13. Chapter 13
Claire
My mother calls at nine-fifteen on Monday morning and says the words I have been dreading: your father was watching ESPN last night.
I set my pen down.
"How bad?"
"He saw the segment. The comeback story — how Darius went from the doghouse in Atlanta to playing some of the best ball of his career here in Houston.
" Her voice is careful. Measured. The voice she uses when she's trying not to make something worse.
"He watched the whole thing and then he went looking. "
"Baby, just be prepared. You know how he gets."
My stomach drops.
"He found the Chronicle piece about the affair with that married woman.
Printed it out, read every word, put it in the recycling bin.
That's the part that scared me." She pauses.
"Then someone in his Sunday school group had shared an old thread — posts Darius made online, the way he talked about his teammates.
Your father didn't say a single word. He just closed his laptop and went to bed at eight o'clock. "
I close my eyes for exactly one second.
"Is there anything I should know before he calls?" she asks, gentle but direct. "Anything you want me to be prepared for?"
I tell her the arrangement is still professional and temporary, and that I'm handling it.
She says, "I know you are, baby… and that's exactly what worries me," because she's afraid I'm handling a man who could bruise me in ways I don't see yet.
***
My father calls at noon.
He doesn't ask how I'm doing. He doesn't ease into it.
He goes straight to Proverbs 4:23 — guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life — and then he goes quiet, which is Samuel Wells for: I am disappointed, and I love you, and I don't know how to hold both of those things at the same time.
"I read the piece," he says finally.
"Dad—"
"A married woman, Claire. Fights with his own teammates. Whatever he was posting online about those people — the ones he was supposed to be playing beside."
I wait.
"I didn't raise you to tie yourself to someone whose reputation could stain your own. Not even for a contract."
"It's part of the job." I keep my voice even. Professional. The voice I use when I need someone to stop pushing. "This deal keeps the Foundation funded. It covers the bills at home. I couldn't turn it down."
"Reckless men don't change because a good woman stands beside them. They just take her down with them."
The line goes quiet.
I stare at the briefing document open on my desk. The bullet points blur together.
He isn't wrong. I know he isn't wrong. But there is something about the way he says it — the certainty of it, the clean, uncomplicated certainty — that makes me feel twelve years old and boxed into a shape I didn't choose.
I love my father. That part is easy. The hard part is that loving him has always come with a ceiling — a clear, unspoken limit on how much of myself I get to be before it becomes a disappointment.
I've been performing perfect for so long I stopped noticing the weight of it. The right clothes. The right job. The right choices. Always the example. Never the problem.
These past few weeks with Darius — arguing in hotel corridors, stress-baking at midnight, sitting in stairwells saying things out loud I've never said to anyone — I haven't once felt like I needed to edit myself.
No version. No ceiling. Just me, unfiltered.
And for the first time in longer than I can remember, that was enough.
I didn't realize how good that felt until right now, sitting here with my father's disappointment still warm in my ear.
I tell him I'll call this weekend. I tell him the arrangement is almost halfway through. I tell him I know what I'm doing.
He says, "I hope so, baby girl," and hangs up first.
***
My eyes sting before I'm even off the phone. I grab my notebook and walk fast, head down, because if anyone stops me right now and asks if I'm okay, I'm going to lose it completely in the middle of this hallway.
I sit on the middle step of the stairwell and press my fingers to the bridge of my nose and breathe.
The door opens seven minutes later.
Darius.
He has a bottle of water — the plain kind from the cooler by the training room, not the branded team variety — and he's still in practice clothes, which means he came directly from the field. He sits on the step below mine and hands up the water without looking at me.
I take it.
"Your dad?" he asks.
"He wants me to call this off."
Darius turns to look at me. "Call what off?"
I give him a look.
"Us," I say. "The arrangement. All of it."
"Why?"
I almost laugh. "Darius. My father is a pastor."
He stares at me for a second. "And?"
"And you are..." I gesture vaguely at all of him.
He straightens slightly. "I'm what?"
"The opposite."
He's quiet for a moment. Then: "So I'm not good enough for your dad."
It isn't a question. There's something underneath it that isn't quite hurt but isn't nothing either.
"It's not about good enough," I say. "It's about what he sees when he looks at you. The headlines. The history. He doesn't know what I know."
"And what do you know?"
I look at him. He looks back.
"I'm still figuring that out," I say.
He doesn't push. He turns his phone over once in his hands and sets it face-down on the step.
