Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
NOAH
“Hello?” Arie picks up on the very last ring. He’s always trying to finish whatever email or text he’s working on before answering.
“Hey, it’s Noah.”
“I have caller ID,” he says flatly. “What’s up?”
“I want to take on a manager for my social media sponsorships.”
I’m sure he can hear the dollar signs cha-chinging. “And why would that be?”
“It’s a business opportunity,” I say, though I don’t think I’m all that convincing.
“Try again.” Dammit.
“It’s about a woman.”
I can hear the creak in his office chair as he leans back into it. “There it is.”
“We’d hit it off and we’d been talking nonstop, and then all of a sudden yesterday she showed up for coffee with her briefcase talking about sponsorships.” I trail off… I don’t really know anything else.
“This is a weird way to gold dig.”
Anger pinks my cheeks. “She’s not a gold digger.” I try to calm myself so I don’t bite my agent’s head off. “She’s already pretty successful at this. I’ve checked her website, looked at her client list.”
“So if she doesn’t need your money, then what’s this about? She could have just let you down easy if she wasn’t interested in dating.”
I run my fingers through my hair. “I don’t know, Arie. But I’m going to find out, and to do that I need you to approve this and sign the papers.”
“I don’t know if this is a good idea…”
“I will give you double your usual percentage. I’ll take some from whatever I get, and I’ll double yours. Just don’t fight me.”
Arie heaves a dramatic sign as he’s wont to do. The man lives off of hysterics, but is ultimately controlled by cash. “Fine. But when this all blows up in your face and she leaves you high and dry, don’t come crying to me.”
“Oh, I won’t. I can promise you that.” Because this is the real deal, and this is how I’m going to prove myself to Audrey—and get to the bottom of whatever is going on with her.
I’m worried about Audrey. Not about her and my future, but in the sense of whatever happened to make her pull a one-eighty on me.
I could see in her eyes that she needed me to go along with whatever this was.
I almost asked her to blink twice if she was being held hostage because it was so unlike her to behave this way.
The woman I was getting to know was not who was sitting across from me at Common Bond the other day.
If she thinks this shtick is going to keep me away from her, she’d lose that bet every day of the week and twice on Sundays. I’m determined not to let her forget how good we are together. How good we could be.
I genuinely don’t have any skeletons in my closet. I’m not a one-night-stand kind of guy. I don’t have any crazy exes. No one could have contacted her telling her I’ve got other women on the side or anything. I’m in no rush. If this was really in the shitter, she would have straight up dumped me.
But for some reason she needs me to be her client. And for that reason alone, I will go along with this and get to the bottom of whatever is wrong with her.
But the end of summer is fast approaching.
The heat is still lingering and there’s no sign of fall.
It will make its tardy appearance sometime in late September.
The only note of time moving along is the end of the preseason games quickly approaching.
There’s only one preseason game left. I’ve been focusing on getting fully in gear and keeping my mind off the fact that Audrey isn’t completely mine.
Sweating my ass off as we run new plays over and over is doing the trick, though…
for the most part. Bonding with my teammates and the rookies just drafted to the team is covering the rest of my downtime.
Tonight, we’re eating a team dinner in the private party room of a nice-ish restaurant in the city.
We were all cut loose an hour early to have time to shower, change, and get here for dinner.
Appetizers are being passed around. Crab cakes, meatballs, bread and butter galore.
The chatter is amiable and friendly. Big, booming laughs drift down the table from the defensive linemen.
The tables all have white linens on them and our burly, bruised, and tattooed bunch stands out against their starkness.
I’ve been on the Hurricanes for more than three years now, and even if I don’t feel comfortable with my position and the fight I’ve put up for it, I do feel comfortable with the men surrounding me.
For the most part, they’re good guys. Some of them are still learning to not indulge too much in all the special privileges that being an NFL player comes with, but sometimes you have to get burned to know.
Colin hands me a plate of meatballs in a tomato-y barbecue sauce and I scoop a whole one onto my plate. He takes the chance to ask, “How’s the girl?”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I snap.
“That’s not what I asked, asshole. Geez, someone is testy today.”
I’m not going to admit it’s in spite of my best efforts. I’ve been the best damn client anyone could ask for.
She sends me the contract? Immediately signed. I send it to Arie, and just as he promised, no questions asked. “I’m not. I just don’t want to talk about it.”
This pricks the ears of the other guys on our side of the table. The kicker, long snapper, and the entire offensive line look my way.
“Don’t want to talk about what?” Mack asks.
“Not what,” Colin answers with a pointed finger. “Who.”
“Nobody,” I mutter. I have a recurring therapy appointment, I don’t need to rehash things at our team dinner too.
It doesn’t matter that I don’t answer because Colin quickly fills everyone else in on my romance turned strictly business.
Nothing stays between two teammates here for long.
Everyone heard me say I was taking Audrey to The Lush last month, and it seems like they’ve been talking about it among themselves since then.
There’s a mixed bag of reactions.
Jaden snorts. “If she doesn’t realize what a catch you are, then she’s not worth it. You deserve to be fully wanted.”
I rest my chin on my hand and my elbow on the table, listening. Finally, I lean back in my chair. “I have to respect what she wants.”
Mack is the first to speak, shaking his head. “No, that’s not what this is. Women want to know you want them. To know you’re willing to put in the effort to win them over. She’s obviously interested, and you got along great at dinner. So I don’t think you should give up on this.”
I scoff. “I think she wants to be with me. I can’t just disregard whatever is going on with her and scare her away.”
“No, no, no, no.” He shakes his head vehemently. “That’s not at all what I’m suggesting. I have… a plan…”
If this was a sitcom and there was a camera, I’d look right into it with my mouth wide open. “Yikes.”