Page 112 of The Play

Darcy shook her head. “Just said he wanted a minute, if you had it free.”

Even without details, Grant had a good idea what he wanted to talk about. It didn’t take a rocket scientist—or a billionaire—to figure it out.

“Practice is over then?” He’d resolutely forced himself to stay at his desk. Not to wander over to the windows and look down. See what Deacon was up to.

He’d sworn to himself that one, they could compartmentalize this, and that two, it wouldn’t affect the team.

But if reporters were hounding his players over their relationship, two was barely holding up.

As for one, the fact that he’d had to resolutely force himself into his desk chair at least half a dozen times, when he’d kept rising out of sheer instinct, said it all.

How had this happened?

Grant didn’t know the answer to that. But he did know that it wouldn’t have mattered if they’d still kept their hands to themselves. Even if they weren’t doing the things the world kept speculating they were, behind closed doors, everyone would still assume they were.

“Been over for an hour,” Darcy said. “There was more in the article. Some speculation about Deacon leaving a players get-together at that bar early. A very blurry picture of a truck that could’ve been Deacon’s, or another thousand in this town, pulling up at your building half an hour later.”

“We need more security,” Grant said, turning to his computer again, beginning to draft another email to the company he contracted with to not only keep him safe but his private business private.

Of course that was kind of a fool’s errand, these days.

“Grant,” Darcy said, and he looked up in surprise, because she’d come around the back of the desk and was right there. “You can’t fight this like you normally would. You can’t outsmart it or buy it into submission.”

“I wasn’t—”

“Yes, you were,” Darcy interrupted, gesturing at his screen, where there was the barely started email to his security contact. “You can’t stop people from taking pictures of Deacon’s truck.”

“You said it yourself, it could’ve been one of a thousand in downtown Charleston.”

“And it wasn’t, was it?” Darcy looked resolute. Hard-edged, in a way she almost never did. Only when she was going in for the jugular.

Before she’d only done it with their opponents and their enemies.

Never with him.

“What does it matter?” Grant said, throwing up his arms, but not in defeat. “Okay, yes, he came over last night. Do you need me to draw you and the rest of the fucking world a diagram of what we did after? Is that what you want?”

“It’s not about that and you know it,” Darcy retorted. “You knew when you began this that it was probably only going to end one way. It was why you told me, that time in the plane, why you couldn’t just wait to do this, until later. Until after Deacon was retired. It was always going to be a sensation. It was always going to blow back on both of you. You knew that. It was why you said you could never get involved with him.”

“What are you saying, then?”

Grant hated fighting with Darcy, and he knew she felt the same, so the fact she was willing to go toe-to-toe with him on this meant a hell of a lot.

“I’m saying, think about it. You give them a taste of what they want, maybe it’ll be intense for a little bit, but then it’ll fade away. Another story will crop up. They always do.”

“I don’t want to be the story,” Grant said bitterly.

But he did want Deacon. Desperately. Fiercely. With every molecule in his body. With every single bit of his heart.

“Then you’re gonna have to figure out how to deflect, and I’m telling you right now, this is not doing it. This is not the way.”

“I’ll think about it,” Grant said.

If he was convinced she was right, he’d have given in immediately, called Deacon and then Nicole and done the interview tomorrow.

But what did it matter if they gave the world what they wanted if it destroyed him and Deacon in the process? They were too new to weather this, no matter what Deacon believed. No matter what Grant wanted to believe.

This was like standing in the middle of a hurricane and claiming you had a generator, so it was all going to be good.

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