We sit there for another five minutes and the stairwell is quiet except for the muffled sounds of the building around us — sneakers on the corridor floor above, someone's phone, the distant thud of the weight room.
Then I stand up, smooth my skirt, and go back to work.
***
The Stallions VP emails me the official AFC media summit attendee list at three-fifteen.
I open the attachment expecting forty names. I scroll until I find the one I'm looking for, because I already know it's there.
Camille Pierce. Panel: Ethics in Sports Communications.
I actually laugh out loud.
A short, sharp laugh that I have to cover with my hand because Katie Collins has her head around my wall in a second flat, eyes wide.
"I'm fine," I call back.
I am not fine. Camille Pierce, the woman currently blackmailing a professional athlete, has a speaking slot on a panel about ethics.
I read her bio anyway. Three paragraphs of polished, wounded professionalism. A woman who has dedicated her career to honest storytelling. A woman whose integrity has been tested by forces outside her control. Every word is a weapon with the safety on.
I print the page. I add it to the file I've been building since week two. I pick up my pen and open my notebook to a clean page.
I write two words.
Be undeniable.
I underline it once. Then I go back to the briefing document and I work until six.
***
I'm shutting down my laptop when Darius appears in my office doorway.
The sight of him hits me before I'm ready for it. A warm rush under my skin, a quick lift in my chest, a tiny spark of awareness that wasn't there a week ago and now refuses to be ignored.
He's just standing there, but something about the way he fills the frame of the doorway makes the room feel smaller.
His gaze finds mine, steady and direct, and my pulse reacts before my brain can catch up.
He looks so damn good today wearing a fitted white T-shirt that pulls across his chest, a baseball cap turned backward with just enough hair slipping out the front to make my fingers itch with the urge to push it back.
His eyes find mine, those piercing blue eyes that always seem to land exactly where I'm most unprepared, and the impact is immediate. Warm. Direct. A little too knowing.
And then there's his mouth — full, focused, distracting enough that I lose the thread of my own thoughts.
"Long day, Wells?"
The sound of his voice sends a small, unwelcome flutter through my stomach. I straighten a stack of papers that doesn't need straightening.
"You could say that."
He smiles — slow, satisfied — like he knows exactly where my mind just was.
I hate that he's right.
He steps into the office but doesn't sit. He looks at the wall behind my desk — the printed summit schedule I've pinned there, the timeline, the media coverage map — and I watch him take it in.
"I need to move faster," he says. "Camille's going to walk into that summit and own every room she enters. You know that. I know that." He looks at me. "I need the world to see a different man before she gets the chance to define one for them."
I nod. This is already part of the plan.
But then he says something I didn't expect.
"I went to church on Sunday."
I wait.
"Elevation Church, over on Westheimer. Been getting calls from half the pastors in Houston since the Lakewood photos dropped — apparently my attendance does something to the offering plate." He laughs, short and self-deprecating. "Guess my showboating can do some good after all."
I almost smile.
"When I got there the service was something else. The preacher said something — I don't even remember the exact words, I just remember the way it landed." He looks at the floor briefly, then back at me. "Like something I'd been carrying got lighter for ten minutes."
He's not performing this. He's not angling for coverage.
"I want to go back Wednesday night," he says. "Not for cameras. Not for the plan." A pause. "I just want to try to work on myself, and I don't want to do it alone."
The room is quiet.
I think about my father's voice on the phone four hours ago. I think about what my mother said. I think about the version of Darius that is supposed to be my answer to both of them — he's a client, he's a project, he's the last man I'd fall for.
"Okay," I say.
He blinks.
"Wednesday. I'll be ready at six-thirty."
He nods once, slow, like he wasn't sure I'd say yes. He pushes off the doorframe to leave.
"Darius."
He turns back.
"Whatever the preacher said — hold onto it. We're going to need it."
He almost smiles. Then he's gone.
I sit in my office for another minute, the briefing document closed, the summit schedule on the wall in front of me.
Be undeniable.
I open my laptop and add Wednesday evening to the plan. Client accompaniment. Church visit. Image rehabilitation — phase two continuation.
I stare at the words.
Then I close the laptop.
Because I didn't say yes because it's on the agenda. I said yes because he asked me in a voice that had nothing to do with cameras or Camille or the Next Play Foundation, and I wanted to say yes.
I grab my bag and my notebook and I'm halfway down the hallway before I pull out my phone and open my sister Hannah's contact.
I think I have a problem.
I stare at the message for three seconds.
Then I hit send.