Page 59 of Nothing Less Than Everything

TATUM

“‘Ay!” Theo bellowed the second I walked into the locker room. “Look who it is—Mr. Can’t Pick on Someone His Own Size.”

The rest of the boys chimed in with jeers of their own. Gideon chucked a sweat towel at my chest as I weaved through the melee to my locker. “How’s it feel to know that the only person you’ve tackled this season was a damn cheerleader?”

“Anyone made fun of him for the shirt he wore on Good Morning USA on Monday?” Coach Tyson asked with a smirk as he cut through the locker room.

“Dude, that dress shirt was so tight I was afraid the buttons were gonna start popping off like BBs,” one of the linebackers cackled.

“That shirt gave you bigger tits than the chick! You gonna start wearing a little training bra, Bryant?” Seth howled.

Before I knew it, I was swinging around and shoving him down onto the bench in front of his locker. “You better think twice about running your mouth like that, Goldielocks. Or me and my tits will teach you a lesson.”

The locker room went eerily silent, followed by a deep chorus of, “Ooooh!”

Seth glared at me, rage boiling just below the surface.

I shoved my finger in his face. “Maybe if you hit the weight room a little more and showed up for the team the way you show up for those wanna be Instagram models you party with, you’d have some tits, too.” I spun the sweat towel Gideon had thrown at me and snapped his chest with a rat tail.

I felt a hand grab onto the back of my shoulder and nearly decked the owner of it. Gideon yanked me back to my locker and away from Seth.

Murmurs of “oh shit” rumbled through the tension like distant rolls of thunder on a humid summer day.

“The fuck, man?” Gideon said under his breath as everyone slowly returned to what they had been doing.

“Fucker shouldn’t have been running his mouth like that.”

“He ain’t worth shit,” Gideon muttered. “Don’t give him the time of the day. He’s just trying to ruffle your feathers.”

I eyed the chi—cock on the wall. “Nice pun.”

He smirked. “How’s your girl? She got over her food poisoning yet?”

I pitched my t-shirt into my locker and grabbed my practice jersey. “Getting there,” I said evasively.

“That sucks. Heidi was really looking forward to meeting her and seeing your new place.”

I felt bad about the white lie I told Gid and Theo, but the truth was worse than the lie. I couldn’t even tell them her name now that Wren’s name and face was splashed on the front page of nearly every media outlet. When I left the quiet room where Wren was being evaluated, I told Gideon and Theo that “my girl” had gotten food poisoning and that I’d have everyone over when she was feeling better.

I should have picked a more long-term illness. Did people still get the bird flu? Fucking food poisoning… I should have gone with pneumonia.

“I’ll tell you—one time Heidi was on the road with us. She flew out to see the game when we played in San Francisco, ate some bad airport food and was laid up in the hotel the whole time. It was brutal. She ended up staying an extra day because she was too scared of hurling on the plane.” He shucked his jeans off and grabbed a pair of shorts.

“That sucks,” I grumbled, scrolling through my phone to send Wren a good morning text. I had changed her name to something nondescript in my phone in case one of the guys happened to look over my shoulder. She had done the same for my contact information.

“How’d she get food poisoning?” Gideon asked.

“Uh… Bad sushi.”

He grimaced. “What’d she think of all the press you and the, uh—what’s her name again?”

I gritted my teeth. “Wren.”

Gideon wasn’t fazed. “Right. What’d she think of all the interviews you and Wren had to do together after what happened at the game? They were really playing up that love story angle, huh?”

“It’s just business,” I clipped. “She knows that.”

It was only a matter of time before Gideon put two and two together. Hell, I had shown him Wren’s photo when I was talking about her as my interior designer. It wasn’t that far of a leap with the cheerleader version of Wren being all over the stadium.

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