Chapter 41
Colin
THERE’S A POETIC kind of justice in the team’s head of PR being the one to uncover us. The fact that Neesha stands on one side of him and Sullivan Adams, phone raised and almost certainly taking video on the other, is simply icing on the cake.
I could lie. But in that moment, with Sam in my arms, my knuckles throbbing with each heartbeat, I am done. Done being a coward. Done hiding. Done denying myself the one person I want more than anything else in this world. So instead of lying, I’ll fight.
Frank repeats himself. “What the fuck is going on here?”
Neesha steps forward and holds her hand out for Sam, the look on her face making me release my tight hold.
Sam breathes slowly and looks up at me. I meet her gaze and stroke her soft cheek, hoping the small gesture is worth something.
I open my mouth to speak. The words really are there this time, but her lips thin as she looks away, stepping out of my embrace and turning to Neesha without another word.
Neesha, still staring at me with a look that I can’t decipher, wraps her arm around Sam’s shoulders and leads her away. Frank’s eyes cut to Neesha’s, and the sharp shake of her head has Frank looking back at me.
When the women are gone, Frank turns fully to me and crosses his arms. “Now might be a good time to start talking.”
Ignoring Frank, I turn my attention to Sullivan, who hasn’t stopped recording.
I have a new plan. “I’m going to speak to the press tomorrow at nine.
I’ll give you an exclusive after that, but for now, feel free to break the news that Coach Thicke has been secretly married to the team’s new head of physical therapy for months. ”
Frank’s eyes bulge. “Turn off the phone,” he growls.
Sullivan’s attention stays on me.
Frank stalks into the phone’s view, adopting a threatening position. “Turn off the fucking phone.”
“Nah,” Sullivan says.
Frank’s hand shoots out, knocking the phone out of the man’s hand. “Take one step toward that phone and it’ll be the last thing you do as a reporter.”
His mouth pops open in shock. “You can’t be serious.”
“Deadly.”
And that’s when I’ve had enough. “Frank,” I snap.
He turns to me, practically snarling.
“You’re fired.”
“You can’t fire me.”
I smirk as Sullivan picks up his phone behind Frank’s back and trains it right back on us. “You’re right. Technically, I can’t. But I’ve got express permission from Scott to do it the second you step out of line. I’d call threatening a member of the press ‘stepping out of line,’ wouldn’t you?”
Frank scoffs. “I’m not fired. If anyone is, it’s you.”
I raise a brow. “Good luck with that. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some things to attend to.”
Frank moves toward me.
“And before you take another step, I’d like to remind you that not only is he recording us, but there are cameras all over this place capturing everything.”
He halts, considering.
“Get the fuck out of my face.” My voice is deadly calm. I’ve already punched an opposing team’s player tonight; this snake is nothing but a nuisance.
“You’re finished,” he warns, then turns to leave.
Once he’s turned the corner, I look back at Sullivan. “Did you get all that?”
He thumbs the phone to stop recording and flips it around so I can see. “Every last word.”
I exhale, glad I trusted my instincts. Turns out that it’s not Sullivan who’s the issue; it was Frank the whole time. “Good. You want to help me get this press conference situated?”
He grins. “You really giving me the exclusive on the backstory?”
“Seems only fair.”
“Deal.”
A little later, after Sullivan and I have sorted out a few more details and I’m up in my room, I text Neesha.
How is she?
Shaken up, but okay.
She tell you the story?
Yes
All of it?
Enough.
Is she in her room?
No. She’s staying in mine.
An ache lances across my heart. I want nothing more than to curl around her and protect her. I want to fucking kill that asshole who put his hands on her. But neither of those things are options at the moment.
Thank you for taking care of her. Tomorrow morning at nine I’m doing a press conference. I set it up with Sullivan after you two left.
Should I be worried?
Not at all. Or…maybe a little.
Am I going to have to fire you?
I grin.
Hope not. Thanks again.
I close out of the text with her and pull up a text to Sam next.
My thumbs hover over the screen as I try to decide what to type.
Are you okay seems like a stupid thing to ask, because no, she’s definitely not okay.
I love you, I’m an idiot, please watch the sports channel at nine tomorrow morning also doesn’t seem like the way to go. In the end, I settle on something safe.
Hi. Feel like talking?
She doesn’t answer.
