“Foster, you’re known to be a high-intensity guy. Do you worry you’re the cancer on this team?”
My jaw clenches. “Well, thanks for going for the jugular there. Good thing I’m thick-skinned.”
“I assure you, he’s not,” Hayes interrupts.
“Definitely not,” Easton adds.
Decker says nothing because he probably believes I am the problem when Drew is the one who’s infecting this team.
I hold up my hand toward my teammates. They don’t need to fight my battles. “If my intensity becomes a problem, then it’s not intensity—it’s immaturity. I’m not interested in being that guy. Not here. Not anymore.”
“Last question,” Hayes says.
The same woman who called out Hayes last year about Leighton stands up at the back, and my stomach drops. Her gaze falls to me, then Hayes, and back to me. The cunning smile says she’s about to blow my secret wide open.
I rack my brain for what proof she might have. Who she could have heard it from. What picture got leaked. She always focuses more on players’ personal lives than the game.
“So, Hayes, you and Foster are best friends.”
Hayes looks down the line at me, nods, and flashes me an easy smile. “Yeah.”
Bile rises up my throat. He trusts me and has no idea that I’m about to ruin our friendship.
“So then you must be pretty excited—or are you not, and that’s why there was tension on the mound today?” She turns to me. “Is that why you seem so off, Foster? It’s gotta be stressful, especially for someone with your reputation.”
Hayes looks down the line at me again, frowning.
“Just spit out whatever bullshit you have,” Easton says.
“Fuck, Kodiak,” Decker mumbles.
“Hayes’s sister, the podcaster Callie Carlisle from If I’m Honest?”
My fists lock under the table. Callie’s about to be exposed, and it’s all my fault. I can take the heat, but she shouldn’t have to.
Hayes rocks his head back as though he understands what she’s getting at. “Oh, yeah, she had some landlord problems, so she’s staying with Foster temporarily. Someone catch a picture or something?”
“Temporarily?” The smile hasn’t left her fucking face.
Easton and Decker glance at me, and my teeth grind together. I have no choice but to wait for her to pull the pin on the grenade.
“Yeah.” Hayes looks so certain.
I wish I had some superhero power to freeze time for everyone but him and me. Anything to keep him from being blindsided in the middle of a press conference.
“Well that’s interesting, because a picture was taken of your sister and Foster at an OBGYN office yesterday. Isn’t she pregnant with your best friend’s baby?”
Wentzel steps forward. “And we’re done.”
Boom.
Chapter
Thirty
Callie
* * *
