Markus Spears answered his phone on the third ring, and he sounded out of breath.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“Mr. Spears, you’re speaking to Kina Peterson. I’m phoning on behalf of Jacob Lawson.”

“Who are you?” he asked. “A reporter?”

“No, I’m the PR Manager working with him.”

“Right,” he said, and he didn’t sound happy at all.

I hoped that it was enough for him to talk to me about everything.

“Would you mind if I spoke to you about the messages that have been circulating recently? I understand that he’s slighted you in some way.”

“You’re damn right he did,” Markus said. “Don’t know if you follow the news, miss, but he’s a loose cannon.”

“Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

He snorted. “You don’t need much of anything to happen for him to lose his mind, if that’s what you’re asking.”

I rolled my eyes. He was dramatic, trying to drag it out. I just wanted facts, not an emotional rollercoaster.

“What happened?” I asked again. “I can’t seem to find anything specific in the media.”

The messages were all about how Markus was the victim, but there were no real events that I could find.

“I was out with my friends, minding my own business, when he attacked me. He’s mad, I tell you.”

“Why would he just attack you?” I asked.

“Beats me. I said something about Texas, and it must have struck a nerve. It was ugly.”

I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly.

“When did this happen?”

“Friday night. He’ll never do it at training when everyone’s around to suspend him and put him down on his ass where he belongs.”

I nodded. I had everything I needed to know. “Thank you, Mr. Spears. I appreciate your input.”

He said something I couldn’t make out before he hung up.

He’d told me as much as I needed to know. Markus Spears was lying through his ass, and he was trying to bring Jacob down. I had no idea what his problem was, but I knew he was lying. If his story had been on any other day, I might have believed enough to follow up with witnesses, but it wasn’t necessary. Markus Spears was lying.

I knew he was lying because the alleged fight happened while Jacob and I were having sex.

Jacob arrived just after nine. He was freshly showered. I could smell his soap and aftershave. He was dressed in sports clothes, ready to go to his training session after he came to me. He didn’t look very happy, though. He seemed a little down, and it was understandable.

“Hello, Jacob,” I said. It was all very formal. I would have liked to give him a hug, but we were in public and our working relationship wasn’t supposed to allow for that kind of intimacy, never mind everything else we’d been doing.

“How are you?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Tired of all this gossip when all I want to do is play ball. This isn’t even sports anymore, it’s about entertainment. People are bored out of their minds, and they’re amused by someone else’s suffering.”

I nodded. He wasn’t wrong. He sounded a little bitter, and I could see how this would get him down. I was embarrassed because of how Kyle was being, and I wasn’t even famous.

“Well,” I said. “I think you can deal with the good news first, then.”

Jacob looked at me with hopeful eyes.

“I verified what Markus is talking about, and it’s bullshit.”

Jacob looked relieved. “How did you find out?” he asked.

“I phoned him.”

He frowned. “And he told you it was bullshit?”

I chuckled. “Oh, no. He told me everything that happened. How you were out in public with him and attacked him for saying something about Texas. On Friday night.”

Jacob shook his head. “I was with you on Friday night.”

“My point exactly.”

He smiled. “Right.” He took a deep breath, and it seemed like it was a weight off his shoulders. His smile faded a little. “So, what do we do, now?”

“Well, that’s where I’m stuck,” I said. “Coming clean about where you were is ideally what you would want to do. A witness will do wonders for your career.”

“But we were—”

“Yeah, I know.” I watched him, my face carefully expressionless. “That might not look very good when it gets out.”

“It’s not good that we’re doing it?”

I shook my head. “It’s okay, I guess, but I’m your PR Manager. It can be misconstrued as a business move on your end, something to bribe me with.”

Jacob nodded, slowly. “I get it. God, people are inclined to think the worst, aren’t they?”

“Unfortunately,” I said.

“What if I just lie about it and throw it back on him? I’m sure I can come up with something that will make him look bad, instead. People will believe anything.”

“They will. And they love drama and gossip, and it will be like reality television. You don’t want to go there, trust me. The moment you call him out and say something that’s a lie, too, he’s going to retaliate. You’re going to get stuck in a circle of revenge and he-said-she-said, and you don’t want that.”

“But it’s my image.”

I shook my head. “It’s not. If you do that, it’s about his image you’ll be playing at, and that’s just bad sportsmanship. Be the bigger man.”

Jacob sighed loudly. “Being the bigger man doesn’t exactly fix things.”

“Not right away, no,” I said. I understood where he was coming from. “But in the long run, they’ll like you better for it, and you’ll look better as a player who should be kept on in the end.”

Jacob didn’t look happy. I knew he wanted revenge. He wanted to do to Markus what he’d done to him so it was fair. No one liked it when their name was being dragged through the mud. It was so easy to respond, to do the same.

“Markus wants you to retaliate. If he can get you to respond, great. If he can get you to fight with him, even better. He wants you to freak out and respond with exactly what he’s accusing you of. If you do that, all you’ll do is prove his lies right.”

Jacob groaned. “Why is this so complicated? What the hell did I do to deserve this?”

“I know it sucks,” I said. “But we’re working on this. We’ll make it happen.”

Jacob sighed again. He looked around the office, toward the window, at my table. I could almost see his mind working.

“I think if I keep quiet, though, I will be made a fool, and I can’t defend myself. That’s not fair either. Or what if I tell the world about you? Something has to work.”

I blinked at him.

“I really don’t think it’s a good idea,” I said.

“Come on, Kina. It will be better than just sitting here.”

I took a deep breath and held it for three counts before blowing it out again. I was getting irritated. Jacob had been redeemed in my eyes by Markus’s lie, but he was starting to grate me again.

“Look, in the end, it’s your choice. You decide what you want to do and let me know.”

Jacob frowned. “You’re going to leave this up to me?”

“I’m here to give you advice and nothing more,” I said coldly. “It’s your choice how you want to handle your career.” I wanted to be sarcastic about how good a job he did before, but I wasn’t going to be that cruel. It was clear that his history was a touchy topic. Markus wouldn’t have used it if it wasn’t. I wasn’t going to be that person.

He was getting irritated, too. I couldn’t tell why.

“Fine,” he said and his voice was snappy. “I’ll do that.”

He got up.

“You have to tell me by Friday what you decided. If you don’t, your career will be open. You don’t have forever to think about this.”

Jacob nodded and left without saying anything else. We were back to being sticky. For a moment there, it had seemed like we were okay again, like we were agreeing. I liked Jacob, and I liked it when we got along. I didn’t like when we got stuck, and that seemed to happen quite often. Jacob was a stubborn man. If he wasn’t going to listen to me about what to do, he had to make his own choices. I was his PR manager, but I wasn’t going to tell him what to do. I wasn’t his mother.

I sighed. Deciding that didn’t make me feel any better about it all. I wished he would come back, and we could fix us. But there wasn’t an us to fix. And even if there was, he didn’t seem like the type to come back and grovel.