RHINO: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (With FREE Bonus Novel OFFSIDE!) (23 page)

Thirteen.

Alex

Past life and newspapers. Turns out you can’t avoid the wrath of either one of them. It takes a lot to convince Lucy that story is bullshit, and even though she says I don’t need to do half the stuff I do to prove it, I can tell that deep down she still has her doubts.

I don’t blame her either. I don’t cheat and I never have, not even way back when I would hold hands with a girl during recess and think the world couldn’t get any better, but I’ve done a lot of shit in the past I know full well is going to come back and haunt me, and, unfortunately, it turns out that this was just the first part of that.

It was exactly this kind of shit that got me in trouble with the press before, but this time around I go through the right channels to dismiss it, which includes contacting my legal team, building up a bulletproof PR campaign and approaching the same newspapers that publish the story in the first place to give my version of it. The version that also happens to be the truth.

Yes, we fucked. No, it wasn’t this season, and no there isn’t a sex tape, unless she pulled some hidden camera bullshit on my ass I didn’t know about. The girl comes to me afterward and asks for money, and then when I refuse to give it to her she threatens to release the tape to the internet. This goes on for about a week until it’s clear beyond doubt she’s made the whole thing up and most of the papers are forced to issue a retraction and a subsequent groveling apology. The sex tape never surfaces, no matter how much she crows on about releasing it, while she takes the whole bullshit confession thing online to a tiny corner of the internet nobody pays attention to.

That’s not the only scandal that hits me this month either. After that stuff with the big titted call girl from Cincinnati, two other stories come out about me sleeping with women while on the road. This time they don’t make the papers, instead they end up all over social media, which is almost even worse, because what follows is an endless gossip thread questioning my loyalty, with people making up all kinds of crazy stuff left, right and center about how I’ve cheated on them in the past, or done something to wrong them, or how basically I’m just a love rat.

It takes a while to adjust to, and even though this apparently happens as much to other players as it does to me, depending on who happens to be popular that month for a public airing, whether the story is true or not, it still has a massive impact on my life.

I get called into the team’s office to defend myself, twice in a matter of weeks, while Lucy doesn’t know what the hell to think, one moment getting over one story, while reading another about something a girl and I did together over three years ago. It’s a difficult time, and one in which I do everything I can to prove to my coach I haven’t suddenly slipped back into old ways and to Lucy that I love her.

The old me isn’t the me I am now, and it’s unfair for people to judge me on past actions. That sounds reasonable to me, but I understand how difficult it is for other people to understand, especially if they come from a completely different world. Lucy’s been on the receiving end of cheating men more than once, and I know if she thought I was doing the same to her, especially after everything I’ve told her to the contrary, it would break her into a million pieces.

It’s hard for me to convince her I’m not, even more so when the evidence against me looks overwhelming - call girls changing dates, doctored photos, women paid to lie through their teeth - but there is nothing else I can do that I’m not doing already and  hope she comes around.

We’re only two months into a relationship, a month of which has basically been spent trying to quash rumors and convince her I’m for real, so I know it’s going to take time. Hopefully, we’ve got that, though. Hopefully, Lucy will finally come round, that niggling doubt she’s got about us will eventually fade away into nothing, and we’ll be so strong that not even a seemingly infallible made up story will be able to get between us.

And if she’s still in doubt about my intentions, I’ve got a foolproof plan to make absolutely sure she knows how I truly feel about her, she’s going to find impossible to refuse.

That’ll all come later, though. That’s my trump card in a perfect hand, and I’m not going to do it until the moment is right.

For now, while all of this bubbles away in the background, and Lucy and I jackknife from one made up scandal to the next, from old stories I thought were dead and buried to new ones we’re trying to create between us ourselves, I have a commitment to maintain a new image I’m desperately trying to hold onto for myself. The Giants have gone 7-0, which is even better than our start to the campaign last season. I’m excelling in almost every aspect of my game, despite what’s happening off the field, and I’ve never felt as close to perfection as I do right now. I’m leading the stats board, I’ve broken more records than I knew existed and this year could be the year they finally put me in the hall of fame. In short, life does not get much better than this.

Alright, Lucy and I have been put through the mill over the last few weeks, but that hasn’t pulled us apart. If anything, it’s only made us stronger. The whole world knows about us, which is exactly what I always wanted, and even though gossip columns lament the loss of a bad boy quarterback to an ordinary looking, normal-in-every-way girl from Boston, I couldn’t be happier.

That’s part of the reason for me doing this. I’ve managed to change my image and finally get at least a portion of the PR machine working in my favor, so I want to do the same for Lucy. I want to introduce the girl I know intimately to the world properly, so they stop assuming stuff about her that isn’t true. Lucy, however, is naturally skeptical.

“
Another interview?” she asks.

“
For both of us.”

“
I don’t know, Alex. That’s kind of your world.”

I turn the magazine to a page about her titled
What do we know about Lucy Parker, the girl that’s got Alex Vann Haden’s attention?

I read: “Lucy is atypical for Alex. Lacking appeal in almost every department, we just can’t see what’s got the quarterback so worked up.”

“
At least they’re not printing stories about you anymore”, she says.

“
Doesn’t this stuff bother you?”

“
You know that isn’t true.”

I go on. “Frumpy and mousy looking, this snap of these two out to dinner shows just how much she’s punching above her weight, which seems to be increasing by the way. Just look at the dress she’s chosen. I could go on.”

