Chapter Sixteen
Eden
“Woo! C’mon! Troy’s our boy! Troy’s our boy!”
Shrill feminine voices filled my ears, and I smiled as I watched the Stud contestants waving white and blue pom-poms in the air as they jumped up and down with excitement. They were standing on the edge of the field at Levi’s Stadium, just below where I was sitting with the other producers, and the little cheer routine they’d just started was going to make a good shot for the episode promo video.
Four weeks had gone by since the fateful hot tub incident, and we were down to just seven contestants now—Hayley, Cailin, Anya, Blair, Bonnie, Emily and Elise. For this week’s group date, we’d headed down to San Francisco for an off-season charity football game in Troy’s home stadium, and the women were acting as cheerleaders for his team. They were playing a team from Seattle, and all the proceeds from the game would be going straight to a children’s hospital.
Even though it wasn’t a ‘real’ game in the grand scheme of things, I was still hoping Troy’s team would win, not because of the fact that it would make good TV to have his team win during this episode, but because I wanted to see his face light up. I hadn’t been to one of his games since I was a teenager watching him play high school football, but I still remembered and loved the bright, exuberant look in his eyes whenever he helped lead his team to victory, and I desperately wanted to see it again.
The last few weeks had been good for us. As bad as the hot tub incident had been (I’d rightfully felt like such a bitch for my ignorant, untrusting part in it) it’d made us reach a turning point in our relationship where we’d realized just how much the past still affected us and how important it was that we communicate properly to get past any issues that might arise because of it. It was hard sometimes—the past was honestly like a bomb, and once that shrapnel is inside you, it will always work its way to the surface one way or another—but overall, we were doing really well now. I knew beyond a shadow of doubt that I could trust Troy, and I knew he felt the same.
Nothing was going to screw things up for us now.
The last play of the charity game was about to begin, and I turned my attention back to the field and held my breath. Troy’s team were down two points, and there wasn’t much time left, but I was still holding out hope. You can do it, Troy! I silently willed, hoping my message would telepathically reach him. He was conferring with a coach, and after nodding a couple of times, he ran back to the huddle with his team and said something to them before both teams went back into their formations.
The play finally began, and Troy took the ball from the center, faked a movement to the right, and then deftly ran to the left. Anticipation hung and crackled in the air like electricity, and I smiled as I watched him, knowing what was going to happen. He had a perfect arm, and it was going to find its target. His pass danced through the air in a breathtakingly perfect spiral before landing perfectly in the wide receiver’s hands, and the wide receiver then turned and dashed towards the end zone. The Seattle defenders launched themselves at him, but he dodged them all, sidestepping and weaving through and around them, leaving them all fumbling like goons in his wake. The crowd went wild as he entered the end zone before slamming the ball for a touchdown, and I turned my attention back to Troy, who was grinning blissfully back up the field.
There was that look I’d been hoping for, and it made my heart soar right to the heavens.
His eyes found me in the crowd, and his grin somehow grew even wider as he waved and gave me a nod. Given where I was standing, it looked like he was waving and smiling at the contestants just below me, and our show cameras captured the moment as colored confetti, balloons and streamers began to rain down on everyone. I wished I could run down to Troy and jump into his arms, but obviously I couldn’t do that.
Candice sighed next to me a few minutes later; she’d never been a sports fan, and none of the crowd’s positive energy had affected her in the slightest. “And now here’s the fun part, where we wait around for ten thousand years while the crew packs up everything,” she said, rolling her eyes as the team headed off the field and the Stud contestants went to get changed. “God, I’m so bored. I kinda even miss our Sabotage Queen. At least things were more interesting when she was around.”
I gave her a wry smile. “It’s not that bad,” I replied. “And seriously, it’s a good thing that she’s vanished. Remember how pissed Glenn was about all she crap she pulled? ‘The wrong kind of drama’ and so on. I’m glad she was eliminated, whoever she was.”
“True. Although, maybe she was never eliminated. I honestly still kinda suspect Anya. Maybe she’s just lying low for a while.”
I sighed. “Yeah, maybe. But we’ve been keeping an eye on her for weeks now just in case, and nothing’s happened. I’m pretty sure that whoever it was, she’s been cut already.”
“Eden! Candice!”
Candice and I both snapped our heads up at the sound of Glenn calling to us, and we looked over at him. “Yeah?”
“Candice, go and make sure the girls are all okay and not lost or anything. It’s like herding cats with them around,” he began. “And Eden, you go and find Troy in the locker room and tell him not to get dressed yet—I changed my mind and I want a shirtless interview out here before we pack up. Sweat and all. Our viewers will be creaming their panties at that.”
I nodded and stood up, and Candice snickered next to me as she did the same. “Have fun in the stinky locker room,” she said.
I poked my tongue out. “You mean the stinky locker room filled with sexy, muscular half-naked football players?”
