Page 24 of Making the Save
“Stopped it,” I repeated. What else did he need to know?
Syd explained the Port-a-Potty.
“Okay, so we need to see if there is video of that happening,” Tyler said, stroking his eyebrow. “But that could feed into our story of you already being a couple. Jealous boyfriend and all that. The teammate, he’ll keep his mouth closed?”
“Of course,” I said. Hadn’t this guy ever been on a team before?
“And then what?” Tyler asked, and Syd explained the afternoon at the pool.
“What about the hotel staff?” Tyler asked. “Do you think it was obvious to the servers, bartenders, anybody waiting on you, that this was the first time you’d met?”
I shrugged.
“Not helpful,” he said. “Sydney?”
“We spent most of our time on floaties in the middle of the pool,” she said. “It was nice. Nobody bothered us and we just…floated.”
It had been nice. Real nice. I’d been buzzed, relaxed. Not thinking about Liam, the team, potential future retirement, my grieving dad.
Nick, the mysterious other brother.
I knew there wasn’t anything I could do about Nick’s past. There wasn’t anything I could do to fix what had happened to him or what he suffered. I could only move forward with the relationship.
Still, it ate me up inside. For years, while I was growing up with the best dad a kid could have, he was getting the shit beat out of him by his.
But Syd was right. It was just us on some floats, feeling good. Talking about everything and nothing. I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt that free. Like all that messy shit was far away.
It was probably why neither one of us had wanted the day to end.
She’d about dropped me to my knees when she walked outside the hotel in her barely there white bikini.
But there was this… and it sounds crazy in my head, given that she was a smoking hot twenty-something global pop star… innocence about her.
She’d blush and blink when I complimented her. She’d reach for my arm, but then pull her hand away when I noticed. She did not like physical compliments. But she beamed when I told her that my favorite song of hers was Backroads.
“And after,” Tyler said with a snap that brought me back to the present. “At the club?”
“We danced,” I said. “We drank. We didn’t really talk to anyone there.”
“Hmm. Videos have surfaced. It looks like,” he rolled his eyes. “New love, I suppose. Like you couldn’t keep your hands off each other.” He cast a very dark look at Syd and I curled my handinto a fist just in case he said the S word. “I think we can work with this. Which makes our next steps obvious.”
“I can’t wait,” I muttered, and Syd, who’d been so tense since the second Tyler walked in, relaxed enough to laugh at my lame joke.
“A sit down,” Tyler announced.
“A what now?”
“A sit down with Tricia Yonish.”
Sydney flinched.
“You know you have to,” Tyler said, like he didn’t care about Sydney’s reaction.
“She doesn’thaveto do anything she doesn’t want to,” I said. “Do I need to remind everyone no actual laws were broken?”
“Really, Wyatt, it’s okay.” She touched my wrist. It felt like a butterfly had landed on my skin. “I don’t have the best opinion of Tricia. She’s a bit ruthless, but that’s probably what we need right now.”
“Excellent,” Tyler clapped. “I’ve already arranged it. She’ll be here at eleven am sharp. Be ready for makeup by ten.”