Page 34 of Double Team

  been hiding out for the past day. We ditched our cell phones on the way, and have been behind the gate since we arrived, so no one except my security who followed me and the White House knows where we are. At least for now.

  I exhale heavily. I'm exhausted. I might not have internet or phone access, but I saw the newspaper and tabloid headlines Vi's friend brought in this morning. I wanted to see what the damage was with my own eyes.

  It was as bad as I'd feared. Headlines this morning read "The O Heard Round the World!" and "President's Daughter Donates Live Porn For Campaign Fundraiser!" People are already selling my orgasm as a fucking ring-tone.

  All of the articles have been about me. I might as well have an S for slut painted on my forehead, because that's what they're calling me: the slutty daughter of the president. Or the mentally ill daughter of the president.

  None of the articles have mentioned Noah or Aiden by name. Yet. They've been my unnamed lovers in every article. Or my rapists, depending on who’s writing the article.

  "I don't need a lecture, mother. Did you come here for a reason or just to scold me?"

  "Scold you?" she asks, her voice going up an octave. "Scold you?! You didn't spill ice cream on the front of your dress, Grace Monroe Sullivan. No, you acted like a common whore and fucked two men on a live audio feed at your father's campaign fundraiser!"

  "Oh, fuck you," Vi bursts out. "And fuck your slut-shaming and fuck your campaign fundraiser."

  If my mother's head could spin entirely in circles, I think it would right now. "You," she hisses. "You're not to say another goddamn word. If you think I don't know what kind of an influence you've been on my daughter–"

  "Your daughter is twenty-six, not twelve," Vi says. "And she's been through enough already."

  "How dare you talk to me that way!" my mother screeches.

  "Vi," I warn, finally finding my voice. Except my voice is conciliatory. "It's– I fucked up."

  "You're damn right you fucked up," my mother yells. "You ruined everything for your father. Do you understand that? His approval rating dropped twenty-two percent in the last forty-eight hours. His polls are down by thirteen points! And, so help me, you're going to fix it."

  "Grace!" Vi says, looking at me with wide eyes. "Tell her to go to hell."

  "But she's right. I shouldn't have done- that- at my father's campaign fundraiser," I admit. "It was impulsive. And ill-considered. And I'm sorry it got broadcast for everyone to hear. Hell, I'm more sorry about that than you can imagine. I'm sorry I got caught." I take a deep breath and resolve to say what I'm going to say, setting my jaw and looking at my mother with defiance in my veins. "But I'm not sorry it happened."

  "You'll be more than sorry, do you understand?" my mother shrieks. "You don't want to think about your father's career? Fine. Don't want to consider all the good he still has left to do during the next four years? Fine. Don't want to think about the fact that you've completely destroyed your life forever, that you'll be remembered as 'that girl' for the rest of your life? Fine. But you'll be doubly sorry when your paramours lose their contracts, everything they’ve worked for, because of your inability to keep your legs closed!"

  "Are you threatening me?" I ask, appalled. My own mother?

  "Let me be crystal clear. We have fixers doing what they do at this very moment– patching up every loose end pertaining to this unfortunate affair. Now, there's nothing that can be done to take back the fact that your voice has been broadcast everywhere– there were mobile uploads of you recorded on phones at the fundraiser within seconds of it happening. But there are loose ends to tie up that would affect your boyfriends greatly if they were to come untied."

  "Don't listen to this, Grace," Vi interrupts.

  "Shut up," my mother snaps. "Your neighbors, your colleagues, your staff at the camp– anywhere those men might have been seen with you– are all being interviewed as we speak. Payoffs are being made, favors being given, to retain their silence. Non-disclosure agreements are being signed. Everything is being done to ensure that at the very least, your boyfriends remain anonymous. And if you want them to remain anonymous, you're going to do exactly what I say."

  "Their silence– they won't want that…" I start, but my voice drifts off as I think about the contract Noah is about to sign– about the contract Aiden just signed. There are morals clauses in those, aren't there? Behavior requirements. Noah and Aiden said they had to stay on the straight and narrow.

  If they couldn't play football…

  If my family– if being connected to me- were the reason they couldn't play football for the rest of their lives, they would resent me forever. I would have taken away everything from them.

  I can't be the reason for their total destruction. I won't.

  So I make a deal with the Devil.

  45

  Aiden

  It's been thirty-three days since the incident.

  It's been thirty days since we were picked up in an unmarked SUV outside of training camp (because in the midst of all of this shit, training camp started) by armed agents in suits and taken out of town to a landing strip where the First Lady met us and told us to stand down.

