Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Lucas
The incessant buzz of my phone wakes me up before my alarm can.
I rub the sleep out of my eyes before reaching for it. Logan’s still out cold in the other bed, his blue foam earplugs doing their job.
After a dozen quick blinks and a yawn, I check my notifications.
20+ Notifications
Twenty plus?
My socials always have hundreds or thousands, but I mute those.
These are texts from my dad, sister, and Coop all individually, as well as some to the family group thread Coop is on. I have a text from Kayla, one from the Flaps manager, some from other Flaps players, and even my agent.
There are too many to process.
But there’s one I see first, sitting at the top of my personal texts like it’s been waiting for me since she sent it at midnight.
Scottie
It’s done.
I stare at it.
It’s done.
My heart does a complicated flip, caught between hope and confusion. I read it again. And again.
It’s done.
What’s done? The post? Jake? Them?
I’m still staring at it when another buzz pulls my attention back to the pile.
I open my dad’s text first.
Papa Fisch
Son, I don’t know what happened, but call me.
Then my sister’s.
Liesel
LUCAS! What is going on?
I feel like I’m sinking, but I don’t even know into what.
Coop’s text is the first one that’s helpful.
Coop
You up? Check socials, buddy. You’ve got a big problem. Let me know what I can do.
The quicksand starts pulling me faster.
I pull up socials.
FIREBIRDS LOVE TRIANGLE EXPOSED
Insider claims Scottie Quinn “sneaking around” behind Rodgers’ back
I sit up and swing my legs to the side of the bed.
The floor vanishes.
I’m not sinking anymore.
I’m in free fall.
The picture is the one Jake took of Scottie and me in the video room, dangerously, stupidly close, but it’s cleverly cropped to make it look worse than it was.
“An exclusive source close to Rodgers says Quinn has been seeing the popular rookie reliever behind his back. Rodgers is reportedly devastated.”
“No, no, no,” I whisper. I scroll as fast as I can, and that’s when I see it—below the photo, the paparazzi who posted also screenshotted a post from Scottie’s ReelTime page.
It’s a picture of her and Jake both flexing at the camera when they were teens—looking chummy but not romantic—timestamped at 3:00 a.m.
After a lot of thought, Jake and I have decided to go our separate ways.
We’ve learned we work better as friends, and I’ll always be grateful for the time we spent together.
And he'll always be family. He's one of the most talented people I know, and I can't wait to watch what he does this season.
Wishing him nothing but the best. Go Firebirds!
I go back to the hit piece, read the “jaw-dropping exposé” in light of Scottie’s breakup message.
Her post is generous and generic. The kind of statement a publicist would write. The kind that goes up when something’s already over.
Or when someone’s trying to get ahead of something.
No.
The thought arrives before I can stop it, ugly and cold.
Did she know this was coming?
I sit with that for exactly three seconds—three seconds of feeling like I’m going to be sick—and then I go back to my texts.
Back to the top, at 12:06 a.m.
Scottie
It’s done.
12:06 a.m.
She sent this at midnight. Before anything broke. Before anyone was awake. Before there was anything to get ahead of.
Her post went up at 3:00 a.m.
The hit piece dropped at—I check the timestamp—5:17 a.m.
She scheduled the breakup post.
She must have texted me right after, before she went dark.
The cold feeling dissolves as fast as it appeared. Of course. Of course. This wasn’t damage control. This was Scottie Quinn, alone, frustrated, and sunburned at midnight with a phone full of unanswered texts from her family, finally doing the one thing she never does.
Choosing herself.
Jake leaked the photo. He’s the only one who had it. He must have seen her post go up at three a.m. and panicked. Probably told his agent, who did what agents do.
I’m going to kill Jake.
But first, I need to talk to Scottie. I text. It shows delivered. Call. Straight to voicemail.
I try again.
Her phone must be off. She probably scheduled that post last night, texted me, and then went to sleep, not knowing I’d be up five hours later with hundreds of notifications and a heart that’s about to come out of my chest, unable to reach her.