Lucy narrow her eyes. “It’s meant to be inflammatory, it’s an opinion piece”, she says.

“
That’s why we need to do an opinion piece of our own.”

“
Maybe I am punching above my own weight.”

“
Yeah but you’re definitely not mousy looking, I mean that’s just insulting.”

Lucy smiles at me and I take her by the shoulders. “It’s only a couple of hours”, I say.

“
I hate reporters.”

“
Then you’ll be careful what to say.”

“
You shouldn’t get bothered by this kind of stuff, you know? You seem more bothered than I am about this, which makes me worry that you’re embarrassed about me being described that way, as though the mighty Alex Vann Haden wouldn’t dare to be with someone ordinary.”

I give her my death stare. “You really think I’m mighty.”

“
Alex, I’m serious.”

“
I’m just sick of everyone making stuff up, especially after what’s happened so far this month.”

“
Yeah, well, we’ll never be able to change that I’m afraid.”

“
This could be good for you”, I say.

“
I don’t like being the center of attention.”

“
Alright, I’ll call it off. I just thought-.” I go back to the magazine. “Making ends meet at lowbrow magazine Endzone, where Lucy spends all of her time interviewing college football players, and utilizing her basic degree in English to write articles that lack passion and integrity. Come on Alex, this doesn’t sound like the girl for you.”

“
It doesn’t say that.”

“
It says it.”

I show her the magazine, my thumb highlighting the word basic.

“
What do they mean by basic? How do you even get a basic degree?”

“
I guess they mean it’s easy, you know, I don’t know-.” I’m getting those eyes again. “I don’t think your degree is basic”, I say.

“
It’s not basic. It’s the same as every else’s. It was damn difficult.”

“
I know that honey, you know that, but everyone reading this magazine now thinks the opposite.”

“
They can think what they like.” She’s shaking her head. “Basic.”

“
Shall I get the car ready?”

It doesn’t take much more to convince her. With magazine clutched in her hand, we take to the car, where Lucy spends most of the journey reading things out from the article and shaking her head in maddening disbelief.

For a long time I didn’t read what got written about me, but since that bullshit scandal broke, I’ve been much more careful about keeping tabs on what goes on in press and social media and what gets printed about me. It’s an ongoing war to stay on top, but I figure that if I do the work now and set the foundations, I’ll have to do much less later on.

Lucy was the same as me, which is why she’s never bothered to do anything about it before. What they say about her doesn’t affect the way I feel about her, but I do know that if there is an opportunity for us to print the truth, then we might as well take advantage of it.

The idea isn’t to challenge something that has already been written, more to show the side of Lucy that hasn’t been shown before. It’s almost exactly the kind of thing I wanted her to do for me when I asked her to the island before the season started. If they don’t know the truth, magazines and newspapers will print conjecture and conjecture is much more appealing if it’s designed to be provocative.

“
I’ve never done an interview before”, she says.

I look over at her suspiciously. “You’re kidding right?”

“
Not this way around. I’ve done plenty the other way around, but none this way around. What if they don’t like me? I am boring, you know? I’m not a superstar like you. I haven’t got the stories, I’m just going to come across as boring.”

I put my hand on her knee. “Believe me, Lucy, you are not boring.”

“
I’m not a supermodel, I’m not an actress, I’m not a celebrity, I don’t come from a rich family, I don’t have a title, what am I going to talk about?”

“
Just let your natural charm shine through.”

“
Sleepy, adaptable and timid?”

“
Just be yourself. Tell them one of your jokes. You could talk about your dad.”

I get angry rolled eyes for that, and I have to apologize for being inappropriate, even though I think it’s a good idea.

Lucy’s in two minds all the way to the studio. It’s an interview for Sports Illustrated our PR team plan to sell on to Reader’s Digest in a slightly different format, and she’s concerned that whatever she says will reinforce an opinion current media already has about her. I think it’s a great idea to project ourselves onto the American press as the perfect couple, and reinforce my position as a completely reformed bad boy everywhere but our bedroom.

For someone that loves her job so much, it makes me smile to see Lucy looking so awkward on the other side of the table for once. It makes me think back to the island and how confident she was at trying to get underneath my skin and rat me out for who she was convinced I was. Right now, Lucy looks like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a huge approaching Cadillac.

The interview is with us both, and I want the focus to be our relationship - which, by the way, we have now officially labeled in the way I always wanted us to - and, of course, Lucy’s sparkling personality. I don’t mind it touching on important themes, although Lucy may still be reluctant to open up about her father. I can do the critical, tragic shit and she can do the strong woman in the shadows routine if need be, because I know for a fact it’ll be impossible for her to come across as anything other than charming. As long as she understands her role as the interviewee and not the interviewer, we’ll be absolutely fine.

We do the introductions, chat for a couple of minutes and get right into it, that is, after Lucy has made sure that nothing she says is going to be used out of context, that we are provided a copy of the article before it goes live and that if there are questions she doesn’t feel like answering they get scratched off completely.

“
I should have looked at the questions in advance”, she says.

“
That’s kind of not how this really works, at least not how I like to do it anyway. I much prefer a kind of conversational style, but like I say, if there is anything you don’t want me to add, or you don’t want to answer, we’ll stop the tape and erase it.”