“You know what would really make me feel better right now?”
“Oh God,” she says with a playful eyeroll. “What?”
“Eating your pussy.”
“Tristan!”
“You think I’m joking, Smith?” he says, standing up with her in his arms as if she’s a feather. “The only place I wanna be right now is between your legs.”
How could she argue with that?
“Thanks for meeting with me,” Tessa says to Tristan’s lawyer, Steven Pearlman, through her computer screen. “I know it’s coming out of nowhere.”
“I’m shocked,” his thick New York accent fills the room, reminding Tessa of the life she has waiting for her when this assignment is over, but she shakes the dreadful thought out of her head and refocuses at the task at hand. “Tristan would be the last person I would expect this from.”
“He swears it’s not true,” Tessa states, folding her arms across her desk. “And I believe him.”
“Mmm, yes but his word doesn’t hold a lot of merit in a situation like this.”
“Is there anything that would cause a false positive? Any way a test could be tampered with? Or tests with another teammate mixed up?Anything?”
“Well…”
She waits anxiously, holding her breath and clenching her jaw as she awaits his answer. She 100% believes Tristan, that’s not the issue, the issue is that she doesn’t feel very hopeful that he’ll be able to get around what the test said.
“Sure there are,” he says. “The problem is that he likely won’t be able to prove it. A false positive could be as simple as his protein powder being contaminated in the lab, this isn’t unheard of, but could heprovethat the contamination happened in the lab, and that he wasn’t the one to mix it into the power? Do you see what I’m saying?”
Tessa nodded her head and let out a long sigh.
“We could even go as far as to say someone intentionally tampered with his test, but he’d still need to prove that with irrefutable evidence. In my opinion, Miss Smith, it’s best if he just lay low and let this blow over and continue playing when the suspension is over.”
“This is about to hit the press, though,” Tessa said, her stomach tightening with dread. “It’s going to crush him.”
“All I can say is support him through it. Great athletes just like him have been through something similar or worse.”
“There has to be an explanation for this,” she whispers, shaking her head, the harsh reality that the man she loves is being falsely accused of something is – woah….loves?
“If you figure anything out, let me know,” Steven’s voice brings her back to reality, and she quickly nods her head. “I will. Thank you again.”
She slams her laptop shut and bites on her nails anxiously. There are so many thoughts swirling around in her brain. Did she just admit to herself that she loves Tristan? And let’s be honest, did that ever really go away? Also, something was itching the back of her brain screaming at her to dig deeper into this issue, that something about it wasn’t quite right.
She decides to push all of her thoughts aside and leave her office and head towards the practice field, eager to get her eyes on him. She’s been cooped up all day either worrying about Tristan or organizing her interviews for the article, and her tired body craved to be near him, even if it was just from afar.
She wore flats today, making her ability to sneak around the corner much easier, and she spotted him immediately, all suited up in his football gear, looking impossibly strong, solid, and just downright athletic.
But even from here, even with all of his padding and his helmet on, he looked dejected, and that made her heart break even more than it already was.
“Fuck,” she whispered to herself. “I have to figure this out.”
Tristan had his own ways of being protective over Tessa. That usually came out with violence, aggression, or showboating, but Tessa was just as protective and possessive over him. And something in that part of her was unrelenting and nagging –take care of this for him, figure this out, find out who is responsible.
CHAPTER 18
A week had passed with no progress on figuring out how Tristan tested positive for performance enhancing drugs, and what made it worse, is that he had to sit out for a game against the Bronco’s in which the Titans suffered a humiliating loss. Tessa traveled with the team for that game even though she was not required to, but she knew that Tristan needed her. He beat himself up for at least 24 hours after the game, not speaking at all for almost as long.
Tessa had only seen Tristan after a loss during their time at Vanderbilt once or twice, but she remembered it being brutal and him always taking it hard, even if he himself had a good game. Adding the shame that he was carrying on his shoulders about the news of his suspension and positive drug test being all over the news, she knew this loss was particularly hard for him.
“Jordan and Katie are flying in tomorrow afternoon,” Tristan said over a morning cup of coffee with Tessa.