I’m still staring at the screen when Logan wakes up.
“What’s going on?” he asks, pulling his earplugs out.
I shake my head, knowing I need to tell him, but also knowing I—
What? Need to get to Scottie? That’ll only make the rumors worse. Need to punch Jake in the face?
Worse still.
And, honestly, I’m not sure any of those are bigger needs than the one in front of me right now.
I pull up the story and hand it to him.
And then I watch him read it.
I’ve watched Logan’s face my whole life—I know every version of it. The focused version when he’s working a count. The shut-down version when his anxiety wins. Competitive, relaxed, mourning, celebrating. That rare, loose version when he’s laughing so hard he can’t breathe.
I’ve never seen this version before.
His jaw turns to stone. His thumb slows. And then he looks up at me with something I don’t have a word for, because in twenty-six years, my brother has never looked at me like I’m a stranger.
When he holds my eye, for the first time ever, I don’t know what he’s thinking.
“Is this true?” he asks.
“Not in the way it looks,” I say, my stomach roiling.
Logan lets out a sharp laugh. “What does that even mean?”
I rub my temples. “She’s been fake dating Jake to help him fix his PR problems.”
“WHAT?”
“He hit on Doug’s wife last Thanksgiving—he didn’t realize who she was—and Doug told him if he didn’t clean up his image, he’d send him down to the Minors. Jake lost it. It’s a long story, but he begged Scottie to fake date him, because there was a picture of them together around Christmas—”
“The one where they were kissing?”
“It wasn’t like that,” I say. “He kissed her to get some aggressive fan to leave him alone, but someone took a picture, found out who Scottie was, and put up that story that went viral about Jake dating his best friend’s little sister.
It was the first good press he’d gotten in so long, his agent told him to beg Scottie to fake date him. And her family pushed her to say yes.”
Logan shakes his head, blinking. “Am I still dreaming? Her family told her to fake date him?”
“I know. It makes me mad just thinking about it.”
“So she’s been fake dating him while you two have been sneaking around?”
“We haven’t been sneaking around. I love her!”
“Every cheater says that,” Logan says.
“It’s not cheating! They’re not an actual couple!”
Logan shows me the article. “Tell that to the rest of the world. No one will believe this.”
“Do you?”
He squeezes his eyes closed. “Yes, and that’s what makes me so—” he curses. “I’m so mad at you. You should have told me.”
“I didn’t want to get you involved.”
“I’m your twin. I’m involved just by being alive,” he says quietly, which is so much worse than him yelling it.
“I’ve been watching you lie to my face for a month.
I’ve been covering for you whenever you weren’t where you were supposed to be, trying to reassure Coop that you really do care about him.
I told myself I was wrong about what I was seeing.
” He looks at the floor. “I hate that you did this to me.”
“Logan—”
“I know you love her.” He looks up. “That’s not what I’m mad about.”
“Then what?”
He looks at me for a long moment.
“I’m mad that you didn’t trust me enough to tell me. We’ve never kept secrets from each other. Not real ones.” He shakes his head. “This is a real one.”
His pain has always hit me harder than my own. I can’t tell him that I was worried about what a secret like this would do to him. That would be me putting it on his shoulders, anyway. Making his anxiety a part of the equation.
I can’t do that to him.
Especially because, without meaning to, I already did.
I hang my head, shame and regret sitting like a stone in my gut.
“You’re right,” I say.
The silence that follows is icy, bitter, and empty. I’m afraid something has shifted between us that I can’t shift back.
I look at Logan and try to remember the last real conversation we had. Not logistics, not baseball, not me deflecting with a joke or counting down to when I could see Scottie. A real one.
I can’t find it.
And from the way he’s looking at the wall instead of at me, I don’t think he can either.
“What are you gonna do?” He sounds hollow.
That hollowness costs me more than anger could.
At that very moment, a call comes in.
And the plummeting feeling I’ve had all morning suddenly comes to a violent end.
It’s Doug.