There’s a faint fishy smell in the air. I don’t want to be around when it grows stronger. Because I left a present for Felix too. Operation Rotten Fish, as Ivy likes to call it.

We did the same prank on our bitchy ex-camp counselor one summer, smearing fish oil under her bunk and on the inside lining of her trunk. Call it a little fuck you for dunking my head underwater when I couldn’t swim, and for telling Ivy she looked like a flagpole when she clearly had worries about being the tallest, thinnest girl in the camp.

By the end of the summer, the stench had gotten so bad, they had to fumigate. But the trunk remained, and so did the smell.

And though I’d like to believe I’ve grown up since then, the thought of all the fish oil I smeared under Felix’s desk and the tables in Elena’s office gives me a surge of satisfaction. Maybe part of us never grows up. I am surprisingly okay with that.

Dex

“Dexter, man, you’re living the dream!” Shockey, one of my linemen, gives me a hearty slap on the shoulder as we walk to our cars.

“Not my dream,” I grouse.

The “dream” Shockey refers to is the swarm of women currently dogging my every step. Panties in my locker. Tweets offering blowjobs, hand jobs, rim jobs, don’t-know-what-the-fuck-half-of-this-shit-is jobs. Women showing up outside my townhouse. Waiting for me before practice. It isn’t necessarily anything new. All players get this. It’s the sheer volume and intensity that’s driving me nuts.

“Dex.” A pretty brunette saunters up. She’s wearing my jersey, or what remains of it, because she’s cut the sleeves off and tied it into a knot to bare her midriff. “You look tired. I’d love to give you a massage.”

And they wait for me after practice. I shake my head, shrug off her grasping hands, and keep walking. Shockey, on the other hand, slows.

“Aw, honey, don’t waste your time on him. Why don’t you come and keep me company in my post-workout bath?”

The girl eyes me as if she’s trying to figure out if I’ll cave. I don’t break stride. My keys are out, and I’m in my car. Shockey leads the girl away, and I sit back and just breathe in the scent of fine leather.

I don’t care who you are, every guy goes a little crazy when he signs and gets his first big check. You’d have to be inhuman not to. Some go too crazy, buying everything in sight and saving nothing for later. Others get a few big-ticket items and then manage to hold back. Me, I bought a townhouse and a car.

My friends expected me to go in for a truck, maybe an SUV. They were wrong. I fell in love with a sweet little blue Aston Martin Vanquish. Drew instantly wanted one too, but Anna convinced him that he lives in New York City and doesn’t need a car. Now he has to admire mine from afar. Sucker.

I’m probably too big for this car, but I don’t care. I love her. And right now she’s my sanctuary. Okay, she will be as soon as I pluck the numerous perfume-scented notes and scraps of panties that are scattered like snow on the windshield. That people have pawed my car makes my eye twitch.

“Fucking hell…” I take a breath, tossing all of the mess onto the passenger side of my car—because I refuse to fucking litter—and slamming the door shut.

This has to end. Soon. I’m not used to being hounded this badly. I don’t like it. At all.

Worse? It’s not going away. It’s growing. I’m the butt of every damn sex joke in sports right now. Maybe I shouldn’t be embarrassed. But I am. My skin feels too tight and my stomach leaden. Every time a woman approaches me, seeking out her opportunity, it feels like high school all over again.

Rubbing the back of my neck, I turn the car on and pull out. I revel in the act of driving, losing myself in the purr of the engine and the way the car responds to my slightest touch. I’m home too soon.

Only to find my street blocked by a few reporters and groups of desperate chicks—a few guys too, who assume maybe I’m just not yet out of the closet. I drive around to the back of my property and park in the small carriage garage.

The engine ticks as I sit there, not wanting to get out.

The team’s PR department loves this mess. I’m getting attention—not for drugs or violence, but for being virtuous, which is like a hidden gold mine for them. More ticket sales, more press.

Ivy tells me I should just come out and confess to being with Fi. Or she did until I asked point blank, “And do you honestly believe they’ll leave her alone?”

No. Ivy couldn’t assure me of that.

I think of Fi, the one perfect thing in my life. I want to keep her safe, shelter her from all this ugliness. Just keep her. Forever. She’s mine. Mine to protect. And I really don’t give a shit if that makes me sound like a caveman. Because, frankly, Fi drags the caveman out of me and sets him front and center.

But the truth of the matter hits me like a hammer to the chest. Right now, with all of this shit going on, Fi doesn’t need protection from anything but me.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Fiona

I meet my dad at our favorite Chinese restaurant on Mott Street. He and I have almost nothing in common, but we do share a deep and abiding love for soup dumplings and have thus hunted down the best of the best. Despite my fluttering nerves, I slide into the cracked red pleather booth with a hum of anticipation.

“What’s doing, kid?” Dad asks as he sets down his phone. He already has a bottle of Tsingtao beside him and the menu filled out.

I don’t protest because he knows what I like here.