I wake up before my alarm, so early that the pale light of the morning hasn’t begun to seep through the edges of the blackout curtains. For the first time in months, I slept all the way through the night. And now, despite not hearing from Sam last night, I feel a deep sense of calm.
It’s just after five, so I swing out of bed and throw on my shoes to get a run in. My plan is to hold the press conference at the Vegas Lights’ Stadium at nine, give Adams the exclusive, then head to the courthouse to meet Sam.
Do I want the divorce? Hell no. But it’s what I promised Sam, and I won’t let her down any longer. I send my sister a text to watch the rugby news today, knowing she’s already awake, but don’t answer the questions that ping my phone in response.
Sullivan’s eyebrows nearly hit his hairline as I meet him in front of the stadium a couple of hours later. “Awfully dressed up, Coach.”
I look down at the suit and tie, picking an invisible piece of lint off. “This isn’t my only stop,” I say.
“Care to expand on that?”
I laugh. “Not yet. You’ll get your scoop.”
We head into a room set deep within the stadium. It’s set up like most press rooms, with a logo-covered backdrop set up behind a raised dais and tables, a bank of microphones angling toward the empty chairs. The room isn’t packed by any means, which is fine with me.
“It’s a small crowd,” Adam admits, clocking my glance around the room. “I only have so many contacts in my phone, and I half expected Frank to have been working them to keep them from coming.”
I frown. It didn’t occur to me that Frank would do something like that, but it should have. He’s petty enough to make that sort of effort. Not that it matters. I’ll explain the details to Scott after the press conference.
I clap him on the back. “Thanks for setting this up. And for everything else.”
He shrugs off the reference to last night. “It’s easy to do the right thing, Coach.”
I blink at him, letting that sink into me. His words shouldn’t hit me as hard as they do.
Shaking it off, I head to the front and step onto the dais, squinting into the lights that come on as I do. I pull out the sheet of paper from my suit jacket and take a seat, looking out at the small crowd.
Here goes nothing.
I draw in a breath to center myself and begin. “I’m betting none of you expected to be here so early, especially after a night in Las Vegas, so thanks for showing up.”
A chuckle rises from the small crowd.
“Last night, a member of the Vegas Lights harassed our head physical therapist. When she refused his advances at our combined team dinner, he tried again at one of the hotel bars. She refused again, then left the table. He followed her and cornered her. That was when I showed up and punched him.”
“Fuck yes you did,” comes one of the female reporter’s voices.
I lock eyes with her. “Fuck yes I did, Amy.” Then I look back to the broader audience.
“Any additional information about that story will come from her, if and when she chooses to share it with you. I fully support and stand by whatever steps she chooses to take. But that isn’t why I asked you to be here.
She isn’t just the head physical therapist.” I inhale, then exhale. “She’s my wife.”
I expect a flurry of questions, but none come. They all wait.
I huff a laugh. “You aren’t taking this as the bombshell I thought it would be.”
“What’s her name?” That’s from Adams, and I’m grateful for the softball.
“Her name is Samantha Nash,” I answer. “And we’ve kept our marriage secret – I’ve kept our marriage secret – because we actually met and married here, in Las Vegas.”
Amy’s hand shoots into the air.
I nod. “Yes, Amy?”
“Can you explain a bit more?” She grins. “I mean, unless you two met and married on the same night, then –”
“We did,” I interrupt.
And the reaction I’d been expecting this whole time finally happens. A collective intake of breath, followed by questions being hurled at me with no rhyme or reason.
I hold my hands up to quiet them, and notice that Amy’s hand is poised over her notepad, waiting. “Amy?”
She doesn’t miss a beat. “When was this?”
“Six months ago. We didn’t know each other, but she sat next to me at a bar, and she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.
” I don’t bother calling on anyone else, deciding to lay the entire story out for them.
“We spent the rest of the night going from place to place, and when we found ourselves at an Elvis pop-up wedding chapel on the Strip, it seemed perfectly reasonable to get married.”
The reporters laugh.
“So we did. And when I woke up the next morning, I made the biggest mistake of my life. I left.”
“You what?” Amy’s voice cuts through the noise.
“I know. Asshole move, right?” I smile wryly, then lean forward. “I was scared. I’d just been given this job, and the message was clear: no distractions. Get the team to the championship and win it. No exceptions. No excuses.”
“How’s that going, Coach?” another reporter asks.