Chapter 27 #3
“But it’s me. There were cameras in that hotel room.
Everywhere. They got audio, too. And remember how I said Tilly’s into a .
. . uh . . .” I blank trying to remember the words I just used because I don’t want to make my girl sound like a freak or anything, but it’s hard to explain the situation without making her look terrible, and she doesn’t deserve that.
“She’s into games? Just fun, haha, not at all serious games?
The video shows me paying her before we do anything. ”
“Fucking hell,” Keenan groans.
Godwell, who’s a fair, reasonable owner who’s always been super cool and patient with me, whispers, “Why are you like this?”
I shrug. “It was just a game, I swear. We were having fun. We . . .” I slump, tip my head forward.
My hair flops forward with it. Last night, when we finally got home, Tilly undid my twists and washed my hair, using the little spray attachment we have to bathe Donovan.
I don’t have a cast, just a brace that comes right off, but they wanted me off my feet last night, and Tilly threatened me with war crimes if I took it off.
So she sat my ass in the tub, my ankle propped up on the edge, while I scrubbed up and she washed my hair.
And then instead of prepping it for twists, she towel-dried and conditioned and teased it out.
My off-season hair. She’s not going to twist it again until Doc Keltner gives me the green light to get back on the field, and even if I had all the money in the world right now, I wouldn’t go behind her back to get it done professionally.
“We didn’t do anything wrong,” I say firmly. We didn’t. We were two consenting adults, and yes, I gave her almost $10,000 afterward, but I was not paying her for sex. I was playing a game, and then I was giving a gift to someone I thought really needed that gift, and I was right.
It just made everything look really bad.
“After the video was a message about how the whole night was caught on tape, and they were prepared to leak this to the media if I didn’t pay them. So I paid them.”
Maurice Bradley looks at Andy, who took a red eye from California to be here for this meeting. “Did you know about this?”
Andy grimaces.
“Were you the one who advised him to keep this from us?”
“Was I?” he asks me innocently, but it’s been so long I don’t even remember who said what that day. It was an entire year ago, and what a year it’s been.
I shrug. “I don’t know, man. I just didn’t want to get fired.”
“We wouldn’t have fired you over this!” Godwell says, only for the people on both sides of her to start whispering in her ear, no doubt reminding her that there’s a lot of ‘don’t pull any bullshit’ in my contract, and this whole thing literally started the same day as the wet tee shirt incident.
Maybe they wouldn’t have fired me, but I definitely don’t think I’m in the wrong for trying to hide it.
“We’re going to need to see the videos,” says the private detective, Matt Something-Or-Other. White guy. Bulky but gym rat bulk. Crew cut. Still smells like cop. Just shadier.
“Yeahhh,” I drawl, stretching back in my chair. “I’m not doing that.”
“It’s for the investigation. There’s data we can pull from them. Potentially even clues in the videos themselves as to who was recording them.”
“Not happening.”
Andy leans over and quietly reminds me, “They’re not going to share the videos. Just send them so we can get this taken care of.”
“I’m not sending them a video of Tilly eating my ass,” I whisper back to Andy.
Not quietly enough, though, from the way everyone’s eyes suddenly turn away from me, their bodies stiffening.
Oops.
“You said this was her room, right?” Coach Keenan asks. “So who is she, anyway? From what I’ve seen of her, I didn’t think she was anybody.”
The back of my neck prickles. “You calling my girl ugly?”
Keenan blinks several times before very carefully saying, “I absolutely am not saying anything like that, Sinclair. But this sounds like the cameras had already been set up. We’re just trying to figure out how this happened and how to fix it.”
“Yeah, well, it was her room, and she’s a costumer. That’s it. She makes costumes for actors.”
“And this is the woman you were having Doc Keltner treat, correct?” Emily Hess asks.
She says it casually, like she’s just asking for clarification, but she’s as casual as I am.
I see her. I know what she is. She’s been waiting for her moment to strike, and she found it.
This is her conversation now. “Natalie Washington?”
Just saying her full name like that is enough to have me straightening in my chair. “Yeah, Tilly.”
“And the baby is—”
“Donovan.”
“—Yours?”
“Oh. Uhh, yeah.” Definitely not how I wanted to make the announcement, and the only relief I get is that there’s a second of everyone either celebrating or cursing, and half the room gets busy with their phones for a couple seconds.
I nearly ask if everyone’s sharing this on social media, because that’s not cool at a time like this, but then I remember Bradley and the bet.
He’s nodding, pleased, so he must have known Donovan is mine.
Clearly, Donovan is mine. I’m actually a bit offended that so many thought he wasn’t. Look how handsome he is. Obviously, that’s my kid.
I glare around the room, mentally taking note of everyone who didn’t think he was mine. Bunch of assholes. They’re gonna pay—
“Stephanie’s your social media assistant, yeah?
She’s getting a team now. I’m scheduling a photoshoot for this afternoon.
