Warning Track (Callahan Family #1) - Carrie Aarons Page 0,40
couch. When his wife and two daughters attend every game to support him. I can’t stand him, and a lot of our other teammates can’t either. Walker bares his teeth each time the guy walks into the locker room.
“That’s enough,” I deadpan at Shane, and then address the room. “She was on the East Coast and we reconnected. That’s all you gossip columnists need to know.”
Half the guys mutter that I’m being an asshole, and the other half just lope off, disappointed not to get the dirty details. Walker is still seated next to me, and he’s smirking.
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re playing a very skilled game of PR right now.” He wraps the end of his bat in red tape, the same color as the Pistons’ uniforms.
I grin back. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Except that I do. My agent thought it might be good to do some damage control, even if the moves we make are subtle. Which is why I invited my ex to the game tonight, and she’s sitting in the family section as we speak.
Marlena is a pretty well-known model, someone I dated about a year and a half ago back in Los Angeles. We were together for a few months, though it wasn’t serious, and most of the time one or both of us was traveling.
It took some persuading to get her out to Packton, but once I promised some press coverage of it, she relented. Marlena had made some poorly worded comments a month ago about Judaism and the holocaust. I was completely disgusted by them, but if she could use me for some good publicity, I could play the game right back.
And right now, Colleen could not afford another scandal on her head. Still reeling from the blowback of her father’s decisions, she was being questioned left and right. After I stood up for her at the press conference, it turned some heads, but not enough to make any solid assumptions. The attempted assault, however, had brought a media storm to her doorstep.
Fate seemed to have intervened that night, leaving me as the last player to be seen by the trainer. That snowballed into me being the last in the showers, and then the last to leave the stadium. I was the one who came upon those two vile men trying to …
I shiver just thinking about what they would have done to her if I hadn’t fought them off. After I made her report the attack to the police, the report became public knowledge, and had pinged on some journalist’s radar. They picked up the story immediately, and it had burned us up in its wildfire.
Rumors were flying everywhere about Colleen and me. That we were dating, that she was giving me favors just like her father did, that I was breaking my “oath” not to get married before I left the league. The most disgusting one I heard was that I had just been biding my time to fuck my way into the right family, and that was why I had helped Colleen. There was also speculation that the two men who assaulted her could take me to court for battery and request a very hefty payout. If that ends up happening, I’ll have my lawyers hang those two by their balls.
She doesn’t need any of that shit troubling her mind. Not after the thing she just survived. I still can’t get her look of panic and utter desperation out of my head. How she dug her nails into my arms so hard that I bled, holding onto me for dear life as if those two pieces of shit could come back and take her from me.
If pretending to see an ex-girlfriend, and create some gossip by having her sit in the family suite with my tickets, helps Colleen have a marginal amount of peace, then I’ll do it.
Pretty soon, I’m wrapped up in the energy of the game, with no time to stop and dwell on the publicity stunt I’m pulling or to worry about Colleen. We’re playing our rivals, the Carolina Titans, and they’re just a game back on us in the division. With every inch of ground, base stolen, run earned, they’re just a hair above us. The team can’t seem to keep pace with our enemies, and by the end of the game, we’ve lost by three runs and I’m both furious and exhausted.