Chapter One
Sawyer
Ipoint the remote at the TV in the boardroom of the royal palace, and I rewind the athlete interview again. Tamiko and I have been dissecting videos for at least an hour, and it doesn’t feel like we’re making progress. Shifting the focal point of my career has been more disorienting than I expected. Since taking this job, I’ve been second-guessing every instinct, never quite sure if I’m on the right track. That feeling isn’t new, but the reason for it is.
“I can’t believe I said yes to this,” I mutter as Logan Bishop, star hockey player, appears on-screen again. Questions are fired his way about being the weak link in his team after the California Crows lost their final playoff game in the World Hockey League last season. Obvious rage-bait. Logan’s the best player on the team.
“He’s so stiff,” Tamiko says. Her long black hair swings as she shifts in her seat beside me. “In every interview, he has the charisma of dead air. We definitely need to loosen him up.”
“He’s twenty-one. Shouldn’t he be automatically loose?” The other players we’ve watched often have natural charisma. Despite being one of the team’s assistant captains, there’s little evidence of someone personable, a leader worth following. The AC honor must be due to his performance on the ice, not in the locker room.
“Feels like he’s holding back, and not in the way you want from a PR perspective,” Tamiko says. “The trick is to say the right thing without making it seem like you’retryingto say the right thing. Logan isn’t saying anything at all. If you want an excellent example of this, it’s Travis Kelce. He put himself into a high pressure, high-stakes relationship, and he understood the assignment. Give people a glimpse of the truth without filling in all the details.”
“Honestly, Tamiko, I don’t even know whatI’mdoing right now. How am I supposed to help anyone else?” I can’t help the self-conscious laugh that escapes. “I’m a physiotherapist, not a PR specialist or a media trainer or whatever King Alexander and my dad are trying to make me become.”
“You’re good with people,” Tamiko says, “and Logan Bishop is pissed about the California Crows becoming the Bellerive Bullets. More than the physiotherapy, your job is to make sure he’s happy about being on this island, being on this team, until he forgets he was ever mad about it.”
I’ve certainly had a lot of practice recently at pleasing men, and I’m not entirely sure the pivot I’m making here is the good kind, the kind that takes someone out of a rut. Instead, I worry I’m only entrenching myself further, pleasing men at my expense—again.
“You must have had lots of contact with the PR machine during Dalton’s run for the Advisory Council.”
Self-consciously, I touch the back of my head where a goose egg is fading, a dull ache. While Dalton and I were together, I never asked myself if the places he wanted to go were also the places I wanted to go, and I’m not making that mistake again. Getting swept off your feet sounds romantic, until you search for your footing and realize you’re in a mudslide.Never again.
“He had very specific ideas about what he wanted,” I say, carefully. Everyone knows we split up a couple of weeks ago. But absolutely no one knows the circumstances. He tried to make me sign an NDA. What I know could jeopardize his job as one of the highest-ranking officials in the government, but I told him that even if he sued me for all my billions, he couldn’t stop me from talking if I decided to.
It’s just that I haven’t quite figured out what to say.
The thing I never comprehended about losing faith in yourself is that it doesn’t happen all at once. It’s a gradual erosion, so slow, so miniscule that you don’t even realize it’s occurring until you’re sliding down that cliff, completely untethered from anything you recognize.
And until it happened to me, I would have told you it wasn’t possible for it to happen at all. That’s the part that still rattles my insides—I didn’t even see what happened coming.
“I’m a little worried that I’m going to feel like a babysitter or a cockblocker or a fun stealer,” I admit. “He’s ten years younger than me. I bet we have nothing in common.”
“Sawyer, you’re fun.”
Am I?It doesn’t feel true.
“Besides, by all accounts, he doesn’t live a wild life. Some pro athletes are…” She whistles long and low. “You know? But he keeps to himself on and off the ice. The only close friend outside his current team that I could trace was Chayton Thackeray, whoplays for the Michigan Moose of the WHL. Bishop’s family is complicated and fragmented. He’s a loner. I don’t think you’re going to be attending underage orgies or anything.”
“People hide all kinds of things,” I say, and bitterness tinges my voice. But at least in the social aspect, he sounds like the opposite of me, the opposite of Dalton. My circle was wide and full until I let Dalton make it small and sparse.
“True—people hide all sorts,” Tamiko agrees. “But it’s a lot harder to keep that completely hidden when you’re superfamous. I haven’t heard a thing about Logan Bishop—other than that he’s a bit grumpy—even on the whisper network.”
I peer at his frozen face on the oversized screen. His playoff beard makes him look older than the other interviews we watched where he’s clean shaven. Either way, he’s ruggedly handsome. Manly in a way that I don’t usually find appealing. He doesn’t seem uncomfortable in his skin—just in the spotlight. His dark hair is sweaty, overly long, and messy. But in every interview, it’s his eyes that snatch and hold my attention. There’s something in their hazel depths that seems worn out, a bit jaded, and a string inside me tugs with recognition. Isn’t that how I’ve felt lately too? Jaded. A bit done with it all. Except he’s not bothering to hide any of it.
“The team officially moves in a few weeks?” I pull up the calendar on the screen. After almost a year of King Alexander and my dad trying to convince me to become part of their impending ice hockey dynasty, I finally agreed the dayafterI ditched Dalton. One last giant “fuck you” to my former boyfriend, but I’m not sure if I’ve really just fucked myself instead.
“The team arrives on the island in two weeks. King Alexander bringing an arena to Bellerive, and an ice hockey team to the island, is a pretty gigantic grand gesture to his Canadian wife.”
“She used to be a figure skater, you know,” I say.
“I’ve heard he’s trying to lure skaters to the island and build a program for that too. When you’re a king, why not build whatever your wife’s heart desires?”
“Almost unlimited money doesn’t hurt,” I say.
“Having Tucker money in his back pocket didn’t hurt either,” she says with a wink.
“Billionaire buddies,” I say, trying not to seem bitter about having money.
