Page 1 of The Player's Club

ELODIE

“I don’t get why you’re acting like San Francisco is that far away. It’s not like I’m asking you to move to the moon.”

I scowled at no one in particular. My boyfriend, Todd, loved to throw that dumb line into our arguments about me moving with him for his new job.

It’s not that far. It’s not that different. It’s still in California.

“We’ve had this conversation already,” I said for what felt like the millionth time.

“Baby, come on. You’re just being stubborn. You don’t even like your job.”

“I like my job just fine.”

Todd sighed. As he began listing all the reasons I was, in fact, being unreasonable, I tuned him out. Because I was actually trying to do my job—namely, follow famous people around to scope out stories about them.

Yeah, I was basically a gossip columnist. But a girl had to eat, right?

Standing outside Blades Arena, I currently waited alongside an entire crowd of paparazzi for Cole “Mac” Mackenzie to exit, a forward playing for the LA Blades. Mac was one of the biggest hockey stars in the country right now, not to mention he was also one of the sexiest.

He’d just been named the sexiest athlete by Sports Illustrated, and he’d recently graced the cover wearing nothing but a hockey stick to cover his crotch. I might’ve snagged a copy of that and placed it in my nightstand to use for future “inspiration.”

That cover photo had proceeded to blow up the entire Internet in the past few days. I’d seen it across all the major social media platforms, usually accompanied with drooling and fainting GIFs in the comments. Females from sixteen to sixty haven’t been able to get enough of Mac lately.

The fan frenzy had gotten so intense that some ladies had tried to stand outside Mac’s penthouse wearing only pasties and thongs while holding hockey sticks. The shocking thing was that they were wearing anything, to begin with—or that none of them had gotten arrested for indecent exposure.

Then again, this was Los Angeles, a land of excess and self-expression. People wearing little to no clothing was hardly a strange occurrence, especially when the temperatures rarely dipped below seventy degrees during the summertime.

“Baby, did you hear me?” Todd asked me. He sounded annoyed now. “Where the heck are you, anyway?”

“I told you. I’m on assignment.”

Todd snorted. “You mean you’re stalking some celebrity?”

Once upon a time, I’d been a real journalist, but living in LA was damn expensive. Sadly, writing gossip columns about the rich and famous often paid more than penning exposés on an environmental scandal or, worse, a story about some politician having an affair with a staffer.

At one point, I’d even gotten a book deal with a publisher that’d seemed legit . . . until that publisher had gone under, leaving me with no advance and a book I couldn’t shop to other publishers. The parent company of the publisher who’d fucked me over had yet to let me out of my contract, and I didn’t have the money to pay for a lawyer. So my poor book just gathered dust and was probably going to keep gathering dust for the foreseeable future.

“I’m on assignment,” I repeated. “And that means we need to table this conversation for now—”

“Elodie, I’m tired of this back-and-forth. You need to make a decision already. You’ve had months. I’m moving to San Francisco. Either you can come with me or . . .”

That statement caught my attention. I stepped away from the crowd, which grew larger by the minute. I snapped, “Or what? Are you breaking up with me?”

I loved Todd. We’d been together for five years, and he’d been there for me during many difficult times. And to his credit, he’d never asked me to sacrifice much of anything for him up until this point.

I didn’t want to leave LA, though. Despite Todd’s assertion that I didn’t like my job, it wasn’t true. Sure, it wasn’t as fulfilling as I’d like, but there was something about getting the big scoop before anyone else that I still enjoyed. Plus, I’d had encounters with some of the biggest stars out there.

How many people could say that Justin Bieber told them he liked their sunglasses or that Kylie Jenner had asked them what the code to the Starbucks bathroom was? Not too many.

“Are you breaking up with me?” Todd asked.

I almost laughed because this conversation was verging on the absurd.

“No, no,” I assured him. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Of course I don’t want to break up. I love you.”

Todd let out a sigh. “Give me a damn heart attack, why don’t you?”

“It’s not that I don’t want to be with you. It’s just that my job is here, in LA. I’m on the road a lot. It’s not something I can do remotely,” I said.

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