Chapter 2 Ellie
TWO
Ellie
The stadium was loud, the kind of loud that rattled your hands and made your ears feel like they were vibrating. But inside my head?
Silence.
Everything had gone weirdly quiet. My brain hit pause while the rest of the world kept blaring. Rachel was saying something beside me, but nothing registered.
My eyes stayed locked on the Jumbotron.
There he was: Sawyer James. A six-foot-something wrecking ball with a grin that could melt the coldest of hearts, and he’d just blown me a kiss. Not just any kiss—a smirky, smug, too-charming-for-his-own-good kiss. To me. On national television. After getting knocked senseless.
Rachel’s voice finally broke through the static in my head as the screen shifted back to the game highlights. “Was that what I think it was?”
I didn’t answer, mostly because I didn’t trust my voice not to come out as a squeak. I could practically feel the dozen cameras zooming in on my face, so I pasted on my brightest smile, even though internally, I was definitely having a full deer-in-headlights moment.
“That’s right, folks!” the commentator said. “Sawyer James, offensive lineman for the San Francisco Rebels, just blew Ellie Miles a kiss from the field!”
Rachel smirked and pushed her auburn hair over her shoulder. “Okay, so that definitely was what I thought.”
I pressed two fingers to my temple and sat down. “I’m hallucinating, right? That was just some sort of weird, mass hallucination.”
“Nope. Very real and very viral.”
“Oh, God.” I dropped my head into my hands. “This is going to be everywhere.”
“Most definitely.” She sat down and kicked her boots up like we were at a sleepover instead of a professional football game. “But it’s not all bad.”
“I got kissed during an armed standoff,” I said slowly, because I still couldn’t quite believe it. “And now, he’s blowing kisses on the jumbotron.”
Rachel shrugged. “Well, if you ask me, that’s some pretty impressive dedication on his part.”
“You’re impossible.”
“I’m strategic.” She pulled out her phone and started typing—classic Rachel, unable to turn off publicist mode for even one day.
“Wait.” I narrowed my eyes. “Was your whole ‘come on, El. Let’s go to the game. You need a break before your tour picks back up,’ just code for ‘I’m trying to set you up with Sawyer James?’”
She gave me a guilty little smile and lifted a finger. “Okay, hear me out.”
“I’m scared.”
“We let the narrative run. We steer it. Ellie Miles, America’s pop princess, finally moves on from emotionally constipated C-list actor Harold Douche-Face with a hot NFL player who may or may not secretly be a cinnamon roll.
Boom.” She paused, then waved her hands in a dramatic rainbow arc. “Media gold.”
“You already pitched this to my agent, didn’t you?”
“After the footage dropped, we may have exchanged a few texts. I was waiting to talk to you after the game, but now seems like as good of time as any.”
“I haven’t even talked to Sawyer since that night.”
“Like I said, now seems like as good a time as any.”
“The last time I talked to him, I was bleeding and in shock, and he was…” I waved my arms around. “I don’t even know. Very large. Very protective. Very...unhelpfully charming.”
“And now, he’s your new PR opportunity.”
“I can’t date someone just because he saved me and looks great in tight pants.”
“But you can pretend to date him. I mean, you already kissed him.”
“He kissed me as a distraction!”
She pointed at me. “But you kissed him back.”
I fought off a smile. “That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Doesn’t it, though?” She tilted her head. “Have you seen the video? I mean, the sparks were undeniable.”
“There were no sparks,” I falsely denied.
“There were definitely sparks.”
“There were trauma-induced coping mechanisms while I was shot!”
She shrugged. “Tomato, tomato. Come on, be honest with me. Didn’t you feel something?” She pinched her fingers together and squinted. “Even for a teeny tiny little second?”
I opened my mouth and then closed it. That kiss came out of nowhere in the middle of pure chaos, and it had been electric in the worst possible way, the kind of moment that flips your stomach and hijacks your brain.
Still, every time I closed my eyes, I could feel the press of his mouth against mine. The taste of it, the shock of it, all in a moment. I hadn’t known how to process then and still didn’t now.
“This is crazy,” I muttered instead. “The footage. The kiss. The press. And now this?” I gestured toward the field. “He fucking winked at me!”
“It was a really good wink.”
“But I don't want good winks from ridiculously handsome men right now.” Still, I couldn't help the smile tugging at my lips. “Even if they are really, really good winks.”
After everything with my ex, Harold, I was finally starting to feel like myself again.
This was supposed to be my fresh start, time to focus on me, show my parents everything they'd given up for me was worth it, not accidentally stumble into some ridiculous fake romance story with a football player.
“Or,” Rachel said, her amber eyes bright, “we lean into it.”
“I don’t want my life to be a stunt.”
“Girl, it’s too late for that. You’re famous.”
I slumped against the seat and let out a long sigh. “Yeah, but I didn’t exactly want to be this kind of famous.”
“No one does. It just happens. The only choice you get is what you do with it.”
She was right. Ugh, I hated that she was right.
Dating a football player would actually solve the headline problem—no more speculation about me crawling back to Harold or whoever else I could possibly be dating next.
Maybe there was a bright side to this mess after all.
I didn't love the idea of playing the game, but at this point, I wasn't sure I had a better alternative.
I stared at the big screen, now replaying the body cam footage of him stepping in front of me and then the kiss that lasted a little too long.
“He’s not my type,” I said, attempting to deflect.
“Really? Because six-and-a-half feet of golden retriever energy, ridiculous muscles, and a too-perfect smile sounds suspiciously like your type.”
And once again, she wasn’t wrong. He was stupidly, distractingly handsome. That rough-edged, pretty-boy charm worked in ways it shouldn’t, from the strong jaw and trimmed beard to those sparkling eyes that always seemed like they were in on the joke.
That smile, the goofy way he didn’t even seem to know he was that pretty? It was enough to send my brain into hyperdrive.
But that was entirely beside the point.
“He has a huge family,” I muttered.
Rachel paused. “What?”
“I think he has a lot of siblings, and they’re all…close. Like aggressively supportive.”
Rachel tilted her head. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Families like that make me nervous.” I crossed my arms. “I don’t know how to be around so many people at once.”
She gave me a look. “Ellie, your parents are the most wholesome humans I’ve ever met, and you’re around thousands of people when you perform.”
“Yeah, but that’s different,” I said.
“You’re projecting.”
“Obviously.”
“Well, while you sort that out, I’m doing my job and setting you up with the NFL’s hottest distraction.
” Rachel was already in work mode, her thumbs flying across the screen like a woman possessed.
She gave me a cheeky smile. “Texted his agent. I’ll let you know when we hear back. Love you,” she sing-songed.
“Am I going to regret this?” I muttered.
She smiled without looking up. “Only if you fall in love with him.”
I tossed a napkin at her, and she caught it one-handed like a smug little ninja.
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, eyes on the tunnel where Sawyer had disappeared.
What was he thinking? Was he thinking at all? Maybe it really was slightly unhinged football player logic that said, Hey, national television seems like a great place to flirt.
For all I knew, this could implode any second or fade out in a week, dropping me right back into the status quo. But with the whole world watching, it didn’t matter how it played out. Either way, they weren’t letting it go.