Double Team, Page 35

  reporters who had managed to find their way to the front of my house earlier today.

  My neighborhood wants me gone.

  Over the past month, I’ve gotten death threats, been called every name in the book, and been pretty much vilified in the national media. People have expressed their sympathies for my parents or declared them the worst parents in the history of the universe.

  I didn’t go to rehab, although it probably would have been better than hiding out for the last month in the “undisclosed location” my parents arranged. Yesterday, I was discharged and “requesting personal space in this trying time” as I recover.

  The truth is, the last month has been a terribly shitty one– but not because of all of the media craziness or because people in America think I’m either the sluttiest girl in the world or the epitome of sexual liberation, depending on who you ask. It’s been terrible because I’ve had to stay away from Noah and Aiden, despite wanting to email them or text them or call them and just say this was all some kind of awful joke and I’d see them at home.

  I wanted to call them a million times this month and tell them that I regretted going along with my mother’s plan to keep me under the radar.

  I also wanted to tell them that I didn’t regret anything that happened with them.

  Instead, I developed a slight obsession with Colorado football while I was away, watching the sports channels’ videos of their training camp and trying to catch a glimpse of them. I felt responsible when I read that Noah got angry and stormed out of a media session, and when sports commentators described Noah and Aiden's overly aggressive attitudes on the field.

  But tonight, my regret is magnified about a thousand times as I sit here inside my house that’s as silent as a tomb. I peer through the curtains that cover the window to my deck, momentarily contemplating going out to the deck and sitting in the evening summer air, the way I would have before.

  You need to get back to the way things were before, Grace.

  Get back to your old routine.

  Stop hiding.

  All sage pieces of advice from Vi, except that assumes everything can go back to what it was before.

  I try not to look at Noah and Aiden’s house, but it’s impossible not to, and of course the second I do, everything I’ve tried to suppress for the last month– everything I felt before– comes rushing to the surface. And in an instant, I can’t breathe. In an instant, my chest feels like it’s being crushed by an enormous weight, and I’m sitting on the floor trying to catch my breath.

  I can’t stay here. It was a stupid, stupid idea to think that I could just come back to my house– right beside theirs– and everything would be normal.

  I don’t know how long I sit like that on my bedroom floor with my back to the French doors before I hear buzzing, quickly followed by a gunshot. Before I even pull open the bedroom door, my bodyguard is tearing up the stairs and inside my bedroom. “You’re safe, ma’am.”

  “I heard–“

  “It was one of those drones,” he says. “The tabloids use them to get aerial views of their targets and take photos of them. It’s been neutralized.”

  “A drone,” I repeat numbly. For a second, my heart stops beating. No, it wouldn’t be Noah and Aiden. It couldn’t be. It would be a reporter. Thirty-three days ago, I basically told Noah and Aiden I wanted nothing more to do with them– not in so many words, but my actions were clear.

  “One of the other members of the security team is in the backyard with the evidence. The FBI has already been contacted.”

  “Can I just…” I shouldn’t even go outside. I should ignore what just happened, close up the house, and get out of here. I should have packers move everything and find a new place, somewhere far from all of this.

  Except I don’t.

  I walk out onto the balcony, even as my well-meaning bodyguard protests, looking down onto the yard where the drone has been blown to smithereens. And where there are– what the hell?- hundreds of little quarter-sized glowing circles scattered through the grass, an explosion of glow-in-the-dark…

  No.

  I squint at the grass before looking up at Noah and Aiden’s house. Their lights are on, but I don’t see any movement inside the house and I can’t see into their yard.

  Still, I ask anyway.

  “What are the… the things in the yard?”

  The bodyguard clears his throat. “They’re prophylactics, ma’am.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Condoms.”

  “Condoms,” I repeat flatly. “Glow-in-the-dark condoms.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Clearly it’s the work of someone mentally ill or–”

  Or…

  I look back over at Noah and Aiden’s house.

  “Was there anything else?”

  “Excuse me, ma’am?”

  “Anything else. Was there anything else that was left in my yard?”

  “Ma’am, you can trust us to do our jobs,” he says. “You hired us to protect you not only from threats to your safety, but also threats to your mental health. Our job is to intercept messages from the people who might be fixated on you because of–”

  “Yes. I understand.” My heart is beating a thousand times a minute now. “But was there anything else left? I need to know.”

  “There was a…” He clears his throat, obviously uncomfortable. “There was a doll. An inflatable doll.”

