‘And do you regret not doing so earlier?’ Ashlyn says with a salacious grin.
Harmony bites her lip. ‘Let’s just say it was worth the wait. And then some.’
Everybody squeals. A few of the girls punch the air. A weight lifts from my shoulders.
‘Anybody else sleeping with a football player?’ Jewel laughs. I give her a look of apology, but she squeezes my shoulders.
‘I might have something,’ Angel says. ‘I mean, if we’re sharing.’
The room quietens. All eyes go to Angel, mostly in surprise at where she might go with this, except she’s glancing at Shawny. Shawny flushes an uncharacteristic shade of pink, and there’s something in their shared look.
‘By that I mean,we,’ Angel adds.
Shawny smiles knowingly at Angel. Angel blows her a kiss and I gasp.
‘I mean, the contract says we can’t fraternize with the players, right?’ Shawny says with a shrug. ‘There’s nothing about us not fooling around with each other.’
It’s the first time I’ve seen her embarrassed about anything. Once the room has gotten over the latest revelation, Solana shrieks, ‘Oh my god, are you guys actually acouple?’
Shawny rolls her eyes. ‘I mean… we’re practically living together.’
‘You see, this is exactly what I mean,’ Harmony says, before anyone else can ask questions, and she’s back on her feet, next to me and Jewel. ‘We are a sisterhood. We stand up for one another. We have one another’s backs. And hey, some of us more than others. But we didn’t stand up for Persia. Or Mona. And I’ll be damned if we’re gonna sit on our asses this time around and watch Serenity lose her place on this squad. I say we take a stand. We show Samantha Conway and Kathleen we mean business. That we don’t get paid so little to get treated like infants or stand accused of things we categorically did not do.’ She points to each face in turn, looking hopefully up at her. ‘You come after one of us, you come afterallof us. Now, who is with me?’
Almost every female in the room raises her hand. Everyone except Ashlyn.
Ashlyn says, ‘Harm. I love you. You know I do. We joined as rookies together. But… and I know I keep saying this, but you know what we signed up for.’
‘What do you stand for Ash?’ Harmony fires back. ‘Are we not in this together? Are we just window-dressing… here to make everybody else look good, for no money I might add, while our medial hamstrings are slowly shot to hell? What are we, if we’re not a team? Are we just gonna stand here and watch our own backs?’
Ashlyn watches Harmony for a moment, as though digesting her words. She swallows. Slowly, she nods her head. ‘Alright, I’m in. So… what is the plan exactly?’
‘I got an idea,’ Jewel says as her hand shoots into the air.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Jake
Samantha Conway is talking about something.
I’m not even listening. Monday afternoon, sitting on the opposite side of a conference table from her and I’m trying to curtail the rage that’s swirling deep in my gut. Rage that’s been there since Dalton pulled me over, still on the field in the final moments of the fourth quarter, the Titans defense weary from the pounding they just took, and told me that Serenity had been fired.
Brody Conway couldn’t resist, and he threw her under a bus.
It had felt good there, for a brief second, still inside the stadium after the win, thinking Serenity and I might just have gotten away with it. But then there I was, on the sideline at forty yards, smashing my helmet to the ground, for which the NFL has slapped me with a violation for unsportsmanlike conduct.
The team flew back from Tennessee this morning. Now I’m in a conference room at the Danube, flanked by Dalton on my left, Harmony Rees to my right, and facing off with Samantha Conway, Kathleen Lafferty and Coach Holland.
‘The matter will be handled internally,’ Sam Conway is saying. She’s trying her darndest to be civil, because she knows I’m the reason we beat the Titans by the margin that we did, and the Mutineers can’t afford to have me giving anything less than my best right now if we wanna make the playoffs. ‘Since you have not broken any terms of your contract, you will be given a small fine, and we will leave it at that. Miss Harper has resigned her position—’
‘You fired her,’ I interrupt in a low growl. ‘You fired her personally and you had her remove her uniform in your presence. You demeaned her on purpose, and because you knew you could, and she was helpless to do anything about it.’
She levels her eyes on me. ‘Mr Walsh. Would you speak to my father in that way?’
‘I would if he’d had the balls to show up to this meeting, yes. As I would your son. But he seems to have been conveniently removed from this picture, when you know, whether you’re prepared to admit it or not, that he was your so-called anonymous sender, and that he was the one continuously harassing Serenity these past few weeks. How hard did you have to beg the Jaguars to give him a job?’
She might not be squirming on the outside, but I can see it in her face. ‘My son is going to Florida to gain valuable experience—’
I open my mouth to make a cutting remark, because I’m through with her grinding my gears, but Dalton interrupts me, loudly clearing his throat, to ensure that I don’t. We agreed before this meeting took place that it wasn’t a good idea for me personally to burn too many bridges, and not just because I’m signed with the team for the next four years.
