CHAPTER 20 JOLENE

His nose brushing mine.

His fingers digging into my hip.

That fresh bergamot smell.

I looked up what bergamot even is because I didn't know. It's basically an orange rind, which sounds gross, but when it's mixed with apple and birch…

I clutch my sheets at the mere memory.

I've been tossing and turning all night, and maybe I just need to give myself a quick treat beneath the sheets, but I don't want to while I'm thinking of him.

And believe me…over the last couple weeks, he is what I've been thinking about pretty much exclusively.

Why would he come at me in the break room the way he did?

I can't figure it out. It's like he wants me, but he doesn't. He must be as confused as me with these conflicting feelings. And then he dropped off the radar completely. Which is a good thing.

It's the healthy thing.

It's the smart thing.

But my brain isn't very smart, especially not first thing on a Friday morning. I need to head into the Complex today since the general manager is going to go over the upcoming schedule with certain members of the media, and I'm dreading the possibility of seeing him there.

Or maybe it's not dread at all. I'm not really sure what the hell it is, but I do know I need to get Jonah out of bed since the bus will pick him up in about an hour, and I need to jump in the shower before that.

I rush over to his room, and this boy who used to wake up at five in the morning to play with Lego sets now won't budge when I try to wake him up.

I try to get him in bed earlier at night, but he keeps pushing and pushing for a later bedtime.

So I do the mean mom thing. I pull open his curtains and let light stream into the room while I grab him a pair of shorts and a t-shirt from his drawer. I toss them on his bed. "Get dressed! I'm getting in the shower!"

We have an hour, but it's never enough time. Every morning feels like the same rush, and I wish I knew some magical solution to fix that, but it is what it is. And Fridays when he's going to Jeremy's house are even worse since I need to pack his overnight essentials in his backpack.

We plow through breakfast and rush out to the bus stop, and he bats me away when I give him a million kisses since I won't see him until Monday after school. Jeremy will pick him up from school and drop him there on Monday. Or, more than likely, his wife Alyssa will be doing the pickup since he'll probably still be at work, but either way, it means my heart will be in another place for the next eighty or so hours.

I hate it.

Every single time, I hate it.

But as much as I want to, I can't wallow.

Cade is at his dad's house this weekend, too, and Sam is off work, so we've already planned a night out together to get our minds off…well, everything.

I work for a few minutes at home—checking the news, reviewing the scripts for a few different off-season story ideas, and emailing Marcus. And then I head to the Complex for the media meeting with the general manager.

The closer I get, the more my heart thunders at the thought of running into him. This is Steve's meeting, but certainly Lincoln will be here somewhere in this building.

It feels like I can't take a deep enough breath at the thought. He's already suffocating me and we've barely had any interactions at all.

I go straight to the press room, where I find a very small group of familiar reporter faces. A team assistant standing at the entry hands me a notebook, and inside is a listing of every team-related activity this season.

I glance through it.

It's lengthy.

It's not just the game schedule that's typically issued publicly. This is a comprehensive breakdown of everything, from practices to charity events to camps to flights and accommodations for every away game.

It's my life for the next year.

The problem? It's also Lincoln Nash's life for the next year.

Steve steps up to the podium and says a few words welcoming us and taking us through the schedule. "Any questions?" he asks.

"How much input did Nash have on this, and where is he today?" James from CBS asks. "Coach Thompson was always here to talk that through with the media."

I perk up at the question as my eyes move from my notebook up to Steve. I wasn't here at the previous media itinerary days since my predecessor was, so I wouldn't know to even ask that.

"I'll start by reminding you that our new head coach will have his own way of doing things separate from that of Thompson," Steve says, and I hear a few grunts around the room.

They don't like Lincoln? I thought I was the only one. He seemed to show up and win everyone over immediately, but it's hard to step into the shoes of such a legendary coach as Mitch Thompson.

"With that said, Coach Nash is with his family this weekend," Steve finishes.

