Now Or Never by Stella Rhys

39

IAIN

Three Weeks Later

“You’re askingif you can quote me on that?” Drew said incredulously with his ear pods in and his phone resting on my coffee table beside him. “Dude. Yes. I’m giving you an exclusive interview. I appreciate your consideration, but just because I’m saying crazy shit doesn’t mean I don’t want you to publish it. Publish that shit.”

Even in my state, I had to snort at the scene that was currently playing out with him in my living room.

He was stretched out on my couch this morning with Kai sitting on his chest, playing with a stuffed shark toy. It was his one day off for the month of August and he was spending it a floor down in my apartment, doing what he’d been so vigilantly doing for the past three weeks—serving as a one-man PR campaign for Iain Thorn.

Which was admittedly necessary after I dropped Shane Watt outside a downtown sports bar.

I knew well that I was going to make the news.

After all, I was more than familiar with sports scandals. I’d handled plenty on behalf of my clients. Put out hundreds of fires over the course of the years. I knew how the media cycle worked.

But even I was surprised by how long this scandal lasted.

How incredibly big it got.

Then again, I could admit that it was a hell of a storyline.

Once a hero, I was now the perfect villain.

I’d been written up in Sports Illustrated, GQ for my miraculous ability to manage the most unmanageable athletes. After all, I was the straight-laced hard-ass who turned Drew Maddox from blacklisted hothead disaster to MVP champion and beloved family man. I had a sterling reputation. One for keeping my clients out of trouble.

And yet I’d snapped three weeks ago and sunk my fist into my own client’s face.

Not the best optics to begin with.

But Watt, of course, made it worse.

I knew it had been a hard hit. I definitely didn’t doubt that it hurt. Of course, Watt made it his mission to play it the hell up for the media.

Watt Fears Setback For Return.

Watt to Undergo X-Ray For Orbital Fracture.

It was a bullshit headline. And a media trick I knew all too well. I hadn’t hit Shane Watt anywhere near his eye. His biggest injury was a severely bruised ego, not a goddamned orbital fracture. But once the headline was printed, the word was out, and by the time it was disproved, it was already long in everyone’s minds.

For people who didn’t follow the game that closely, it looked like I had singlehandedly put Watt on the injured list. That he hadn’t already been there. That I’d endangered my own client’s career.

Forget Iain Thorn’s brilliant track record as one of the best in the industry. The man can negotiate a whopping contract, that’s for sure. But good luck getting your next one when you’re riddled with career-threatening injuries—caused by your own damned agent.

A retired star had written that particular bit. Shortly after, Watt’s X-Ray came back negative, but by then it was too late.

Player statements had already come out. Statements about how in this league, they needed to stand together.

I’ve had nothing but excellent experiences with Iain Thorn as my agent, but due to the events that transpired between Mr. Thorn and my friend Shane Watt, I’ve made the decision to sever ties with Thorn Sports and Entertainment, and I encourage my fellow players to do the same.

Somehow, I only expected a few to leave.

But in the end, more than half did.

It took the first big star pulling the trigger, but then one by one, players dropped me. Clients called me at all hours, apologizing profusely, saying it was entirely to do with optics. That they felt pressured.

They wished they didn’t have to.

But they did.

And it was at that point that new life was breathed into the scandal. It had died down after the first week, but my official fall from grace gave it a robust second wind.

One that caused Holland’s resolve to waver.

We’d been particularly strong together in the first forty-eight hours after the story hit the news. It helped that we avoided reading anything. My agency had hired a specialized PR firm within hours of the incident. We were told to lay low while they worked on a statement. Building my case. Getting security footage from the bar.

In fairness, I hadn’t acted first. Watt had yanked Holland down so hard she’d scraped a raw line up her leg, and I still wanted to kill the motherfucker when I thought about that. Still balled my fists when I thought about the look of fear I’d caught in Holland’s eyes, the wince of pain she felt from the fall before she flipped a switch and forced herself to be strong for me.

That night, during the ride home, she’d ignored everything else she was feeling to hold my shaking hands, rub my arms, cup my face. She told me on repeat thank you and I love you. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry that happened. But everything’s going to be okay. I’m going to make sure of it,” she had whispered in the backseat of the car.

And for the next three days, I worked from home because my office wasn’t a place for me to be. Not until the media circus died down. And in some ways, it felt like some kind of treat for me. Waiting for 6PM every day. My heart lifting when I heard Holland coming home to me after work, and my soul warming when she dropped her purse to the floor and wrapped her arms around my neck to kiss me.

It was a preview of the life I never thought I would want.

The life I now knew that I needed. Scandal or not.

And I’d done my best to tell Holland that every night. To tell her that we were going to get through this. That things would blow over.

But then my clients left. We found out the bar had no security cameras outside. The story grew with a life of its own.

Then Engelman canceled the merger.

She’d heard me raising my voice in my office that day. Locked in there for hours trying in vain to do damage control.

And days later, she left me the letter on my kitchen counter where I was sitting now, drifting in and out of my thoughts. And of course, having my conscience repeatedly pierced through by the sound of Drew’s voice.

He was playing two roles right now—that of world’s best dad and my loyal client as he grinned wide, fighting his own toy shark against Kai’s while continuing to give his seamless interview.

