrong with what we were doing.”
“Nobody saw anything. It was dark, and we were in our booth. It’s fine.”
I glance at the first few lines of the article attached to the images, though, and it’s pretty damning.
“Who would’ve taken our picture and sent it in?” she asks .
“Probably someone out to make money,” I say.
Who knows who it was? It could’ve been anyone.
Maybe it was that Jason dude who I declined drinks with.
Maybe he was angry at the rejection, and this was his way of getting back at me.
Or maybe it was just someone who recognized me and decided to make a buck from it.
“So someone took our picture in an intimate moment, and then they sold it? Like…they profited from it?”
I shrug. “It happens all the time, and there’s not really much I can do to stop it.”
“Except, you know, not having public sex.”
“Well, yeah, there’s that. But where’s the fun in that?”
She huffs out an annoyed breath, and then our breakfast is served, effectively ending that part of our conversation. Still, I bring it back up mid-meal.
“Are you okay?” I ask, a little worried about how this sort of thing might affect her long-term.
“I don’t like it, but I can’t change it. I’m just trying to force my eggs down over the nausea I feel.”
“From the vodka?” I guess.
She shakes her head and nods at her phone. “From those pictures of us.”
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly.
“It’s not your fault.”
“Yeah, it is. People do this. They see an athlete or celebrity, and they take advantage of the situation. I thought we were protected in the dark. It was a corner booth. People were occupied with their drinking and dancing. But I’ve been in this field long enough that I should’ve fought the instincts I had to be with you in that moment.
I should’ve warned you that something like this could happen. ”
She presses her lips together and sets her fork down. “Is this what it’s like being with you? ”
“It is,” I admit. “But it’s not all bad.” I lift a shoulder. “We could use it to our advantage, you know.”
Her brows dip together. “How?”
I hold my hands up and look into the distance as I make a sort of rainbow with my hands to indicate the new headline. “San Diego Storm Star Running Back’s Fiancée Has a Secret Identity as Bestselling Romance Author Summer Love.”
Her brows that were already close together seem to pinch a little tighter. “Are you saying we should reveal my identity to the world?”
I shake my head. “Not if you’re not ready for it. But I have a platform, and I’d be more than happy to use it to tell the world about my favorite author.”
“You’d do that for me?”
I reach across the table and grab her hand. I squeeze it gently, and my voice is quiet as I say, “Don’t you know by now that I would do anything for you, Soph?”
She blinks a few times as her eyes shine at me, and then she swipes at her cheek with her thumb. “I do.”
“Good. Don’t forget it.”