Vegas Aces: The Wide Receiver Complete Series

CHAPTER 7 TRISTAN

I stare at the text for what feels like hours even though it’s only been a couple minutes since it came through.

It feels like the second one fire goes out, another one pops up somewhere else.

It’s getting exhausting, quite frankly.

I just unpacked my suitcase and stepped out of the shower at my parents’ house when I heard the text come through.

Unknown: Have you told your fiancée about your time at Coax yet?

It’s from a Vegas area code, but I’m not sure that matters.

Maybe I should just tell Tessa about it. I’m not sure it’s even that big of a deal. So I’m a member of an exclusive, members-only club where sex happens. Okay, fine…a sex club . But I never fucked anybody there, and her accusation that I only want to be with her because I want to save her sort of meshes with the things I learned about myself in my time on the third floor at Coax.

But then I remember my vow to myself. It was always going to be my dirty little secret. I never wanted anybody to find out, and the more I think about it, the more certain I am that Tessa should never know…especially not after I ran into Brandi when I was in Las Vegas.

I just don’t think she’d understand. She’s on the conservative side. She was raised the daughter of the town pastor, and I feel like she’d never see me the same again.

Maybe it’s true…maybe I do have a savior complex, and maybe I get off on stepping in to save the day. But that doesn’t mean that’s why I want to be with Tessa.

I want to be with Tessa because of the things I said to her.

I had plenty of opportunity to be with other women over the last few years—the last few months in particular. I wasn’t holding out for Tessa, which should be obvious given the fact that I married another woman, but I was holding out to find the sort of connection I shared with her. I wanted to feel the way she made me feel. I wanted to experience that deep bond with somebody the way I did with her.

We haven’t set a wedding date yet.

With the doctor’s wife finding out about the baby and threatening to sue for custody…paired with my dad’s illness showing me how short life is…on top of the constant threats coming my way courtesy of my ex… plus all the different people trying to break the two of us up—I’m starting to think we should do it sooner rather than later.

I can’t lose her again.

I realize marriage doesn’t mean I won’t, particularly given the hell my last marriage was, but if we’re legally tied to one another, she’ll have a better shot at custody if the doctor comes after her. We’ll have a better shot of making it through the Savannah threats or the Stephanie break-ups or the Tiffany manipulations or whoever it is that sent me this text this morning.

I delete it.

It’s not worth responding to, but somebody somewhere knows I went to Coax. Somebody somewhere knows what happened.

And I’m quite sure it’s not something Tessa needs to know.

It’s almost like whoever sent it can sense I deleted it because another one comes through.

Unknown: I’d be happy to inform her about your savior complex even on the third floor.

My first thought is somehow Savannah found out.

But I know her number, and besides, she wouldn’t hide her intentions. This isn’t her style.

Don’t engage , I tell myself.

Unknown: I’m sure she’d love to hear all about what went down with Brandi in particular.

I wonder for a second if this is Brandi. I got to know her, and I trusted her, and she’s a member, too, so she signed the same legal paperwork I did about contacting members outside of the club.

But she wouldn’t do that.

At least…I don’t think she would.

Maybe I brushed her off faster than I should have back at the bash Ben threw for me in Vegas.

And it was another reminder that these people exist outside of Coax. In some ways, the world seems so vast, but in others…it’s a small world.

I was raised with that small town mentality where everyone knows everything about everyone else until the one girl I cared about disappeared. Then nobody seemed to have any answers—or they trusted that whatever the town pastor was telling us was the truth.

If only they all knew.

Besides, I did seemingly disappear from the club as if from out of nowhere. I’d been going nearly weekly until the season ended, and then I came up here, reconnected with Tessa, and the rest is history.

I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to engage, so I block the number.

And that’s when I remember something I found out in Vegas.

I download the JustFans app and find the profile Cory showed me.

Tessa Taylor, age 25, Chicago, Illinois. Engaged to NFL wide receiver.

The profile picture is definitely Tessa, and now that I’m home and can think for a second, I realize I’ve seen the photo before. I open Instagram and navigate to her account, where I spot the matching photo almost immediately.

I glance at the clock. It’s five minutes until window time, and I think I should just be honest with her. I don’t want to upset her, especially not when life in general has been stressful lately and she’s supposed to be avoiding stress.

Still, she should know. This is something we should face together.

I report the account as impersonation, but I don’t imagine that will stop whoever this is.

She’s getting into position in her window, so I open mine.

“Can we talk about something?” I start.

Her brows knit together, and she nods. “Anything.”

“Cory showed me something while we were in Vegas, and I think you should know about it.”

Her hand moves to her chest. “Me?”

I nod.

“What is it?”

I toss my phone on the bed from where I sit. Best to just get this out there, right? “Someone’s impersonating you online,” I blurt. “They’re using one of your images for their profile on JustFans.”

“ JustFans ?” she screeches. “The porn site?”

“I mean, it’s not exclusively porn, but yeah, that subscription site where creators can charge for original content,” I say.

“What am I doing on there?” she asks a little dryly.

“I don’t know. I haven’t paid to see, but there are little underwear dances meant to be teasers to get users to purchase more. I’m sorry, Tess.” My voice is quiet.

“What does more mean?” She looks like she’s about to vomit.

I shrug. “She’ll maybe pull on a bra strap so you think she’ll ditch it in the paid portion. Maybe tease with her panties to make you think she’ll touch herself.”

“And she’s pretending to be me?” she asks. “But…why? How?”

“She’s only showing her body. Her hair could pass for yours, like she styles it the same way as you. As for the why…I don’t know. And I don’t know the who , either. I’ve reported the account, and I plan to have my lawyer look into it more. We can file a police report if you want.”

“Stephanie,” she hisses. “She cut her hair like mine. She dyed it, too.”

“Why would she start up a JustFans impersonating you?” I ask.

Her fingertips move to her forehead, which she rubs for a second as she thinks. “I don’t know. Between her daddy issues and her totally obsessive personality, I can’t quite figure out why she does anything she does.”

“You really think it’s her?”

She shakes her head with disgust. “I’d need to see it, but she’s the first person who came to mind who’d want to mess with me.”

I nod. I don’t say anything more, but I can see the fear on her face.

Now that our relationship is public, Stephanie—or even Tiffany and Savannah, for that matter—are hardly the only people on Earth who’d want to mess with her. With us .

I suppose one option is to just quit now. It would be the easy way out even though it would be much, much harder than last time.

But nothing worth anything comes easy.

It might be an option on paper, but it’s not an option for us. We’ve fought to hell and back to get to where we are now, and I refuse to give up. I love Tessa. I love our baby. I love our future.

I will slay every single one of the monsters myself if I have to. As long as her hand is planted firmly in mine, we can get through anything.

As soon as I have that thought, I pray I’m not jinxing us.

I pray I’m not tempting the universe to bring its worst.

When you’re going through something, you always think it’s the worst thing—that you can’t handle any more piled on top of what you’re already dealing with. What doesn’t kill you…and all that, I guess.

But I have a feeling all this is far from over, and I never imagined these would be the easy problems. I never imagined how much more would be piled on or how much harder things would get.

I never imagined there would come a time when we’d give up the fight for each other.

For us .