Tackled (Alpha Ballers #1) (19 page)

Which is exactly what I was going to do. It was what I needed to do. It was all I could do to keep this football dream alive.

I couldn’t really talk to Lily about it. We had avoided each other for few days, only meeting to do our customary interviews, and barely exchanging any words. I tried to open up to her but Lily clearly didn’t want to talk to me anymore.

That hurt really badly, and not just because I would lie awake in my bed each night thinking about having her lips on mine, feeling her boobs in my hand, feeling the way she shook when I pushed my cock into her and made her moan.

I worried about what she thought of me, why she hated me so much all of a sudden.

I had to get those feelings, those memories, out of my head so I could focus on football, but it wasn’t easy. There was only so much time I could focus on the X’s and O’s of the game, so naturally, each time I hit my breaking point for the day, I would wonder what Lily was doing, where she was, whether she was thinking about me.

I missed her greatly.

Finally, on Friday morning, I had had enough of this. The rumor had died down by now, as rumors often do in a near-high school environment. Given how fast information and libel spread, it was just as fast people found something new to talk about and gossip over.

No one was talking about Lily and Bill Thompson anymore, but I wanted to get to the bottom of things. Lily wouldn’t talk to me, and I didn’t dare bring up the subject again, because seeing her run away from me in tears like that on Tuesday afternoon had almost torn my heart out from my chest.

So I went to the next best thing, the horse herself. Lily had mentioned Annie’s name before the stormed off, and it didn’t take more than a little digging to find out that Annie was the source of the rumor in the first place.

After practice on Friday, I walked up to Annie and asked if I could have a word with her.

Annie put on this huge fake smile that I could see coming a mile away. “Of course, sugar, I’ve been just dying to talk to you since I got here, but you’ve always been so busy.” She playfully punched my shoulder like Lily did, only with Lily I actually enjoyed it.

With Annie, none of this was any fun, I realized. “Can we talk?”

“Of course, sugar, let’s go right over here and we’ll have ourselves a little pow-wow.” She smiled and directed me off to one side, and I followed her, finding it easy to avoid staring at her body along the way. The rest of the guys might be way into that, but just by looking at her I could tell already she was definitely not my type.

Not like Lily was.
 

We settled on one corner of the practice field and Annie turned to me, taking our a recorder and turning it on. I shook my head, and she blinked a couple times, not understanding. I pointed at the recorder, and she smiled a little less wide this time and turned it off.

“What’s up, sugar? What can I help you with?” Even her accent sounded fake.

“Tell me about Lily Pearson and Bill Thompson.”

CHAPTER 21 - LILY

After practice ended on Friday I realized that I had had enough of this. I had gone around moping for 3 days now, barely talking to Drake during our interviews, just writing my column and not even saying a word to him or even looking his direction when we weren’t on the practice field.

Ugh. I hated this. And people weren’t even talking about it anymore! Like all shitty and stupid rumors it had died quick, because after the initial phase of “no way, really?” that came with this particularly salacious rumor, everyone realized that oh wait, who gave a shit?

Of course I knew the truth. Of course I knew who had started this rumor. But I couldn’t say anything. If I did, I’d just be the vengeful bitch trying to get back at clean as pure snow Annie Ross for airing my dirty laundry in public.

No, I couldn’t do that. But I could fix things up with Drake. I knew that he didn’t really know me all that well, and I knew that he was just honestly asking if the rumor was true.

It had hurt a lot to see him standing there and looking at me like that, like he was so disappointed in me. Just him thinking that it might even be true was enough for the knife to cut directly into me. I liked him so much, couldn’t stop thinking about him, but I also couldn’t stop replaying him asking me if I had slept with Bill Thompson over and over in my head, with that sincerely hurt look on his face.

I hated how I had acted, but I didn’t know how to fix it. I decided on Friday morning, though, that I would fix it after practice that day. I would talk to Drake before or after our usual post-practice interview and I would apologize for freezing him out like that all week, for acting like he was barely there, just an answer machine for me to ask questions to.

