I spotted them as soon as I stepped off the private penthouse elevator with Kayla’s phone in my hand.
My heart plummeted at the sight of the woman I loved. She was dressed in a Suns hoodie and a pair of sweatpants, with the team’s name written down one leg, and clung to the handle of her large purse as she spoke animatedly with the French butler whose name she’d insisted I commit to memory, François.
Well, Kayla didn’t look nearly as happy with his performance as she did when she made me promise to remind her about leaving a review before we left the hotel last night. And even worse than that, there was a bloke who was not me standing at her side.
I immediately recognized him as her ex, Dwayne. Even if Bruno hadn’t insisted on looking up a picture of “the enemy” yesterday at breakfast while we were plotting my perfect last day of activities with Kayla, I would’ve known who he was due to him being dressed from head to toe in L.A. Suns gear.
He had that classic bench-warmer physique. The football tights he wore underneath athletic shorts showcased his muscular legs. But the tight, long-sleeved yellow thermal top he wore underneath an orange sideline cape coat strained around his belly paunch. Clearly, he hadn’t kept up with the necessary core work to assure a strong kick for the few times he was called off the bench.
However, that didn’t bring me much solace as I approached the scene.
Dwayne and Kayla looked like a couple as she confronted François.
“Tell me!” she was saying to François. “Tell me the truth right now!”
“Madame, please calm down,” François said. “If you will just follow me, we can call Monsieur Atwater, and perhaps he can—”
“Perhaps he can do what? Lie to me some more? I mean, what the heck?!”
She vaguely waved her hand in the direction of the lobby’s overhead flatscreen television, which was broadcasting a news program.
I quickly recognized it as the same type of football morning sports highlights shows we broadcast in England. Except in this French version, the announcers were talking excitedly while a cartoon graphic of me wearing a Paris Triomphe jersey, along with my usual perma-scowl, stood with arms folded at the bottom-right side of the screen.
On the top-right side of the screen, video of Kayla and me ran on a loop. Me getting in the car outside of Kentucky, entering Je T’aime Tourdin. They even had a video of us giving each other a kiss as we left the Eiffel Tower.
What had happened was immediately obvious. Someone had leaked the news of me agreeing to join the Paris team. And now this French sports program was discussing not only the highlights of my career, but also the mystery woman I’d been running all over Paris with.
And maybe even that wouldn’t have been enough to tip off Kayla, but obviously her ex had also found out about us. Probably via some sports gossip site that catered to sports afficionados on both sides of the pond.
“Why would you help him do this to her, man?” Dwayne demanded loudly beside Kayla just as I’d almost reached them. “Did he pay you? Is this, like, some kind of Frenchie thing?”
“Madame, monsieur, please. Do not make a scene,” François pleaded. “We can talk about this privately. Please come this way.”
François attempted to take Kayla by the arm, but Dwayne got between them. “Don’t you think you already did enough? Kayla’s suing you, him, this hotel, and anybody else who had anything to do with this.”
“Andy!” a French voice called out from a cluster of seats in the lobby. “Andy Atwater! The Atomic Foot! It is really him!”
I stopped short as nearly everybody in the lobby turned to look at me.
Including Kayla and Dwayne.
Somewhere in the distance, cheering broke out, with quite a few French men chanting my name. But I could barely hear them.
Everything went quiet in my head as Kayla walked toward me. Her expression was horrified and disoriented. Like someone who had just witnessed a bombing.
“All these people chanting your name?” She shook her head at me. “And according to Dwayne, there’s pictures and video—actual video of me all over the sports gossip sites?”
“Kayla, let me explain. There’s been a misunderstandin’ between us from the beginnin’.”
“No, you don’t need to let him explain nothin’, Kay!” Dwayne insisted beside her. “Let your lawyers explain when you sue him for everything he’s got!”
Kayla threw him an annoyed glance. “Stop, Dwayne. You are not a part of this. This is between me and Andy, and I just need to understand….”
She turned back to me, her eyes completely devoid of the love that had shined so clearly in them the night before at the Eiffel Tower. “So when you told me you were an electrician, that was a misunderstanding?”
“I said I came from a family of electricians. Never said I took that path meself.”
