Chapter 4

Ten years. Outside of our own tiny circle, he had never once publicly acknowledged me as his girlfriend.

The interview rolled on. Maddie slipped quietly out of frame and coiled her way over to me like a snake.

"You must feel so hopeless right now," she murmured, her smile venomous. "You crossed Logan. You're finished in this industry. He'll never spare you another glance."

I looked at her the way you'd look at a corpse.

When I didn't react, something vicious flickered behind her eyes. She suddenly reached out and seized my sleeve in a death grip.

Before I could pull free, she let out a blood-curdling shriek and threw herself backward with all her own momentum, crashing with a bang into the tactical board and the equipment cart behind her.

Aah!

"Ava! Why would you do this to me?"

The hush shattered. Every head in the arena snapped around.

"What the hell are you doing?" Logan shoved reporters aside and came charging over, scooping Maddie up against his chest before whirling on me. "Ava, what the fuck is wrong with you?"

"I didn't touch her." I looked at his furious, contorted face and calmly pointed upward. "The center hang is wired into a three-sixty security feed with no blind spots. Go ahead. Check it."

Logan didn't absorb a single word. He stroked the scrape on Maddie's skin like it was a mortal wound, raging like a lion.

"You pull one more stunt like this and I won't just petition the league to fire you. I'll sue you for assault."

I nearly laughed out loud.

He seemed to have forgotten that he no longer had a future to threaten me with.

The commotion was all the fans needed. The ones who'd already hated me started booing openly. And the four ingrates I'd built from nothing closed in around me, faces twisted with contempt.

"See? I always said this poisonous bitch had no character. She'll even put hands on a girl!"

"If she hadn't been running a pressure cooker in this locker room all season, we'd have won by twice as much!"

Logan rose, face dark, and crowded into my space. "Apologize to her."

I ignored him. I took out my phone and connected to the arena's control system.

A heartbeat later, the massive Jumbotron overhead flared to life, the image blown up huge.

Thousands of pairs of eyes locked onto that screen — where it was perfectly, unmistakably clear that Maddie had grabbed my arm herself and then thrown her own weight backward.

Through the entire sequence, I hadn't even shifted my feet.

Logan's pupils contracted. The color drained out of his face. A sharp collective gasp ran through the stands, followed by a wave of disbelieving noise.

I looked down at his rigid face and delivered it one word at a time.

"As of today, I, Ava Sinclair, am terminating every professional and personal relationship with this team."