She grinned. “Touché.”
We went our separate ways to do what Glenn had asked us, and I paused outside the team’s main locker room after flashing my pass at the security guys in the corridor. Most of Troy’s teammates were spilling out after having already changed, and they were heading down the corridor the opposite way towards the media room, where I assumed they’d be giving interviews to news channels about the charity game they’d just played.
I stopped one of them with a wave of my hand and gave him a polite smile. “Hi, sorry, I’m one of the producers from—”
He grinned and cut me off. “Let me guess, The Stud? We’ve all been giving Troy so much shit for that.”
I smiled. “Yeah, that’s the one. Anyway, is he in there?”
He nodded. “Yeah, he is. You can go in if you want. I’m sure there’s nothing in there you haven’t already seen before.”
He winked, and for a heart-stopping second, I thought he knew about me and Troy. Then I realized he was just making a joke, and I laughed weakly and thanked him before pushing open the locker room door and stepping inside to find it mostly empty.
I hadn’t been in a sports locker room since the day I scored my first date with Troy back in high school, and even though this was a professional league locker room, it wasn’t all that different. Sure, everything was a bit more polished and definitely newer, but it still smelled exactly like our old high school one; that musky, heady scent of masculine sweat. Not the sweetest smell in the world, but not unpleasant either.
I spotted Troy sitting alone and shirtless on a bench, and I was hit by another wave of nostalgia. It was all the same; the almost-empty locker room, him shirtless on a bench and looking as sexy as ever…only this time, I wasn’t nervous in his presence.
“Hey, this is perfect,” I said as I approached. “Glenn wants you all sweaty and half-naked outside for an interview, and here you are, already shirtless.”
Troy looked up and flashed me a good-natured grin. “I’ve already wiped myself down, so I’m probably not going to be sweaty enough to please him.” He stood up as he spoke, and before I could reply, he pinned me up against a locker. “But I can think of one way to get nice and sweaty again before going back out there.”
I frantically pushed him away. “Troy!” I hissed. “Someone could see us!”
“Isn’t that half the fun?” he murmured, leaning in again and pressing his lips close to my ear as one hand slid up my shirt. “C’mon, just a little quickie. There’s no one else in here now anyway.”
“No, really, Troy, we can’t,” I replied, my voice a little breathless now. I had to admit, I was pretty turned on by the thought of being with him right here and now, but I couldn’t risk my job. Someone could walk in here at any moment.
He chuckled and drew back. “Don’t worry, I’m kidding. But fuck, you’re so sexy, it’s kinda hard for me not to—”
I clamped my hand over his mouth at the sound of the main locker room door opening, and he sprang back as he realized someone was coming. I smoothed down my shirt, and a few seconds later, Glenn came into view. He strode over to us. “Oh, there you are. I was worried you got lost. I see you found our man, though.”
My face was burning, and I hoped it wasn’t as red as I thought it was. “Yeah, I just found him a second ago.”
“Troy, I trust Eden told you what I want?” Glenn said, turning his attention away from me. I breathed a quiet sigh of relief; we were safe for now.
“Yep. I was about to shower, but luckily Eden caught me in time and let me know what’s happening.”
Glenn gave me a smile. “Yes, Eden always gets things done on time. One of the reasons she’s my favorite junior producer. Now, let’s go and do this before we lose any more light.”
He turned around, and we followed him out of the locker room. My cheeks were still burning with guilt and shame; Glenn’s words had really struck a nerve. He was a bit of an ass sometimes, but he’d made it very clear to me that he trusted me and saw me as a bit of a protégé, and here I was repaying that respect by sneaking around with the leading man from his show.
As we walked, I wondered how much longer I could do this. How much longer could I betray the people I worked with? How much longer could I go against all my professional ethics? And how much longer could Troy and I pretend we weren’t together without it all blowing up in our faces? I hadn’t thought about it all that much over the last few weeks, because I’d just been so blissfully happy that we were back together, but now the reality of what we were doing was finally crashing down on me.
The show’s filming would wrap in about four weeks, once the final eliminations had been made and Troy had picked the winner, but that didn’t automatically mean we could be publicly together right away. The Stud and the winner usually did magazine and TV interviews for months after the season had aired, pretending to be blissfully happy with each other, and I wasn’t sure I could handle the stress of hiding our relationship from the world for that long while Troy played along with the show’s obligations. It’d been bad enough hiding it for the last five weeks or so.
The thoughts were still plaguing my mind ten minutes later as Troy filmed the shirtless post-game interview, and halfway through it, he looked over at me and gave me a heart-melting smile. With that, all the negativity in my mind seemed to fade away, and I just couldn’t think about our troublesome issues anymore. That smile of his had always been able to take away all my problems, and today was no different.
We could save our worries for another day.