I felt better almost immediately after I decided it, and the rest of the day went so much better just knowing that we would have all this stuff patched up in no time.
 

The weather was gorgeous, the perfect New England summer day, and thankfully the humidity was lower than usual today. I actually heard the players grumble a little less about practice, given that just jogging around today wouldn’t have them covered in sweat.
 

Apparently when you were a giant football player staring at a long regular season and a hopeful deep playoff run, it was the little things like a slightly cooler practice session that mattered the most.

Football players were funny like that.

I even wondered whether Drake might be able to come over tonight after he was done with his other stuff - we could have a nice night in together, and possibly even sleep in in the morning!

Listen to me, the subject of one sleeping around rumor, meanwhile I was trying to setup another rendezvous in my mind! Such a dirty tramp I was!

I laughed to myself as I turned to look for Drake.

Oh.

Oh HELL NO.

What was Drake doing talking to Annie Ross?! He knew what she had done to me, the vile lie she had spread about me!

And now he was talking to her after practice? When he had a regularly scheduled interview with me?

Again, the tears came without warning, but this time I was able to wipe them away. The anger helped. I felt my cheeks get hot, though, and despite my love for journalism, running neck and neck with my love for the New England Patriots, I found myself wanting to be anywhere else than where I was at that very moment, on the practice field, watching my team head back to the locker room after a good practice.

I couldn’t believe that I had let Drake twist me around like this. I should have known that he couldn’t change his ways. He was a skirt-chaser and would be till his dying day. Why had I even thought that I could change him?

Why had I even thought I could get involved with a player on the team I covered? Ugh, I was so stupid. This had to have been one of the dumbest things I had ever done.

And now the best thing I could do, given the situation was try and get myself out of it with a minimum of mess.

I turned and headed toward the entrance to the building where my room was, hoping to get out of sight before another wave of emotions about Drake overtook me.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

As I hurried into the tunnel, thankful to get out of the sun and get some cover over me so no one else could see my distress, I heard footsteps behind me, heavy ones, the sound of cleats on cement. I’d recognize that sound anywhere.

I turned around and pointed, almost without looking at who was there. “Stay away from me, Drake.”

Of course it was Drake following me. I secretly wished it was him, and I was inwardly thrilled that he had, even though I would never, ever, admit that, even on pain of death.
 

At the same time, though, Drake was the last person I wanted to talk to right now. He had some serious explaining to do before I could even stand to be in the same room as him, and that wasn’t even a guarantee. Maybe we could do our daily interviews by email or FaceTime. But audio only, none of that video nonsense.

I didn’t want to see him.

“Lily, what’s wrong? We have an interview, remember?”

What’s wrong? He’s asking me what’s wrong, after who I just saw him talking to? They had probably already hooked up once before. It would be just like Drake Rollins - he had already slept with every other attractive girl on the planet, why not Annie Ross too, while he was at it?

She must have visited Cal last season at least once to cover the Bears steamrolling through the Pac-12, ugh, I meant, Pac-11. It was really tough to wrap my mind around just what had happened to Stanford and the complete destruction of their academics and athletics program. It was almost sad, but then again, couldn’t have happened to a more deserving bunch. At the rate the scandals kept on mounting, their degrees would never be worth the paper they were printed on again.

“Interview for today’s canceled. I’m not feeling well.” Of course I couldn’t tell him what was really bothering me. That would be too normal of me. Ugh again.

“Canceled? We haven’t missed a single one yet, and now you want to cancel? Something’s up.”

I crossed my arms under my chest and shook my head. “Look, I’ve got a headache, maybe you could just email me about today’s practice. You know the standard questions I ask each day.” That was true, our daily interviews had gotten a little stale.
 