  "My daughter has been eviscerated in the media," she says frostily. "She has been torn apart. My husband's last term in office and his re-election campaign are now marred by this disgusting incident."

  "Where is Grace?" I demand. I don't give a shit about the president's re-election campaign or what the hell his last term in office is like.

  "Grace is going to rehab," the First Lady tells us. "It'll be announced tomorrow. This little dalliance she's had with the two of you is going to be written off as a byproduct of a nervous breakdown triggered by the stress of working on her father's campaign and running the foundation."

  "What, are you kidnapping her?" scoffs Noah. "This is ridiculous."

  The First Lady raises her eyebrows. "Oh, I see. You think she's being held against her will? How quaint. I'd figured both of you were slightly more worldly than this."

  "She wouldn't have chosen to go to rehab," I say.

  She narrows her eyes. "Did you really think that the daughter of the President of the United States is going to continue an affair with two athletes?" She practically spits the word. "You didn't think this was ever going to work long-term, did you? Surely the two of you aren't that naïve. She was never going to choose you over her family– you do understand that, don't you? The First Daughter wasn't going to pick even one of you over her image and her family and her career and her country. She certainly wasn't going to choose both of you."

  "We want to talk to her," Noah growls.

  "Oh, you want to talk to her?" The First Lady mocks him. "That would do wonders for her reputation, wouldn't it? If you care at all about her, you'll leave her in peace so that she can pull together the scraps of dignity she has left."

  If we care at all about her, we'll leave her in peace…

  The First Lady was right. Grace was completely annihilated in the media– and we were not, even though we should have been right there in the same articles. Instead, we were written off as her unnamed lovers.

  For the past month, Noah and I have both been on edge, seething, barely speaking to each other. Noah stomps through the house, angry and sullen and practically breathing fire. We've gotten in trouble for rough play at practices. Noah got fined after he told a reporter to fuck off and walked out of an interview.

  Mama Ashby called right after the campaign fundraiser. Word travels fast, even in West Bend. She wanted to know if Grace was okay and said that the next time she saw us, she was going to slap us both upside the head. That was until we told her that Grace's mother had convinced her to go to rehab, or that Grace had chosen rehab (and her family and her image) over us. Bess insisted that didn't fit with the Grace she met in West Bend, but who the hell knows? A few weeks ago, I would have thought the same thing. But Grace is the daughter of the president.

  My sister called a couple of weeks ago.

She had missed most of the news while she was traveling. Her first question was whether we were the guys with Grace. She was more pissed off that we'd hidden the relationship from her than anything else.

  "I'm not talking to my sister about who I'm screwing, Annie!"

  "It's different when she's the daughter of the president!" she yells back over the phone. "I'm reading it in a tabloid right now!"

  "The shit in the tabloids will stop soon enough if no one keeps feeding it.”

  "You and Noah were really with the First Daughter," she says in disbelief. "Like, the three of you. Together-together?"

  I exhale heavily. "Fuck, Annie, I don't know anymore, okay?" I exclaim. "I thought we were. I thought she was with us."

  "She was your girlfriend?" Annie asks, her tone softening.

  "I thought so. But obviously I was wrong."

  "So you and Noah both like her? Do you love her?"

  "I don't know, Annie," I groan. "Why the fuck are we even talking about this?"

  "It's not a hard question, Aiden," she says. "I wasn't asking you how to split an atom. I was asking if you guys love her or not. It's yes or no."

  "Fuck, Annie, yes, okay? I do. I'm pretty sure Noah does, too. Does that make you happy? Your man-whore brother finally fell in love– with a girl he has to share– and she's chosen to go to rehab rather than publicly admit she's with him."

  Annie is silent for a moment. "No, that doesn't make me happy, A-hole," she says. "And it obviously doesn't make you happy either. So why don’t you man up and do something about it– you and Noah?"

  "She's been taken off by the White House to fake rehab in hiding someplace, Annie," I say, my voice tired. "We have no idea where the hell she is and no one is giving us that information. Besides, even if we knew, it’s not like we could break in and force her to talk to us.”

  "Well, then, get creative."

  Vi shows up on our doorstep, barging into the house without a word and walking straight into the living room like she owns the place. “Nice digs,” she comments. “Very grown-up for athletes.”

  “Did you come here to comment on our interior decorating, or do you have news about Grace?” I ask.

  Noah crosses his arms. “Like where the fuck is she?”

  “She’s home,” Vi tells us.