With his family.

The Nash family.

I wonder if he's going to tell them he shoved me up against a wall and his lips were centimeters from mine.

I shake out the image.

A few others ask questions, and that's it.

I rush over to James before he leaves. "What do you have against Nash?" I ask.

"Probably something different than what you hold against him," he says, and his tone is suggestive.

It takes everything in me not to slap him.

"I don't care for what you're implying," I warn, but he dismisses my complaint.

"Listen, Bailey. You're a reporter. If you're getting the impression people aren't receptive to the new coach, do your due diligence. Don't hit up your competition for information."

I blow out a breath. If it was Rivera asking, I bet he'd hand the details right over.

Still, the fact that maybe not everybody in Vegas is on board with this new hire is on the table for the first time.

I make a mental note to do a little more digging into Coach Nash. Maybe James is right—maybe it's simply due diligence and I've avoided it for personal reasons.

But I won't let my vagina get in the way of this job.

Instead, I head into the office and I start researching.

I don't get Saturdays off anymore, but I do get the flexibility to fit in my work when I can, so I read articles and make notes and dig, dig, dig. By the time I set myself up for a big day of work tomorrow and I see it's nearly seven already, I'm ready for a stiff drink with my best friend.

I told her I didn't want to go to my dad's bar, but I'm so close now, and besides, Lincoln is out of town. It's not like we'll run into him at the Gridiron. I text her the change of plans.

Me: Change of plans. Can you meet me at the Gridiron? I'm on my way now.

Sam: Be there in ten min.

She loves the Gridiron—mostly because she loves fantasizing that she'll meet a hot football player in here and he'll sweep her off her feet and she'll have the sort of life she always dreamed she'd have.

"How was work?" I ask.

She's a nurse practitioner working in an emergency room, and she pretty much makes her own schedule, so usually she does three ten-hour days a week.

"Fine." She shrugs. She doesn't usually like talking about the things she has seen in the ER unless they're entertaining stories, which do happen upon occasion—particularly here in Vegas where people truly live by that old cliché about what happens here stays here.

It's not true. Medical bills follow you back home, even when it's because you stuck a potato in your ass during a bachelor party dare gone wrong.

I reach over and squeeze her hand.

"Yours?" she asks.

"Fine."

"We're a pair, aren't we?" she asks.

I chuckle, and Debbie comes over. "The usual, ladies?"

I shake my head. "I need something strong, Deb. What do you have for me?"

She twists her lips as she thinks it over. "Long Island?"

I wince a little as I think about the last time I had a Long Island. It wasn't pretty.

"Margarita?"

I wrinkle my nose. "No tequila tonight. I don't need a headache all day tomorrow."

"Hm." She taps her chin. "What about vodka cranberry?"

I nod. "Bingo. Light cranberry, though. Heavy vodka. And a lime."

Debbie nods at Sam, who shrugs.

"Make it two. And nachos."

"Definitely nachos," I agree, and Sam and I high-five.

"What was just fine about your work today?" she asks as Debbie scampers off to get our order going, and she lowers her voice. "Is it that damn fine as fuck asshole getting in your way again?"

I lift a shoulder. "Sort of. James Williams seemed disenchanted by him at a press event today, and I confronted him to ask why and he basically inferred I was already sleeping with Nash and then told me to do my own research."

"Disenchanted?" she presses.

I lower my voice since we're in public, but the music is loud enough combined with the din of the place that nobody would overhear us. "He asked why Lincoln wasn't at the event today since Thompson would've been there. When Steve reminded us that it's a new regime, I heard definite scoffs around the room."

She narrows her eyes as she studies me. "Scoffs? Why scoffs?"

"Well, I wasn't sure, so I spent the rest of the day at the office doing my due diligence, as James directed me to do."

"What did you come up with?"

Debbie swings by with our drinks, and we clink glasses before we each take a long, healthy chug.

