“And we could have hotel sex?”
“As often as you wanted.”
“Mm.” She pursed her lips and nodded, hard. “Would I get to see a game?”
“We could plan it so Fiona and Michelle come too, so yes, you could come to a game with them?”
“Oh, I like those ladies.” She hummed for a second before staring at me straight through the phone. “You want me there?”
“Fuck, Sarah. Yes. I really do.”
“Okay. We’ll make it happen when Mr. Alexandre gets back.”
Her answer helped ease the growing anxiety from the incident downstairs, but it shot back up when Charles sent me a text and the notification interrupted the momentary distraction of Sarah.
Charles: CALL ME
“Fuck,” I said, already feeling the throbbing of a headache coming on. “Charles needs me to call him.”
“Maybe it’s good news. You don’t know.”
“Let’s hope. I should call him. I’m sorry, Blue. I’d rather talk to you all night.”
“I know, me too, but call him and get some rest. It’s much later there.” Her voice was soft and kind and I wanted to fall asleep talking to her. But my life didn’t provide that option. “Talk to you tomorrow?”
“I’ll definitely need my Blue fix.”
“Charmer. You’re dangerous. Go call Charles. Goodnight, Brigham.”
I hung up, braced myself, and dialed his number. One ring. That was all it took.
“What the fuck, Brigham?”
Fear paralyzed me. I wasn’t sure I could even breathe until he explained his comment.
“Drinking? Chicks wearing almost nothing? I thought your blue-haired chick was stopping you from doing this? Fuck, man.” He groaned and panic surged through me to the point my hands shook. “I don’t know how to spin this.”
“What?” I said, my voice above a whisper.
“I have a fucking Google alert on your ass so I see when news breaks. Pictures are out. Beer bottles and skanky chicks. Tits in your face. Same ole party boy.”
“I don’t…No. There was none of that. Thirty seconds of fans trying to get a picture with us, but we turned them away.”
“Doesn’t matter what actually happened, Monaghan. You know that more than anyone. The picture makes the truth irrelevant. I’m sending the photo to you now. We need a fucking plan, because this will be the final fucking straw.”
My phone buzzed and all the blood left my face at the image.
Charles wasn’t kidding. It looked bad. Worse than bad. Horrific. The woman’s body was positioned just right so it looked like I was staring down her dress.
“Charles, this isn’t…the photo is staged. I didn’t even see them take a photo.”
He didn’t respond and I wanted to slam my phone through the window.Why does this happen, again?I’d done the right thing. I’d said no. My eyes stung and I had no warning before I threw up in a shitty metal trash can by the desk.
“We need something. Anything. A comment about the falseness. Photos of you and blue hair. This might be the final straw, Brigs.”
“I’ll send you everything I have.” I scrolled through my photos in a wild desperation. I had so many of Sarah and me. Maybe it would help, maybe it wouldn’t. Twenty pictures of us, of her smiling, the dogs, pictures of me and my sister, some of Gideon, Bummy and me at the rescue event. My brain didn’t compute how they were helpful. “Do we need to hire a publicist?”
“Too late, Brigham. At this point… Not sure what they would do.” His tone had a dangerous tremor, one that sent my worries into an even deeper part of my brain. “Stay in your hotel room. Play great the next three days. Don’t be a fucking idiot.”
