Chapter 16
AVERY
The game ends in a tight loss. Washington beat us in the playoffs last year, so we knew it was going to be a tough one.
I played okay, but having all the cameras focused on my “boyfriend” and our interaction definitely threw me off at first.
And the experience of Rawley wearing my jersey, those ripped arms on display, my name on his back?
That wide smile as I saw him for the first time in eight days?
The bear hug, being eclipsed by his big, strong body, the feel of his lips on my hair?
I can’t be too mad at myself. That was a lot.
This whole circus around us is all a lot.
About two minutes after I was subbed into the game, I recentered myself though. Held their guard, an All-Star, to two points when I was playing, while making six baskets of my own.
I even fought through the distraction of the announcer introducing Rawley during a commercial break in the second quarter, keeping my back turned in the huddle while he had the moment with the fans.
Of course, my friends on the team don’t miss the opportunity to tease me now that the game is over.
“Looks like that night at Eclypse worked out for ya,” says Wendy, while a bunch of the other women laugh.
Sarah just gives me a squeeze on the shoulder. “I’m glad you’re giving Rawley a chance after all.”
“Thanks, Sar.”
When I leave the locker room, I mentally prepare myself for the next phase. One more round of photo ops.
Kayla pops in my view first as I make my way down the hall. And then a moment later, there’s Rawley and his brother.
I’ve never met Connor before, but I knew he was coming. And he’s got the same face as Rawley and Landon, only with glasses and straight blond hair.
“Hi, Pepper,” Rawley says. Connor looks at him like he’s confused. So am I.
“Pepper?” I ask as I get closer.
“I thought it might work as a nickname. You know, pepper is black like your hair?” He shrugs. “I wanted to try it out.”
Connor starts chuckling, and I’m pretty sure I hear him say “good luck with that one” under his breath.
But I’m not feeling amused.
“Um, no. Rejected. And please for the future, no food-based nicknames.”
Rawley smiles widely. “Heard, loud and clear.”
Why such a big grin? He’s such a smart-ass, did he— “Did you do that whole bit to tease me?”
“Maybe. Or maybe I just wanted my girlfriend to have a super cool nickname.”
“Anyway,” Kayla interjects, “if you guys want to leave out the back stadium doors, it should be less of a production. There’s a chance you get caught on camera, but it won’t be anything like going out the front.”
We know Taylor has alerted a couple of photographers about where they can capture our departure, but Kayla’s not in the circle of secrecy.
“Connor, here are my keys,” Rawley says as he throws them to his brother, sticking with the plan of him meeting us back at my place.
In the meantime, Rawley and I will be photographed leaving together in my car, and even before that—
“You ready?” Rawley says, extending his hand. Again, all pre-coordinated for the media.
I nod and take his hand in mine.
Warmth infuses into my palm before he turns his hand to thread our fingers together. As I feel him squeeze my hand, heat jolts straight up my arm.
Whoa, that’s unexpected.
It must be the intimacy of this gesture? It’s our first time holding hands. My body’s just adjusting to that contact.
I don’t have any more time to dwell before the doors open and we’re on display.
Rawley whispers faintly, “Smile.” I’m not sure if he’s saying it to himself, me, or both. Either way, I force my lips up and try to think of a way to keep them there.
“I’m getting revenge on that nickname thing,” I tease.
Rawley relaxes a fraction as we start walking to the first section in the parking lot. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”
I rack my brain for a proper insult. “Can I call you ‘Blueberry’?”
“Blueberry?” I can see his chest shake with laughter the smallest bit.
“Yeah, like your eyes.” They are that color. And pretty. “You’re the one who started with the food ideas.”
“You can keep staring at my eyes all you want, but no, you may not call me Blueberry.”
“Well, then we’re both officially nickname-less.”
In a few more strides, we’ve reached my car and successfully distracted each other on the walk. I still don’t see any photographers, but I’m sure they’re out there somewhere.
“Do you want to drive?” he asks.
“No, can you?” He nods. “I’m spent from the game so it’ll be nice to veg out in the passenger seat.”
“No prob.” He takes the keys and within five minutes we’re on the road, some pop music playing low from my car’s speakers.
Once we’re on our way, Rawley rests his right hand near the gear shift and starts tapping to the beat.
For the first time, I notice how large his hands are—no doubt a key element to being able to catch footballs the way he does. It explains why my hand felt warm, locked in his.
“It must have been nice to see your family in Boston.”
My line of thought broken, I move my gaze up to his face. “It was. Sort of.”
He glances toward me quickly, before refocusing on the road. “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want, but when I mentioned your dad at the gym that one time, it…it seemed like it wasn’t a good thing.”
“Yeah.” I debate what to tell him, and how deep to go. “I’ve had people use me to get to my dad, or because of my last name. When I was younger, sometimes it was even people I cared about. So I shut it down pretty quick these days.”
“And you thought that was where I was headed…”
“Not anymore. Now that I know you.”
He blows out a breath. “Okay good. Yeah, I mean it happens to me. People not wanting to be your friend, but faking it so well you can’t be sure at first. And then it turns the knife a little deeper because you started trusting them.”