You’re going to be in long pants and shoes — actual shoes, not slides, you show up in those slides you hobbled in on and I’ll leak those videos myself and you can’t stop me — and Donovan is going to look like the wealthiest baby ever and Tilly better be ready to go full trad wife influencer, Thomas Kincaide painter of light, Nubian princess Betty Crocker here. ”
I’m not the only one to say, “What the fuck,” to this white lady saying some shit like that.
She doesn’t even look chastised by it. “We cannot, cannot, have anyone questioning who the parents are of that baby. We need to cover social media with a family that is unquestionable about genetics but absolutely questionable about what’s going on behind the scenes, got it?
I need the world to see America’s sweethearts, and I need the world to be able to see a video of you two licking each other’s buttholes and say, ‘okay, yeah, this checks out, actually, because all those Stepford Wife-looking sourdough bitches are clearly faking it.’ Are you getting it yet? ”
“This is so fucked up,” I mutter.
“This is the real world. Sorry this is what it is, but if you hadn’t gotten caught on camera paying off a prostitute, she could have just been the girl she is.”
“She is not a prostitute,” I bristle, adding Emily Hess to my shit list even though she was one of the few with stone faces when I announced that Donovan was mine.
She leans forward, her brown eyes blazing with a fire that her frosted Karen hair frames just right to make anyone who might have ever been a manager of anything quake with fear.
“Sinclair. Listen to me. Ignore everyone else in this room because no one else is going to be able to salvage this. It’s just you and me.”
I obey. I let everyone fade away. I don’t even wave goodbye. Because if I get fired now, I have no idea what I’ll do. Tilly’s finances are even worse than I could have imagined. She laid it out for me yesterday, about how she’s been genuinely concerned about rent in the next couple months.
“If this video leaks right now, you will lose your job. You will be too much of a liability. There are too many people involved. It’s going to cause too much of a disruption.
There’s too much money we’ll lose. And frankly, this is why Morales is paid what he’s paid — Morales, whose girl is a PR nightmare, but they don’t have a single sex tape in existence because they’re not stupid enough to lick each other’s buttholes anywhere but the privacy of their own home — so the hit to the team isn’t going to be nearly as bad as the loss of our big sponsors.
“And realistically, we have no control over what happens to these videos. You get that, right? We could sign the entire team over to your sextortionists, and they could still leak those videos. So the only — the only — thing we can do is stay ahead of it. And listen, if this was Drew Cohen? Or Gabe Shaunessy? Or even Wes Foster? This wouldn’t be happening.
They’d be cut. That’s it. So you are welcome that I’m going to save your career, got it? ”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t involve me in your kink.”
I want to exchange a look with Andy, but I don’t want her to castrate me.
“Now, since Natalie Washington is a costumer for a major production company, this is the luckiest day of your fucking life because she’s registered with IATSE.”
“Yahtzee?”
“International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. If you watch the credits of the movies she’s costumed, you’ll see her name right there, Natalie Washington.
Earliest listing is from five years ago, and that is incredibly useful because it validates why she wouldn’t change her name.
Which makes this your million-dollar question: is she your wife? ”
“Nope.” Although, shit, I regret not asking her before everything went to hell.
Emily Hess leans even closer.
“Is she your wife?”
I tilt my head to the side, wondering what I’m missing. “No?”
Once more, much more slowly, she says, “Is . . . she . . . your . . . wife?”
“Y-yes? I can . . . shit, I’ll see if she’ll—” I fumble for my phone, thinking I’ll just text her and see if she’s okay with marrying me. And since her name’s already in credits, it doesn’t make sense professionally for her to change her last name.
Still, I’d like it to be hyphenated. Can that be done without messing up the Yahtzee thing? Would she want that from me? Will Sinclair-Washington fit on the back of my jersey? Oof, Gabe’s jersey, maybe. Not mine—
Andy snatches my phone out of my hand before I can actually type out the text and shakes his head.
Right, yeah, not the time to text.
“And was she your wife when these videos were filmed?”
“No, obviously not.”
Emily Hess actually leans over so far that she’s lying on the table, her ass in the air, I’m pretty sure with at least one knee on the seat. She stretches her arm out and grabs my hand. Squeezes it.
Digs her talon-like nails in.
“Blaise. Blaise. Listen to me, Blaise. Is this a video of you and your wife, your pregnant wife, having a little bit—”
“This was the night she got pregnant.”
“Having a little bit of kinky fun because you know that you’re about to have eight months before you can get away with these kinds of shenanigans again, only for some terrible element to film you and your wife — your wife, Blaise, your wife — in your marital bed?”
I stare her down, deciding whether I should complain that she’s drawn blood on the back of my hand, but probably it’s better to ignore that and just explain to Tilly later.
Really, I’m not going to have to explain it when everything else is going to be a mess.
I give myself some time to think, ultimately needing to point out, “I don’t think this is something I can lie about. This is, like, public records shit.”
Emily smiles, but it’s faint, and it’s creepy. A twitch at the corner of her lips that looks like it’s going to go Joker if it stretches further. “I will make this happen.”
I guess that’s why legal’s not here.