“Look, I’m not going to speak to the personal issues Watt is going through right now,” he said—clearly to remind this reporter about the personal issues Watt was going through right now. “But you all know that Iain Thorn turned my life around. He introduced me to my wife. He made me the man and the player I am today, and you guys are going to negate all that with one swing? You guys vilified me because I was a piece of shit for a solid six to eight years. If Iain Thorn keeps dropping haymakers on clients for another six to eight years, drag him all you want, but one punch? Come the fuck on,” he said, covering Kai’s ears. “And you can quote me on that.”

I eyed Drew, at least managing to appreciate how dramatically the tables had turned. Years ago, I was the lone agent who agreed to represent him after his own scandal. Now he was one of few clients left standing by me. Fighting for me just as hard as I’d fought for him.

“Well. At least we can both agree now that the media is one giant howling trash fire,” Drew said as soon as he hung up. Fixing Kai’s socks, he turned to me. “So any new leads?” he asked, referring to what I’d been spending my entire past ten days on.

While he had been working on my reputation, I’d been working to track down Holland.

Because ten days ago, despite the fact that we had had breakfast as usual, I’d sensed something was off. She had smiled for me, looked me in the eyes, kissed me the way she always kissed me—like she’d been waiting her whole life to.

But when she left for work that morning, I felt something strange tugging at my heart.

And when I went to my office, I found a piece of paper from her trusty notebook sitting on my desk, with Holland’s note to me written neatly on it.

In short, she said she was going to give me space to think.

To breathe.

I promise this is temporary. But I can’t let you go through something as big as this and worry about comforting me at the same time. Protecting me the way you always do. As long as I’m near, your first priority is looking out for me. That’s how it’s always been and how you’re always going to be.

But right now you have to look out for you.

You’ve worked so hard for so long and you can’t save yourself when your concern is only with me.

I love you more than anything.

I just want to give you the time alone that you need right now, and the chance to figure things out. Because you deserve to be happy.

It had knocked the air from my lungs that morning.

Made me rush to immediately call her. Adam. A.J. But Holland didn’t answer and Adam and A.J were in the dark.

So I went to the offices of Minx, but she wasn’t there. “Oh, she isn’t going to be here for awhile,” the person at the front told me vaguely.

I went immediately to her apartment after, where I found only Mia, who told me nothing more than what Holland had. That she knew this was only temporary. She even let me look at Holland’s room. Everything was still there. The bed. Her furniture. Her vision board.

But in her closet, half her clothes were gone and gone were all the notebooks on her desk, which told me that wherever she was, she planned on being there for a fair amount of time.

For longer than I could stand.

It had shocked me that day.

Left me completely fucking stunned.

Though I considered that night that perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised. She was always preaching “me time.” Doing things to take care of myself. And as blindsided as I was, I could understand in some way. Because regardless of the reason why I started my career in New York, it was still something I prized. Something I took immense pride in. I had poured years upon years of my soul into my work. And I genuinely enjoyed accomplishing the things that I did. Breaking league records. Saving Drew’s career. Even if it started for the purpose of burying the demon, this was the life I’d worked tooth and nail to build, so in some way, I saw Holland’s point. Her desire to give me space to figure out what I really wanted without being swayed by my instinctive need to protect her.

I could understand it, yes.

But did I need it?

Fuck no.

Not a single thread of my soul had wavered the day I dropped Watt outside that bar. Not a single thread had wavered the day after, the week after or any minute between the start of this scandal and where I was now.

Holland Maxwell was the woman I wanted to be with for the rest of my life.

And as torn apart as I had been when she left, I wasn’t remotely worried right now. Because I had meant what I said to her brother a little over three weeks ago, the day he found out about us.

I would go anywhere for Holland.

I would stop at nothing to make her happy, to make her mine forever, and it didn’t matter where she was now.

Because I was going to find her.

“I mean there’s gotta be a way to get information out of the roommate,” Drew said for the tenth time.

“I think you underestimate the laws of girl code.”

“Trust me, I do not. My wife has a best friend too, and I’m well aware of how it goes,” Drew snorted, referring to our friend Emmett’s wife, Aly. “I’m just saying maybe you can Jedi mind-trick the roommate into telling you something useful, because she’s the only one who knows anything, and without her telling you shit, you’re going to have to become a mindreader.”

I paused, looking up from Holland’s letter in my hand to stare at Drew from where I sat in the kitchen. Because I knew he’d made his last comment to be a smart ass, but it had just given me a small epiphany. No, I wasn’t a mindreader.

But I’d always been able to read Holland.

To know what she was thinking.

I knew her in a way that no one else did, and now that I’d confirmed Adam and A.J were as in the dark as I was—that Mia wasn’t going to betray Holland’s trust—I could take the time to use my own brain. To rely on the skill I’d had since knowing Holland.

That I’d recently sharpened once again.

“Look, Kai! What’s that?” Drew faked a gasp, using his excited dad voice as he picked up Kai and turned him to face me. “You know what that’s called, buddy?” He bounced a laughing Kai as he grinned at me. “That’s called a breakthrough.”

And as much as I didn’t want to, I had to grin back, shaking my head at Drew and his endless ability to give me shit. But as much of an asshole as he was, I couldn’t hold it against him.

But he was spot on.