Chapter 28
“Hold it there. Yes. Right there. Don't move.”
I try to hold still while the camera flashes in my face, but it’s hard to feel relaxed when I’m standing here in compression shorts that leave absolutely nothing to the imagination.
Sure, I've taken my fair share of promo shots over the last few years, but nothing has ever been this intense. Normally, it's a dark set with a lot of neon lights and I'm in my gear.
This is an entirely different experience.
“Great, Zach. Now, can you turn your chin to look at the stadium in the distance?” As I follow her instructions, the wind picks up. “Oh, this is perfect.”
Click. Click. Click.
“You're a real natural,” Ashley, the photographer, says. After two days on this shoot, I know she's just saying it. I'm not a natural. I'm stiff. My body was made for the field, not for posing.
“Okay, now I know you're cold–”
“You got that right,” I mutter. Between the wind cutting through downtown Rome and the fact that this vest has the insulation quality of tissue paper, I’m freezing my ass off.
Ashley drops her camera to the side and slumps. “I need you to relax. So just for a second, move your shoulders, close your eyes, and think about your favorite thing.”
Okay. Eyes closed.
I smile when I start to think about my favorite thing.
Her.
Always.
That little smile she gives me when she sees me for the first time in a long time...
How she laughs at every single one of my jokes...
The way her hair cascades down her shoulders when I take that bow out...
And to save my own dignity in these tiny shorts, I’ve got to stop thinking about her. Especially not about the last time I spoke to her. It’s been a week, and I’m still not over it.
We haven’t spoken since because she’s busy with Mike, Olivia, and their new baby boy, Harris.
I wish I could be there, too, not just to meet my godson, but because it would just be another excuse to see my girl, who's still in denial that she's my girl.
“That's perfect. Keep thinking about whatever you're thinking. It's great.”
Well, since she's given me permission, I start to think about where Honey could be in the world. She was close enough to Mike and Olivia’s that she could get there in a few days, but that doesn’t say much considering Atlanta is the busiest airport in the country.
Honey could be pretty much anywhere if she got a flight. What if she’s done a Bella Summers and moved to London just to get away from me?
“Do you need a break?”
My brow furrows and I open my eyes. “No?”
“Oh, you were looking a little stressed.”
“Tell me about it,” I mutter.
“Okay,” Ashley says. “That's the solo sequence done. Let's take lunch, and then we'll bring Whit up here too.”
I drop out of the stance and roll my shoulder before pressing two fingers against my wrist. It still aches.
Even with the extra rest from our bye week and all the icing I’ve been doing, the pain hasn’t gone away.
Deep down, I know I’ll probably have to tell someone eventually.
Just not yet. Not until we’ve stacked a few more wins first.
“Do you want to come down for some lunch?” One of the assistants asks as she wraps a white, fluffy robe around me.
Finally, I don’t feel like every inch of my body is on display.
“Yeah.”
She guides me down the clock tower stairs toward the catering tent, where everyone’s crowded around heaters and trays of food.
I grab a plate and check my phone out of instinct, half-expecting to see something from Honey or Olivia by now, but there’s nothing.
She’s probably too busy actually enjoying herself to think about me sitting here waiting for literally anything from her.
I do have a text from Dax, though.
Dax: So.... how are things going? Some blurry pictures have made the tabloids of you and Whit. They're already calling you sport’s newest couple.
I start typing out a response, but a sharp pain shoots through my wrist.
“Fuck.”
I flex my hand once before stopping immediately when the ache intensifies.
“You keep doing that,” a voice from behind says. I look up to see Whit Marlow near the equipment table, lounging in a folding chair. She’s wearing the same robe as me, and her bare legs are stretched out while she lazily munches on an apple.
“Doing what?” I ask, taking her in. “Checking my phone?”
She swallows her bite and nods at my wrist. “No. That. Your hand. Is there something wrong with it?”
Well, shit. I thought I’d been doing a pretty good job at hiding it. Clearly not. We’ve only been on set a couple of hours, and she’s noticed.
I drop my hand, flexing my fingers. “It's just a reflex.”
“Mhm.” She takes another bite of her apple, still watching me. “Is that what you tell your coach when he asks about it too?”
“I don't—”
She raises her hand, cutting me off. “It's not a criticism. I get it. If you tell them, it becomes the story, and then you become the liability. The all-star rookie who was supposed to save the franchise, but he can't, because he's too fragile. No one wants to be that storyline.”
