I rolled over and found my phone on the floor in my pants pocket. When I unlocked the screen, there were more than twenty notifications. Twitter was going crazy and messages were flying around with Markus at the center of it. Football fans all over the States and Canada had comments and hashtags were trending.

“What did you do?” Kina asked, getting off the bed.

“Thanks for thinking this is my fault,” I said, aware that it sounded a little bitter.

Kina shook her head, found a robe in my bathroom and wrapped it around her body. She disappeared back down the corridor. I turned my attention back to my phone. The tweets were all about loyalty and my lack thereof, of fights between team members and Markus saying things about my anger issues.

“This is such bullshit,” I said when Kina walked back into the room. I pulled a pillow into my lap to make myself more decent. “I don’t know what this is all about, but this is making me look so bad.”

Kina was on her phone, getting onto the bed and perching on the edge. Her light blonde, long hair framed her face in messy curls. If I weren’t so worried about what was being said, I would have paid more attention to how fucking hot she was. Even when she concentrated like that, she was gorgeous. I could stare at her all day. But I had bigger things to worry about.

Like why everything was going wrong for me no matter how hard I tried to make it right. What the hell was Markus’s problem with me? Why was he picking fights with me, and over social media no less? The whole world was privy to this now, and it made me look bad. Like I needed any more bad publicity in my life.

I groaned and looked at my phone again as it pinged with more responses and retweets and everything I didn’t want.

“This is extremely unnecessary, Jacob,” Kina said looking at me.

Her eyes were bright with anger.

“Do you think I did this on purpose?” I asked. “It’s not like I planned to fuck and then get in trouble on social media for dessert.”

Her face closed when I said ‘fuck’ and I sighed.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean it that way. I’m just saying this isn’t my idea of fun.”

Kina nodded, but she didn’t look like she was just over it.

“Well, this is going to take a bit of work to fix. What is your issue with this guy, what did you do?”

I shook my head. “Why are you assuming I’m the one who did something?”

“Because no one is innocent. You didn’t transfer here because of your perfect track record.”

I was getting angry. “Yeah, that’s just what I need to hear from you right now.”

She sighed. I didn’t want to let her speak, apologize, whatever.

“You’re making it sound like I’m looking for shit.”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry. It’s just a lot to deal with when we have so much work to do as it is.”

“I’m aware that fixing up my image isn’t going to be a walk in the park, but you don’t have to rub my nose in it.”

She nodded. “I know. I said I was sorry. What’s this all about?” She gestured toward my phone.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Some of the players on the team aren’t exactly excited about my existence right now. It’s nothing I did to them, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I didn’t think it was,” she said, but it wasn’t very convincing. In fact, I had the idea that maybe it was exactly what she’d been thinking. And we’d had such a good night. Now, the mood was ruined, I was pissed off, and Kina looked like she might think I wasn’t the best person to be with after all.

“Look,” she said. “I have to get home to my laptop so we can handle this. I’ll come up with some kind of strategy for us over the weekend. Come to my office first thing on Monday morning so we can see what we can do.”

She got up and left the room, searching for her clothes. When she came back, she had her clothes in her arms. I watched her drop the robe, standing naked in front of me with no sense of self-consciousness, and put on her underwear.

I got up, trying not to stare at her too much and found boxers in my underwear drawer. When she was dressed, clothes in place again like we hadn’t done anything, I followed her to the front door and let her out.

“I’ll see you on Monday,” she said before turning around and walking away into the night.