Monaghan Dates Amputee– Proves He’s the Real Golden Boy
Will Monaghan’s Game Be Affected by His Demanding Girlfriend?
The media buzzguaranteed me hot tea every morning, either at my apartment or Cage’s house, compliments of Flint Hopkins.
“The nanny. You have to stay the hell away from the nanny!” Flint barged past Cage at the front door, making a beeline to me in Cage’s kitchen. Normally he handed me my tea; that day he slammed it on the counter.
I spread chocolate hazelnut butter on my toaster waffles, wearing nothing but Cage’s white T-shirt and a grin. “Good morning, Flint. It’s Sunday. Don’t you ever take a day off?”
Just as I started to turn toward Flint, my protective lover held out a white terrycloth robe that I may or may not have taken from a hotel. I slid my arms in and Cage tied the front ashe kissed me.
“I’m going for a run. Shower with me when I get back?” he whispered.
I squeezed my legs together and nodded.
Cage pointed a stiff finger at Flint as he passed him. “Upset her and you’re fired.”
Flint rolled his eyes, and so did I. It had become Cage’s daily motto. I knew Flint’s number one priority was protecting Cage’s reputation. He knew I didn’t give a shit about the headlines and pictures. We had a whole routine: Cage left, we did our usual verbal sparring, then plastered on smiles when our boy returned.
“I’m serious this time. Training camp starts in two weeks. The media is on high alert for absofuckinglutely any morsel of dirt they can run with.” Flint jabbed his finger at a printed page of social media posts, newspaper headlines, and photos of me and Jamie with Shayna. The headlines all read “Secret Affair.”
I watched Cage’s truck pull out of the driveway. He liked to find a lake path to jog around for an hour or so in the mornings.
“Shayna’s like a daughter to me. Jamie is her nanny. Sometimes I hang out with them when I have free time. Everson knows. Cage knows. What’s the big deal? Shayna is always with us. He’s worked for Everson for like… two seconds, hardly enough time for a scandalous affair. I’ve never even been alone with Jamie since I interviewed him.”
“Do you see Shayna in any of these pictures?”
I looked at the pictures. She wasn’t in any of them.
Jamie and me on a park bench, laughing.
Jamie and me eating ice cream.
Jamie taking a bag from my shoulder, Shayna’s bag, but it did look intimate.
I frowned. Shayna was right there, sitting beside me while we ate ice cream. She was walking next to Jamie when he took the bag. She was playing on the playground maybe ten yards away when we were laughing on the bench—probably about something goofy Shayna did. But she wasn’tinany of the pictures.
“The tabloids said I was having an affair with Thaddeus last week because we were photographed having dinner when I flew out to San Francisco.”
“He’s your boss. That’s easy to explain.”
“So, Jamie is Shayna’s nanny.”
“But Shayna isn’t your daughter or sister or anything that’s easy to explain. That’s why she’s not in the photos, because people don’t care about her. They care about the woman who took one of the most eligible bachelors off the market. They want to know that you’re worthy of him, and if for one second they think you’re not, then they’re going to tear you apart because there are thousands of other women out there who’d love to have the chance that you’ve been given.”
My head jerked back. “Excuse me? ‘The chance I’ve been given?’ Like my name was drawn out of a hat to be Cage Monaghan’s girlfriend?”
Flint blew out a long breath. “I know it seems like my intentions are just to keep Cage’s reputation squeaky clean, but you don’t understand the impact this will have on your relationship with him, especially when the season starts and he’s under twenty-four hour scrutiny of the media. The line between the truth and the lies begins to blur and doubt creeps in. He looks at this photo and starts to wonder. You see aphoto of some girl’s hand on his ass before he has time to remove it and you start to wonder.
“You’re both young. Your relationship is in its infancy. Under perfectly normal, non-celebrity conditions it’s hard to make it work. This…” He shook his head. “This will destroy you if you’re not proactive about keeping things simple.”
Would that be my life forever? Tiptoeing around, worrying about finding clarity with that line between the truth and the lies? Was that why Cage wanted to give it up?
CAGE
I neededto pound the hell out of the blacktop beneath my feet. I needed my lungs to burn. I needed something to erase the worry in my head. Flint did my worrying. He did my fixing. He did the shit jobs so I could focus on my career. But Lake wasn’t my career. She was my… everything.
Could I play professional football and have everything?