  “She’s home?” I ask. Un-fucking-believable. She’s been silent for a month, and now she’s home– not more than a hundred yards away from us– and we’ve had exactly zero communication from her. No text message, no email, nothing. “Like, right-beside-this-place, home?”

  Vi nods. “She doesn’t know I’m here.”

  Noah groans his frustration. “So she disappears for a month and then comes back to her house, which is right beside my place, and doesn’t even bother to say, oh, I don’t know– ‘Hello, sorry I disappeared, I’m back’?”

  “Look, don’t get all pissy with me,” Vi says. “Like I said, she doesn’t even know I’m here. In fact, I’ve been expressly forbidden to talk to you.”

  “Why the hell would you be forbidden to talk to us?” I ask. “I can understand Grace being upset about what happened– fuck, the media has been all over it. She’s been in every damn tabloid in the country. But she can’t be pissed off at us for not fessing up to being with her when she decided to run off to some bullshit rehab for the last month– ”

  Vi interrupts me. “Her parents convinced her to do it,” she says.

  “Yeah, we gathered that. We got a visit from the First Lady,” Noah grumbles. “She made it clear that we shouldn’t have ever expected Grace to slum it with guys like us. White trash athletes don’t get with girls like her, right? Grace clearly chose her path, and that’s what she wants to do. So if you have something else to say that doesn’t involve rubbing that fact in our faces, say it so you can get the hell out of my house.”

  “Grace didn’t choose not to slum it with you two, as you so eloquently put it,” Vi says. “She chose not to take your careers down in flames with her image.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?” I ask.

  “Did you really honestly think Grace would choose to walk away from you because you’re athletes and not billionaires or politicians?” Vi asks. “You can’t be that dense.”

  “She could have come to us,” I say. “You took off with her that night. You could have brought her here, and we would have protected her. Instead, you ran off with her and the next thing we hear is from the First Lady. And the fucking newspapers. Everything else is radio silence– from both of you.”

  “I’m her best friend,” Vi says. “But she’s a big girl who makes her own decisions. And her decision was to do what was best for you.”

  “I don’t even know what the hell that means,” Noah says, his voice loud. “How was this what was best for anyone other than her parents?”

  Vi exhales loudly. “The First Lady had everyone who knew anything about the three of you together silenced– not killed, I mean, just paid off– in exchange for Grace going along with the ‘nervous breakdown’ story.”

  “Why would she do that?” I ask. “We would have come out as the guys involved. I’m not fucking ashamed of any of it!”

  “Because of your contracts, obviously,” Vi says. “Grace knew that Noah was about to sign a contract worth millions –”

  “I’d already signed it,” Noah interrupts.

  “What?” Vi asks.

  “I’d already signed the contract. That was one of the things I was going to tell her at the fundraiser before we… before everything happened. I’d signed the contract earlier. It was a done deal. She went along with this because she thought it would protect us?”

  “It’s Grace,” Vi says, sighing. “Of course she went along with it. She’s always worried about helping everyone before herself. It’s her biggest flaw.”

  “Why wouldn’t she just come talk to us about it?” I ask.

  “Because if it came down to it, she didn’t want you to have to make the choice between her or your careers. She didn’t want you to resent her for it.” Vi exhales. “And I was okay going along with it, because it’s what she wanted. But she’s not happy, and I’m hoping you’re not happy either.”

  “Of course we’re not fucking happy,” I snap.

  “Well, then, do something about it. She’s right next door.”

  “So we should break the door down and talk some sense into her?” Noah asks, his voice gravelly.

  “Well, my advice would be to finesse it just a little bit more than that,” Vi suggests. “She might have been misguided, but she still thinks that by staying away from you, she’s protecting you. And she’s been through a hell of a month. It was hard enough to convince her to come back to her house instead of living in hiding for the next year, or moving to the other side of the world.”

  I think of the shit she’s been through– the stories that have been written about her, the names she’s been called– and realize that Noah and I haven’t faced any of that.

  And she did it because she thought she was protecting us.

  46

  Grace

  It’s my first night back in my house, and this place is shut up tighter than Fort Knox. The shades on the windows are drawn, the doors are dead-bolted shut, and my new private bodyguards are posted in the backyard, the front yard, and in front of my gate. I told my parents I was refusing Secret Service protection– I liked Brooks and Davis well enough, but there’s no way I was letting a security detail report my every move to my parents now– but there are two unmarked SUVs parked down the road from my house watching me anyway.

  The neighborhood had to hire an additional security guy for the front gate because of all of the reporters, and despite the increased security, my bodyguards still had to get rid of two