“I'm not that storyline,” I say firmly.
“Mhm.” Her brow rises, and the look she gives me tells me she doesn't believe a damn word I'm saying. Then she takes another bite of her apple, still sizing me up. “Have you been playing on it?”
“Yeah.” There's no point denying it. I’ve seen her play. She’s relentless and will keep asking until I give her a reasonable answer.
“Just be careful. It could knock you out for longer and put your contract in jeopardy.”
“You sound awfully concerned for me considering we just met this morning,” I say with mild amusement. I tuck my phone into my robe pocket and reach over for some food.
“My dad's a sports fan. When he's not gushing over the Carolina Catfish, he's watching the Raptors, so I have a vested interest in caring.”
“You're one dutiful daughter.”
“Yeah, but I also know how being stupid and playing on an injury can take you out for longer than expected.”
I tilt my head, looking at her.
“Knee,” she says, by way of explanation, pushing her robe a little so she can tap her left leg.
That’s when I realize she’s in the same Ascent gear as me, albeit she looks a lot more comfortable than I do.
“Screwed it up when I was playing in the college championship for Rome U.
Would've been able to go pro sooner if I wasn't nursing that injury.”
“How long were you out?”
“Eight months,” she says simply. “I went back too early the first time. That was my mistake. Thought I could push through it because I'd been pushing through everything else.” She finishes the apple and puts the core down. “Turns out knees don't care about your ambition.”
“No,” I agree, laughing lightly. “They really don't.”
With my plate of food, I pull out the chair beside her and sit down, reaching for the water bottle on the table.
She tilts her head slightly, quietly studying me. “First overall pick,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“How's that feel?”
I take a second before answering. The easy response would be the polished press-conference bullshit about being thankful and prepared for the challenge ahead, but I have a feeling Whit would see through that and demand the truth.
“Like you've been handed a test you didn't write, and either you ace it or everyone finds out you've been cheating the whole time.” I shrug. “There's no room for partial credit.”
She nods slowly. “I get it.”
“Must be hard being the LPGA’s golden girl.”
She nods. “It is. At least you have a team to fall back on if things don’t go your way.
I’m the only person to blame if I don’t bring ladies’ golf into the spotlight.
” She smiles despite the slightly bitter edge in her tone.
“But I don’t hate it. It’s only going to last as long as I keep winning.
You, on the other hand...” she trails off.
Have a lot more to prove.
I finish the sentence for her.
“Yup,” I say. “Gotta win a little more than two games to get put on that pedestal.”
“It’s brutal.”
“Welcome to the NFL.” I lean back in the chair. “But like you, I can’t complain. I knew it was going to be hard coming in. The team needs work, the management doesn’t care, the coaching is worse. None of it was really a surprise. It’s just–” I stop.
“Louder than excepted,” she says.
I look up into her green eyes.
“The noise,” she clarifies. “You can prepare for the work part of it, but what you can’t really prepare for is how loud everything gets the second things don’t go your way. The hardest part is keeping your cool when everyone else around you doesn’t believe in you.”
“Yeah.” I pause. “Yeah, that's exactly it.”
She picks up her water bottle and slowly twists it between her hands. “My coach told me something when I went pro,” she says. “He told me the scrutiny isn’t proof that you don’t belong. It’s proof people expect something from you. The athletes nobody believes in don’t get picked apart like that.”
She shrugs lightly. “It didn’t exactly make the noise quieter, but... it made it a little easier to manage.”
“That's good advice,” I say. Better than anything Coach Masters has said. He’s why our team is struggling. How can we win when the expectation is set higher than our experience allows?
“Don't sound so surprised.”
“I'm not surprised. It’s just that I don’t usually talk about things like this with someone I’ve just met.”
She smiles, which is the first fully unguarded expression I've seen from her. “I find small talk inefficient,” she says. “We've both been doing this long enough to skip the part where we pretend the pressure isn't real.”
I chuckle. “Fair enough.”
She stands, stretching her arms above her head. “Right. I'm going to get some more food before Ashley calls us back and makes us stand in the cold again.” She looks down at my hand. “Get the wrist seen to, Evans. It isn't worth it.”
She heads back toward the food table, and I look down at my wrist, flexing my fingers once before I stop myself.
Point taken, Marlow.