Drake was getting better and better at espousing what the media called “The Patriot Way,” in which players completed with each other for new and inventive ways to say absolutely nothing of substance to the reporters covering the team.

It had actually gotten kinda fun trying to get him to say something that the team didn’t program into him. Or, rather, it would have been fun if we were having a normal interview.

Today was anything other than normal, though. Today was the worst.

Drake stepped toward me, holding his arms out. He looked around really quick, like he was checking if someone else was watching us, but no one else was around, and I didn’t notice any prying eyes in the area. He dropped his voice down low. “Lily, what’s wrong? Talk to me.”

“Don’t come any closer, Drake, I don’t want to see you right now.” I couldn’t be around him any longer, and I turned and fled, running back into the building.

Thankfully, my room was close by and I didn’t run into anyone else from the team along the way. I fumbled around with my keys, looking back and forth, crossing my toes that no one would see me, but thankfully I managed to unlock the door, get inside, and close it behind me, sinking to the floor, leaning against it, breathing deep and holding back the sobs just barely.

Here, though, I was safe. I could let it all out. And that’s exactly what I did. I sat there on the floor and cried long and hard.

I didn’t know what caused it, why Annie Ross and her lies bothered me so much. But as I heard a knock on the door I was learning against, I knew what the reason was.
 

It was Drake Rollins. The guy I knew was leaning on the other side of the door. “Lily?” I heard his muffled voice through the hard wood of the door. “Let me in, Lily.”

What was I doing here?

Why did I ever think I could be a sports reporter? What made me think I could survive in this kind of world where people would use personal and private attacks like that?

And why would Annie Ross even do that to me? It’s not like only one of us could cover the Patriots this offseason. There were tons of reporters, local and national, hovering around the team, and would be till the season ended in January or February!

Was it because we were both women? Or because she was jealous of my writing ability? Why did she even have to bother? She was a national TV reporter with ESPN, literally the biggest name in sports journalism. As venerable and respected as the Boston Globe was, compared to ESPN’s reach, it was like playing in the kids’ sandbox.

It just didn’t make any sense why she would come after me like that.

The pounding on the door became rhythmic. “Lily,” Drake’s voice drifted over, “open the door, I’m not going away until you open up the door and tell me what’s wrong.”

He wouldn’t, either. Now that practice was over, besides the dinner bell he had nothing to do all night.

“I even brought my playbook,” he said through the door, clearly using more of that telepathy he was so scarily good at. “I don’t have anywhere else to go, so until you open up and talk to me, I can just study. I got nothing but time.”

Ugh, I sniffed, and I hated in that moment that a smile was very slowly starting to creep across my face. How dare he be so charming when I was trying so very hard to ate him, and right up until that second, I was being really, really successful at it too!

Boys were the worst. They knew just enough to be fascinating and sexy and devilishly handsome and alluring, but not nearly enough to understand how to avoid being stupid. Why girls kept on chasing them made no sense to me, even when I was in the middle of doing so.

This was getting me nowhere. I could keep sitting on the floor leaned up against this door until Drake got tired or broke the door down, or I could get up and confront the problem.

Might as well be a big girl and do the latter. I took my time dusting myself off and wiping my eyes, not bothering to look in the mirror, knowing I’d be horrified at what I might find, then I took a deep breath and stood up.

After I worked out the kinks in my arms and legs, I turned around and put my hand on the door knob, taking another deep breath before I turned the knob and opened the door.

Drake was standing there, right about to knock again, only this time the door wasn’t there anymore. He wasn’t looking, and his hand, not meeting the door as he had carefully planned, landed right on my shoulder as it came down.

“OW!” I yelled, stepping back and almost letting the door close.

Drake whipped his head around to face me. “Oh shit, I’m so sorry, Lily! I didn’t expect that you’d actually open the door! Are you alright?”

I rubbed my sore shoulder, watching the welt form under my bra strap. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll be fine, watch where you’re pointing that thing next time, will ya?”