Page 152 of Colliding with Ten

“It’s not that kind of party, Ayla. Get yo’ mind out the gutta.”

I gave him a chuckle and a small hug before he walked me out. I stood in the hallway, not knowing where to go. My brother’s apartment was off-limits. My career was in pieces. My name was attached to a scandal, and the one person who could remind me I wasn’t alone was three thousand miles away.

I had nowhere to go.

36

PERSONAL PROTECTOR

LENNOX

Ikept my phone off for the flight home. When the plane landed at LAX after nine, I braced to power it back on. The story of my concussion symptoms flaring and why I left the game early wouldn’t work forever. The screen loaded. Notifications came in—dozens of texts, missed calls, voicemails, news alerts, and social media tags.

I swallowed and opened Jace's first text.

Bro. Call me. Now.

The other was sent twenty minutes later.

Lennox. I need you to call me before you look at anything else.

It was too late; I was already looking. The photos were everywhere. Every sports site, social media platform, gossip blog, and aggregator that lived on drama and the destruction of people’s private lives was displaying images of Ayla and me outside my house. In every frame, we looked like what we were.

The headlines made it seem like a major story. Then it got worse. Some articles built a narrative of insider information and competitive espionage without a shred of evidence. But the evidence didn’t matter if the story sold papers. Jesus. They were throwing her under the bus.

My stomach dropped.

Ayla had walked into AJ’s apartment, about to tell her brother the truth, except the truth had beaten her there. These photos dropped before she landed, so AJ and the team knew. Everyone knew.

I called her, but it went straight to voicemail. She should have been reachable by now. I called again and got her voicemail. I sat in the aircraft for another twenty minutes with the phone in my hand, dread pooling in my gut.

The paparazzi were parked across the street from my house when I got home. I ignored them and walked to my front door. It had been repaired with new hinges and a frame. I wondered who was responsible. I turned the knob, pushed the door open, and stepped inside.

The foyer was clean, but signs of damage remained. I heard a sound from the living room and stopped. After yesterday, I was done. I opened the entry closet, reached past the coats, and pulled out the baseball bat I kept there—a thirty-four-inch Louisville Slugger. I’d never used it for baseball, but I gripped it with both hands and headed down the hallway. No one should feel powerless in their own home.

I rounded the corner into the living room. Jace was on the couch, feet up on my ottoman, TV remote in hand. He was watching a cooking competition, relaxed, like he’d been there for hours.

He looked up at me, then at the bat, raising an eyebrow. “You gonna hit me with that?”

I lowered it, pressing my free hand against the wall, letting my heart rate come down. “What are you doing in my house, Jace? I could have killed you.”

He muted the TV and stood. We met in the middle of the room and did the handshake-pull-half-hug that served as the universal language between men who cared about each other but would never say so with complete sentences.

“I came to check on you.” Jace stepped back. “I found your parents here, and they told me everything.”

So he knew the real story, not the concussion BS that the team made up. “I would’ve told you.”

“I know. That’s not why I’m here.” He sat back down and gestured for me to do the same. “I sent your parents home. Your mom was trying to clean, and your dad was pacing. Between the two of them, I wasn’t sure they wouldn’t spark a fire with the amount of energy they had. I told them I’d handle it.”

I looked around. The rooms were clean and still smelled of cleaning solution. The broken lamp was gone, the coffee table back in place. Someone had patched the hallway drywall, leaving the art I thought was ruined leaning against the wall with a note from the cleaning service suggesting a frame repair shop.

“I hired a crew. They came in today and salvaged everything they could. I replaced the bedroom door too. Here are the keys to everything.”

He handed me a new set of keys, and I sat down. The couch felt strange. The whole space did, like someone had moved all the furniture two inches to the left.

“Thank you.”

“Also, I went into your fridge.”