"He's aggressive. He's not afraid to take risks on the field or off it. He's incredibly driven and very talented, and he puts the game first above everything else. It's why he's thirty-six and single."

She raises a brow. "You sure that's why?"

I narrow my eyes at her. "What are you implying?"

She shrugs innocently. "Nothing, nothing. I just…" She blows out a breath. "When are you going to tell me what happened in the break room?"

My brows dip. "What?"

"I saw you go in the break room two weeks ago when we were here. I saw him get up and follow you in there thirty seconds later. He left first, and then you came out looking flushed and flustered as fuck. I've been waiting two goddamn weeks to get you alone to have this conversation. Now spill it."

I suck in a breath at her words. She saw me. Rivera saw me.

Who else saw me?

"Can I finish what I dug up on him first?" I ask.

In all honesty, I want to get her professional opinion on an article I saw about him earlier so I can figure out if there's any truth to the claim. But I also want to tell her more about why people don't love his coaching style—how he's not afraid to make enemies, how he's more worried about his team's success than anything else, how he likes to shake things up in the locker room and push boundaries.

She shakes her head. "No."

"Come on. I need your professional opinion on something."

"First the details of the break room. Then the professional opinion."

I roll my eyes. "Fine. But let me start by saying nothing happened and it wasn't a big deal."

"Okay, start noted. Now get on with the details, friend." She gives me a pointed gaze before she drinks some more vodka.

"I needed a breather from him. He followed me in. I told him to get out of my bar, we argued. He pinned me up against the wall and it was hot and we almost kissed but didn't, and then he said he didn't know I had a kid and he left. That's it. The end."

I leave out some of the finer details, but really just the ones I think about late at night when I'm having a ménage à moi.

"Oh, no, no, no. That is not the end. That's merely the beginning, sweet Jolene." She's all smiling and happy as she teases me, but I am not sharing that sentiment with her.

"It is not!" I squeal, and then I force my voice back to a normal decibel. "It's not. It was a one-time thing, nothing happened, and we move forward. I have to keep this professional, Sam. My entire career depends on it."

"Right," she says, her tone full of sarcasm as she makes a circle with her finger and thumb as if to say okay. She winks at me.

I roll my eyes as Debbie delivers our nachos.

We move onto talking about our boys, which is where the conversation inevitably goes, but my mind is stuck back on Lincoln.

If my own best friend doesn't believe me where he's concerned, how am I ever going to get the entire Vegas Aces fan base to believe me?

"You needed my professional opinion about something?" she asks.

I nod, and I grab my phone to pull up the article I saved. It's from a tiny newspaper local to New Orleans and didn't gain any traction at all, surprising given the content of it.

I push my phone across the table toward her. "Read it."

She picks up my phone and scans the article and she looks up at me when she finishes.

"Well?" I ask.

She sets my phone back down as she contemplates what she just read. "I'd need to see his records to back up the claim, but yeah…it's possible."

"Would footage of his injury help since I don't have his medical records?" I ask.

She nods, and I pull up the footage I found online from when the injury occurred.

"God damn, he's hot," she says when I slide the phone back over.

"Clearly beside the point, friend." I shoot her a glare, and she giggles as she watches the video.

She nods, and she winces. "Yeah, that looks painful, but I don't think it would be career-ending. The article mentioned a post-op infection, and that's a little trickier. I'd need more details about that to say for sure, but if the surgery went well and the infection was controlled quickly, he could've come back. Lots of players do. Like Alex Smith—he almost died and had to have multiple surgeries for an infection, and he still came back. This article says he was released the standard time after his surgery. Have you looked up whether there were additional surgeries?"

I nod. "I couldn't find anything."

"I'd imagine it would've been pretty well publicized if there were." She taps her chin with her finger while she thinks. "But if he was healthy enough to return to the game, why would he have lied and said he couldn't?"

Why indeed.

That's the same question that's been on my mind since I found this little article, and I am determined to dig deeper until I get to the bottom of it.