It sucks he’s gone through that too, but it’s nice to have someone who understands. “Exactly. My skin is pretty thick at this point.”
An empathetic expression crosses his face, and it prompts me to open up a bit more.
“My dad and I—we’re not as tight as I am with my other family. He likes to be the boss when it comes to basketball, and you might be stunned to hear this, but I have an independent streak.”
“Shocker.” He chuckles.
We’re both quiet for a moment, and he starts to tap to the beat of the music again.
This time, he clocks his movement and flattens his hand.
“Sorry.”
“You don’t have to stop. Or apologize.”
“Thanks. I have trouble sitting still.”
He says it in a clipped tone, not wanting to talk about it more, I think? I change the topic.
“Are you living with Landon for a while? Or are you looking for a place?”
“For a bit. He has a ton of space, and we’re trying to figure out my financial situation, as you know. I don’t want to spend the first chunk of my signing bonus all at once, and I have some NIL money still, but it will go fast if I try to buy a place.”
“Yeah, I know the feeling.”
“Look at all the attention we’re getting though. Hopefully, you’ll be set soon. We both will.”
His confidence helps build mine a fraction. He really thinks this will work.
“I’m trying to wrap my head around the interest in us. It’s intense. I don’t really care, usually. I’ve never let any press stuff mess with my head, or anything like that.”
“Me neither, until my off-field life was all anyone talked about.”
I hate hearing the hurt that leaks into his voice. “You’ve had it much rougher than me, for sure.”
“The worst part…” He looks at me for a second. “I don’t know if you’ll believe this, but none of it is true.”
“You mean that picture was a fake?”
“No, it was real, just taken at a bad moment. All I did in college was drink, and not an obscene amount. I partied, sure, like a normal college student, staying up way too late, drinking beers. But no weed, speed, nothing like that—which, by the way, a ton of my friends did do cannabis, not that it’s bad.
And now it’s off the NCAA banned drug list.”
“Yeah, I won’t name names, but same on the men’s team at my school.”
“I steered clear. Landon was all over me not to go there once I started at UT.”
A thought hits me. “Wait, why didn’t you deny using drugs outright?”
His eyes dart my way and he lets out a breath. “Can you keep a secret? Like for real, this has to stay a secret.”
“Yes, I promise.” I wonder what this could be. “Consider it part of the NDA we all signed. I’m not a gossip, anyway.”
“When I was fifteen, a couple of my teammates and I got caught with—well, we called it something else—but ecstasy. To party with. The cop called our coach, and somehow he and my mom made it all go away. She’s a lawyer who knows everyone.” Huh. “Smalltown Alabama, you know?”
“You were just fifteen?” He nods. “That doesn’t sound bad, honestly.”
“The tale is not over,” Rawley adds with a half-hearted laugh. “For the next year, I smoked up a lot, to the point where it was impacting my football and I was constantly bailing on school. Landon and Grace had left for college, and I made a lot of shitty choices with them gone.”
“Oh, so what happened to turn things around?”
“Connor, who was fourteen at the time, called Landon and told him what was going on. Landon came home from the University of Alabama and kicked my ass. Verbally, I mean,” he rushes to say. “He spent weeks going back and forth between Tuscaloosa and our hometown, making sure I got my act together.”
Now I have a better sense of what he meant when he said his relationship with Landon is “complicated.”
“So that’s it. That’s how I became the family screwup.”
I don’t respond right away, but I flinch internally at how he described himself. I mean, he was just a teenager doing dumb teenager things.
“Aiden and Jim know about it all, and we’re careful to skip outright denials of ever doing anything.”
“That makes sense.” I dig deep trying to think of something comforting to say. “Hopefully this buzz around us will shift all those stories.”
His eyes, those beautiful blue eyes that are usually so light and full of life, hold a piercing sadness, augmented by a film of exhaustion.
Is that emotion always there? Does he just hide it?
In a blink, the window to that hurt is closed, and his expression evens out. “That’s what we’re banking on.”
He turns a corner and I recognize my street. Connor’s beat us here, and I see Rawley’s car as we approach my place.
“Date one done,” he says as he turns off the car.
He starts to reach for his door handle, and a foreign feeling washes over me.
I…I want one more moment. Of him. Of us.
My hand slides over the one he still has resting on the gear shift, and his head tilts back in my direction.
“I’m really glad it’s you,” I say, my voice low. My throat swallows involuntarily before I speak again. “I’m glad it’s you who’s playing this part. And that we’re getting to be friends.”
His eyes flicker with surprise, and then…curiosity? He looks down at where my hand rests on his, then floats his gaze up to my face.
His lips start to move the smallest amount. Once, twice. Like he’s forming words but uncertain he has the right ones.
Then he shakes his head and pulls his hand out from underneath mine. “Yes, for sure.”
He places my keys in a cup holder in the middle of the front seats. “I should go before Connor starts honking or something.”
And a second later, he’s out of the car, fading into the dark once Connor pulls away down my street.