  “A blow-up doll.” I look over at Noah and Aiden’s house again.

  After all I’ve done to keep their identities secret, they wouldn’t dare jeopardize everything the first day I came home, would they?

  And worse, why does the thought of that make my breath catch in my throat?

  Why does it send hope surging through me for the first time in a month?

  “Yes, ma’am. Obviously, we’ll be intercepting some disturbing things as you get settled back into your routine, but my experience is these things do tend to die down fairly quickly, even if it doesn’t seem like it in the moment.”

  He’s trying to be encouraging, but the only thing I can focus on is the blow-up doll.

  “Was there a note?”

  “Pardon?”

  “With the blow-up doll. Was there a note with it?”

  “Ma’am, I really don’t think that knowing the details is a positive–”

  “Was there a note?” I snap.

  “I believe so, ma’am.”

  “Show it to me.”

  “Ma’am, in my experience, these sickos who send these kinds of things really–”

  “I want to see it,” I say, my voice shaking. “Please show me the note.”

  “It will be considered evidence at this point and– please don’t do anything rash.”

  But I’m already headed downstairs and to the front door, my bodyguard in tow. I don’t go to the backyard where the remnants of the drone and the condoms and the blow-up doll are. Instead, I walk down the driveway, ignoring the bodyguard’s advice to stay away from the gate and the road in front of the house.

  I don’t know what I’m doing. My thoughts are swirling around in my head as I walk. I’ve had an entire month to do nothing except think about what happened with Noah and Aiden, and why I did what I did.

  I had resolved to be okay with my choice to adhere to my parents’ plan.

  I rationalized it. I told myself it was the best possible decision I could make in a shitty situation.

  Except that right now none of that makes sense in the face of what has to be Noah and Aiden’s completely stupid attempt at reaching out to me.

  Now, my decision seems idiotic as I push open the front gate and ignore the guard posted there who tells me to stay inside.

  “I’m not a prisoner in my own house, am I?” I ask absently, looking around for any sign of Noah and Aiden.

  For a minute, I wonder if it’s all in my head. This could have been a sick person’s idea of a joke.

  Except that there they are.

  The gate to
Noah’s house opens and there they are, walking out of it, wearing… trench coats? In the middle of the summer, with their bare legs sticking out underneath.

  Are they about to flash me?

  Even after all that’s happened, the thought immediately sends a pang of arousal straight to my core, and mentally I curse myself for my attraction to these guys who thought that sending a note-carrying blow-up doll and glow-in-the-dark condoms was an appropriate way to say hello.

  These men, the ones who send drones to my house, are the men I tried to protect by hiding out and pretending to have lost my mind – when clearly, they’re the crazy ones.

  The crazy men who are standing in front of me in their trench coats and what I assume is absolutely nothing else underneath, while one of the bodyguards yells at them to back away from me.

  The insane men who break into the widest grins I’ve ever seen as I stand there, so that I can’t remember why the hell I ever thought that keeping this a secret was a good idea in the first place.

  “We have a hell of a lot to say to you, sugar,” Aiden starts.

  One of the bodyguards interrupts. “Back away from the First Daughter.”

  But I put my hand up. “It’s okay. I know them. They’re my–” I pause, realizing I’m about to say boyfriends, but that’s not accurate because they’re not anymore, are they?

  “Say it, Grace,” Noah orders, his expression intense. “Say what you were about to say.”

  But I don’t. I close my mouth, and then I open my mouth again, and then I close it again, and then I open it again. Like a fish. “I was about to ask if you’re planning on flashing me.”

  “Well, now, that all depends,” Aiden says. “Are you planning on admitting you were wrong?”

  “Admitting that I was wrong?!” I ask. “I just spent a month pretending to have had a nervous breakdown so my psychopathic parents wouldn’t out you two as the guys fucking me at the fundraiser!”

  My voice is too loud. Way too damn loud. And I'm yelling in the middle of the street.

  One of the bodyguards clears his throat behind me, and I realize they’re right behind me. “Um.” I clear my own throat. “Could I have a few minutes, please?”

  “That’s right, you did,” Noah says. “Now, did we ask you to do that?”

  “I thought you’d be grateful that I didn’t decimate your careers,” I say, bristling at the question.

