Vegas Aces: The Wide Receiver Complete Series

CHAPTER 24 TRISTAN

Our bye week occurs on week eight, and it’s been over a month since I held Tessa in my arms but she hasn’t left my mind.

That means it’s also been over a month since I went to that sex club with Jaxon, Travis, and Cory.

Cory signed up right away for membership. Travis and I are both still thinking it over. We haven’t had a night out in a while, but just a regular club seems more appealing…especially given the rather steep membership price. I get that they’re trying to keep their client list at a certain elite level, but it’s also potentially turning those who are on the fence away.

Bye week is when we can finally rest up and start to allow our battered bodies to heal. I prefer to have it a little later in the season than week eight, but we don’t get a say in the matter.

I’m grateful Savannah chose this week to go out of town. She told me where she was going but my brain didn’t seem to care enough to retain that particular detail.

And so I’m doing shit around the house, shit I watched my dad do as a homeowner even though I don’t own this place. I still take pride in it. I sweep out the garage. I change the air filters. I change the batteries in the smoke detectors. I pull weeds. I fix a faucet that drips.

That’s all in the first few hours I’m off on Monday morning.

I’m used to having every minute of my time prescribed to me in season, and as much as I enjoy a little time off, now’s not ideal for me.

Not when I can’t stop thinking about her.

I think about going to Chicago and trying to find her. Would it really be that hard?

But then I think about the fact that I gave her my number and she hasn’t used it.

Why hasn’t she used it?

I’ve thought about asking my mom to get her number for me from her mom, but there’s too much gossip in small towns. I don’t need Janet blabbing to the whole town that I’m trying to get in touch with her daughter. The next thing you know, TMZ will be floating around hitting up the entire population of Fallon Ridge for any tidbit on Tristan Higgins.

I’m still the same kid I was back then. For the most part, I’m a wholesome guy. I just got mixed up with the wrong woman, and it’s giving me a bad rap instead of the things she promised before I married her.

Maybe I don’t want to be wholesome anymore.

I don’t know what to do with myself, but I’m friends with a bunch of famous athletes and we’re in Vegas. We’ll find something…even if it is an exclusive club where sex takes place on the third floor.

I’ve got a meeting with Coach Jeff scheduled in an hour, but after that…I’m sure we can find something to get up to.

I shoot off a message to my group of buddies.

Me: Anyone around for going out?

I get hits back almost immediately from several of the guys.

Cory: Getting on a plane to visit home. Don’t get arrested.

Travis: I’m down.

Jaxon: I’m in.

I don’t hear from Deon, Austin, or Patrick, but it’s our week off. They might’ve muted our chat, too. Some guys like a week completely off from everything to do with football on the bye, and sometimes I really do understand that mentality. It’s not usually Austin’s mode, but I think he said he had a meeting with his position coach this morning, too.

I start up a group chat with just Travis and Jaxon.

Me: Want to meet at London’s off-Strip?

It’s usually quieter than the clubs and bars on-Strip, and it’s filled with locals rather than tourists.

Not that tourists are a bad thing…it’s just that more often than not, they fall into one of two categories: either they’re cougars or they’re horny younger women in town for bachelorette parties who are already too drunk to have fun with.

And I’m married, as Savannah loves to remind me, so I don’t get to partake in the drunk bachelorettes nor in the cougars.

At least not publicly.

Tough choice there, anyway. I’d take either at the moment.

Jaxon: You two made up your minds on Coax yet? That’s always a possibility…

He’s not wrong.

It’s a definite possibility. Cory talked Travis and me into getting physicals after our first visit just in case . I have the results showing my clean bill of health.

Jaxon’s been after us to make a decision.

All I need to do is tell him I want in, provide my credit card number to the club along with the rest of my paperwork, and voila…I’m a member of an exclusive, elite club I didn’t even know existed a month ago.

It’s been too damn long since I’ve had sex. A man has needs, and being stuck where I am for as long as I have been with a wife I’m trying to escape means those needs are not being met in any capacity.

I have to keep my nose clean to get through to the end of this divorce despite her threats and her digging… publicly .

But what about a place where everyone who walks through the doors promises not to tell anyone outside of the doors what went on?

Travis: It’s a little too rich for my blood.

I think about the cost of the club versus our current contracts. We can afford it. One good endorsement deal would cover the annual fee.

It could be fun. I learned something new about myself the first time I was there, and it might be the perfect solution to my… problem that goes by the name Savannah.

Me: I’ll sign on for one year if you can talk Woods into it.

I slide my phone into my pocket to head toward the Complex, and it’s as I’m driving to see Coach Jeff that a thought hits me from out of nowhere.

Where is my wife right now?

Is she digging into something from my past? Is she trying to find more things she can use against me?

Or is she just off visiting a friend somewhere? Does she even have any friends?

Can she even leave town? I’m pretty sure her probation forbids her to leave Vegas, but I could be wrong.

