CHAPTER 2 ALEXIS
I giggle at the headline.
Baseball’s Bad Boy Caught with His Pants Down.
I’ve admittedly always had a crush on first baseman Danny Brewer.
There’s just something about an athlete in a baseball uniform that calls to those tingles that dart through a woman, and Danny’s bad boy attitude paired with the interviews I’ve seen of him make him come off as a genuine guy with a fun side.
So basically the opposite of the man I’ve been photographed with for the last four years.
I grew up in a town just outside of Vegas, and I was raised a Giants fan.
Don’t tell my Dad, but I secretly cheer for the Dodgers nowadays—only because I’m a Los Angeles resident now. He is, too—but he’d never switch his allegiance to the rival team the way I did.
But now that Vegas has a baseball team? I know who I’m rooting for this season, and it’s not just because Danny Brewer is on first base and Cooper Noah, my favorite former Dodger, is the man on third.
It’s also not because AJ Winters is at shortstop and Rush Ross is pitching and Duke Owens is out in right field.
It’s all of it combined together. It’s one hell of a dream team, and they’re representing my hometown.
And literally every single player on the team is as attractive as they come.
Troy Bodine, the team manager, didn’t just build a talented team. He built a hot one, too.
I’ve always been partial to baseball players. Games were always on the television as I grew up. It was my father’s outlet after a long day chasing talent, and he’s as excited as I am that the Heat is here in Vegas.
“What are you laughing at?” Brooks asks, and I turn my phone toward him to show him the headline.
In just a couple days, I’m going to meet Danny Brewer. And Cooper Noah, and the rest of the Vegas Heat.
It’s a little surreal.
I’ve done more than a few thrilling things in my twenty-eight years. I’ve sang in front of sold-out stadiums. I’ve had parts in movies alongside some of Hollywood’s biggest names.
But I’m not sure anything is quite as thrilling as singing on opening day for the brand-new pro baseball expansion team in Las Vegas.
When my dad told me I was at the top of their talent request list, I about fainted right there on the spot.
And now I’m days away from walking into the clubhouse like I belong there. I do belong there—but I’m more nervous about entering that clubhouse than I was about getting on the stage in Mexico City in front of one hundred seventeen thousand people.
“That guy is bad news,” he says.
I roll my eyes.
Arthur Brooks Donovan the Third, affectionately known as Brooks, is my manager and my…boyfriend, for lack of a better term.
If you can call it that.
We’ve never kissed. We’ve never been affectionate. He’s attractive, but I’m not attracted to him.
But my father, who happens to be my agent, works closely with Brooks’s father.
My dad owns Bodega Talent Agency, and Brooks’s dad owns D3 Management.
They’re two of the biggest companies in Hollywood, and my father doesn’t trust anyone other than Brooks with me—which is why he’s been my manager since I turned eighteen, and six years later, my dad staged it to make it look like he was more than that.
He acts as a pseudo-bodyguard at times, though I have a security guard who travels with me, too.
Some people think we’re married because we’ve been together a while and my father doesn’t bother to correct people under that assumption.
The truth of the matter is that we’ve never been together. At least not in the way we lead the world to believe we are. Hell, even his own father is fooled by our act.
My act, anyway. It’s part of why I accepted the role in my next movie about a pop star stuck in a dead-end relationship and wishing her life could be different when circumstances beyond her control keep her exactly where she is.
Art imitating life? Probably. But the talk of the town is that the script is gold, and it very well could be my shot at my dream: an Academy Award the same year I also win a Grammy.
It’s been done before, but only once by a best actress winner.
Next year will be the year of Alexis Bodega, and the following year will be the year of the awards. All the pieces are in place, and I will do what it takes to win both.
But even after I do…what changes? My life was scripted for me from the second I signed on my father’s dotted line at the tender age of sixteen when I was too young to be making those decisions.
What’s done is done, and my life is with Brooks now.
We live together—in separate bedrooms, of course, at my dad’s house. He travels with me. He’s good at fading into the background when he needs to. He’s good at keeping me on schedule. He’s good at taking care of anything I need. He’s a good friend.
But he’s nothing more, and he just doesn’t give me the sort of tingles he should given that we’ve been together nearly four years now.
I’m getting restless, though.
Maybe it’s time to make a move.
If it has to be with Brooks, well, at least it’s a warm body even if he doesn’t give me the sort of tingles I read about in romance books.
I’m twenty-eight, and every person I’ve ever tried to form a relationship with has been scared off by either my father or Brooks.
Someday I dream of getting married and having a couple of kids…
but then, as my father has reminded me time and again, I’d be giving up the career he worked so hard to create for me.
I made a choice when I was sixteen, and I don’t get to back out of it.
So why does hearing Brooks call Danny Brewer bad news make me want to rebel against everything and slip the first baseman my number while I’m at the stadium in a couple days?
I won’t.
I’m America’s sweetheart, after all. The princess of pop. I can’t be seen with someone who uses an alley as his bathroom.
I have to keep my image squeaky clean.
But I’m tired of my squeaky clean image.
I don’t want to be the princess of pop anymore. I don’t even want to be the queen of Hollywood.
I just want the chance to be me.
I want to write the word fuck into a song and I want to change my image from America’s sweetheart into something a little darker. A little grittier. A little more sexual. A little more…adult.
But that’s not the road I chose.