  Aiden steps closer to me, looking down at me, his expression softening. He’s standing so close and I’ve missed him – them – so much that I close my eyes, breathing him in, drinking in his scent. And I swear that I must have been living for the past month in black-and-white, because when I open my eyes, it’s like everything is Technicolor. I feel alive, more alive than I've felt in the last month. I’m a junkie who needs her fix, and I can hardly breathe as Noah steps closer, taking my hand in his.

  “You ever think that you might have wanted to consult with us before you fell on your sword, sugar?” Aiden asks.

  “I didn’t want you to have to make that choice,” I say, my voice tight. “If it came down to a choice between me and football, I didn’t want you to have to choose.”

  “You should have given us all of the available information and let us make a decision,” Noah says, throwing back exactly what I told him before when he didn’t tell me about the potential contracts outside of Colorado.

  “We’re in the middle of the road,” I whisper.

  “That’s right. We’re in the middle of the fucking road, and neither of us care,” Noah says.

  “What are you saying?” I ask.

  “The night we came to the fundraiser, before we got… occupied with other things, I was going to tell you that we weren’t just coming there to apologize. I signed a contract with Colorado,” Noah says. “I’m not leaving. And there’s no morality clause in my damn contract. As long as I’m not robbing banks or stealing handbags from old ladies, nobody's firing me."

  “Ditto,” Aiden says. “My attorney says I’m good.”

  “And you would have known all of that if you’d come here instead of running off with Vi that night.”

  “So… what I did was for nothing,” I realize. “For the last month, I’ve been trying to protect you and… well, why the hell didn’t you go public, then, if you didn’t care?”

  “Well, we thought you might have realized that a couple of football players were beneath you, and that you wouldn’t want more attention drawn to the incident than already was on it,” Noah says.

  “Why would I think that you were beneath– ohhh. My mother.”

  “We did get a visit from the First Lady,” Aiden admits.

  “Well. I don’t know what to say.” I can’t think straight when I’m standing so close to them like this– smelling them, nearly touching them– and all I want them to do is pick me up and carry me back into the house and stay there for another thirty days.

  “Well, I sure as hell do,” Noah says. “The last month sucked, and I don’t want to do it again.”

  “Ditto,” Aiden interjects. “For the good of mankind, you just can’t leave us again.”

  “For the good of mankind?”

  “That was a little dramatic,” Aiden says. “For the good of everyone around us. Is that better?”

  I raise my eyebrows. “That’s what you came out here to say?”

  “Nope,” Noah says. “We came out here to say we love you.”

  “We love you and we fucking want you,” Aiden adds. “And neither of us give a shit about anyone else's opinions about those facts.”

  “We love you. We want you. And you’re ours. That pretty much sums it up, right, Aiden?” Noah asks.

  “And we’re taking you home,” Aiden says. “Your house or ours. Pick one, but make sure it’s one you’re comfortable with.”

  “Why is that?” I ask.

  “Because you’re not going to be able to walk tomorrow,” Aiden starts.

  Noah interrupts. “Sweetheart, you’ve been gone for thirty days. If you think you’re going to be able to walk anytime in the next month, you’d be mistaken.”

  “Is this the part where I’m supposed to tell you to pick me up and carry me inside the house right now?” I ask. “Or do I get half a second to say ‘I love you’ back before you threaten to immobilize me?”

  “Say it,” Aiden orders.

  “I just did!”

  “Say it again,” Noah commands.

  “I love you both.”

  They don’t let me utter another word. Aiden brings his mouth to mine, his kiss soft and tender and gentle at first but quickly turning into something entirely different as his tongue finds mine. His hands go to my face, his palms on either side, and he kisses me and kisses me and kisses me until I’m breathless.

  When he finally pulls his lips from mine, I don’t have a second to catch my breath before Noah is sliding his arm around my waist to the small of my back and yanking me against him. His hardness is evident even through the coat, and heat floods my body at the sensation of him pressed against me. I melt into his arms, my legs practically turning to jelly as he kisses me hard, rough, passionate, not the least bit tender.

  Aiden’s kiss is welcoming. Noah’s kiss is punishing.

  When we finally stop, my lips are swollen and my body is aching with need. I don’t want to stand here in the middle of the road with them. I want to go home with them. I want to show them exactly how much I missed them.

  I’m about to tell them just that when a golf cart pulls up with a bright green and yellow van driving slowly behind them. One of the security guards from the front gate steps out of the cart. “I apologize, Ms. Sullivan. We’ve been tighter with security given