My meeting with Coach is meant to be a session where we review this season and what I’m doing well in addition to what I can improve upon.

But maybe I need to add more to our agenda.

He might be the guy I can trust with the things Savannah is doing to me. He’s on my side, and maybe he can help me figure out how to untangle our entanglement.

When I walk into his office, he nods toward the chair across from him. “It’s been a good seven weeks so far. How’s the hamstring?”

“Tolerable.”

“Not quite the answer I was looking for,” he mutters. He glances at the screen on the wall beside us where he already has footage from the season pulled up to review. “Anything you want to talk about before we get started?”

I suck in a breath. This is my chance.

And then it hits me from out of nowhere.

Coach Jeff could run to our head coach with this news even if I vow him to secrecy. There’s way too much on the line here with my extension hanging in the balance.

No, I’m not going to talk to him about it today.

But I do have a good idea of who I can talk to about it.

As soon as my meeting with Coach Jeff is over, I make the call.

“What’s going on, Higs?” Luke Dalton answers.

He’s a former player for the Vegas Aces, and he happens to be married to my publicist. And maybe most important of all—the true motivation behind calling him rather than anybody else—is that he was married to Savannah before I was.

“Can we talk?” I ask.

“Of course. I can meet you or you can swing by here,” he says.

“Is now good?”

“Sure.” There’s a little reticence in his tone, but I appreciate that he’s willing to talk to me.

“I’m just leaving the Complex. I’ll be there in ten minutes.” True to my word, I pull up in front of Luke’s place a few minutes later.

“Come on in,” he says, and he leads me to the kitchen, where he tosses me a Gatorade. “What’s going on?”

I make an easy catch, open the bottle, and chug down half of it. “This stays between us, right?”

His brows draw together. “What’s going on?”

“I need your word.”

“Can I tell Ellie?” he asks, naming his wife…and my publicist.

“I’ll tell her eventually, but I really need your advice right now.”

He nods, probably already knowing it has something to do with his ex-wife, and he takes me out to the patio. We sit, and he waits expectantly for me to talk.

I clear my throat, and then I dive in. “Shortly after I married Savannah, she drugged me. She obtained my urine, sent it into a lab, and has evidence that makes it look like I took HGH,” I say, mentioning the performance enhancing drug Human Growth Hormone. “She’s been blackmailing me to stay married to her with those results ever since.”

“Fucking Savannah,” he mutters. He closes his eyes and shakes his head. “You’ve seen the proof? Or she’s just threatening?”

“I’ve seen it. She loves to leave copies of it all over the house for me to find.”

“God, that woman really has a thing for this shit,” he mutters. “Listen, you have two choices. You either tell your story first and risk the consequences, or you stay married.”

“What are the consequences?”

He folds his hands in front of him and leans forward a little. “Human Growth Hormone is an automatic four-game suspension.” He shrugs. “Here’s the thing, though. For one, you weren’t caught taking it by the league. For another, it happened shortly after you married her?”

I nod.

“Then it wasn’t this season. And we all know Savannah’s history with this shit after what she did to me. You can always appeal and see if the men upstairs are feeling generous.”

I stare over his pool as I think over his words.

It’s not fair, but if sitting out a few games and allowing my rep to get a little tarnished means I can finally escape her hold, then maybe it’s worth it.

“It isn’t right, and I’m guessing you’re scared, but weigh your consequences. Is it worth staying married to her for four games?” He shrugs as his gaze falls on the pool. “If you play your cards right, you might be able to orchestrate it so you’re not missing a division game or playoffs.”

The man makes a good point, but the responsible competitor in me doesn’t want to just give up so easily. It’s giving into her demands and it’s allowing her to win.

She doesn’t deserve to win…and yet, she’s still married to me, which is another win for her.

“Yeah,” I mutter.

Maybe the league will go easy on me. It wasn’t my fault…but that’s a fairly common defense when it comes to this kind of thing, and Savannah has the means and connections to blow this story up given her history as a journalist.

She won’t just make it look bad for me. She’ll make it look bad for the entire league that’s already under a microscope when it comes to performance enhancers, which tells me that even if the men upstairs are feeling generous, as Luke suggested, they’ll uphold the automatic four game suspension.

I feel like Luke gave me one perspective. My parents gave me another. Maybe I should talk to Ellie about this, too. Or my agent, Jimmy Segal.

Except the more people who know, the better the chance of it getting out. While I trust everyone in my circle, it’s embarrassing as fuck that I let her do this to me, and worse that I’ve let her get away with it as long as I have.

I guess that’s why I chose Luke as the person to talk to about it. He knows Savannah as well as I do, and while I didn’t take his advice before I married her, it might be worth my time to listen this time around.

But rather than deal with it today, I find a text message from Jaxon when I leave Luke’s place.

Jaxon: Talked Woods into it. Meet at my house at eight.

I guess it’s time to start taking advantage of my new membership.