“And when I told you explicitly that I would never want to date a pro athlete?” Kayla’s expression fluctuated, as if a s was threatening to erupt underneath her face. “Was that a misunderstanding, too?”
Brain scrambling, I dredged pieces of the speech I’d planned to make last night.
“I hoped that if you got to know me…”
“You hoped that if I got to know you, I wouldn’t mind you lying to me from the very beginning?” Kayla exploded. “Because that’s what you did! There was never any Tourmaline prize package. You went out of your way to convince me you are someone you’re not. And apparently, you even got the entire French soccer team to help you do it. All so you could… what?!”
She threw her arms out to the side. “Get in my pants?”
“I mean, the Tourmaline Group did front the bill for the hotel suite and the flight,” I said cos that was the only point I could really refute.
Christ, this was getting out of hand.
Kayla was looking at me like I was a murderer of small children. And I could see several phones pointed in our direction out the side of my eye—a few of which, no doubt, were set to record.
“You lied to me!” Kayla’s sweet voice went guttural and ugly. “From the beginning! Will you at least admit to that?”
The utter disappointment in her eyes was so disheartening, it actually made me want to lie to her again.
A thousand new fibs sprang to my mind—anything to keep her, to preserve what we had. I thought of how happy we had both been just a few hours ago, and desperation nearly overtook me.
But in the end, I knew I couldn’t.
Cos there was one thing I’d said that had been the complete and utter truth.
I loved her. I truly did.
Too much to continue with this charade, even though I knew what a full confession would cost me.
“Yeah, Kayla, I lied to you,” I admitted in front of her ex and everybody else watching with their phones out. “I lied to you. I’ve been lyin’ to you this whole time. Cos, Kayla, I knew…”
I swallowed the bitter truth down. “I knew that if I told you everythin’, you wouldn’t understand that I was the exception to your new rule. You’d push me away cos you’re afraid. Even last night, when you claimed to love me, I knew you didn’t really mean it. Not truly.”
Kayla’s face contorted with fury. “I only claimed to love you because I didn’t have any idea who you were!”
“You know exactly who I am!” I exploded back. “You are the only woman I have ever shown the real me.”
“The real you?” Kayla practically spat the question. “Everything you told me was a lie! I fell in love, way too soon, with a lie!”
“Say what you want, but you know that’s just an excuse,” I insisted, shaking my head.
“That’s the real reason you stayed with this wanker for as long as you did, innit?” I said, indicating Dwayne.
“Hey!” Dwayne yelled.
But I pushed on with my point as if I didn’t hear him. “Because he was safe. Cos you thought he was some nice Missouri boy, and you were afraid of dating someone you felt something real for. Someone like me!
“You’re a coward when it comes to us. You have been from the start. You only fell in love with me cos you thought I was safe. That’s why I couldn’t tell ya. Cos I knew, when I did, this would be how it ended between us. And I was right.”
I pointed angrily at the floor. “You’re usin’ me being a pro athlete to do what you’ve been wantin’ to do from the start. Run! Run like the coward you are. Especially when it comes to us.”
She stared at me.
Then stared at me some more.
Then she slapped me so hard that my face turned sideways.
A great gasp went up all around us.
But, Kayla, who was usually so self-conscious, just ignored them and snatched her phone out of my hand.
“I’m not going to sue you, Andy,” she informed me, her voice low and harsh. “Because I never want to see or deal with you again.”
With that, she stormed past me toward the lobby doors.
“Wait—you can’t leave,” I called after her. “What ’bout your suitcase? It’s still in me room.”
“Keep it,” she said, swiping at her angry tears as she made her way to the lobby doors. “That’s what I should have said three days ago!”
She ran out of the hotel, then, and Dwayne followed.
“Kay! Kay! Wait up!” he called after her. “Where we goin’?”
It hadn’t gone as bad as I’d been imagining when I tried and failed to tell her the truth.
It’d gone even worse.
For several moments, all I could do was stand there. Then the voice screamed inside of me.
Go after her! Make her understand!
I tried to do that. I did.
But as soon as I stepped a foot outside the hotel, I was swarmed by paps and new Parisian fans seeking autographs.
They’d let Kayla by, but they surrounded me with demands and questions, making it impossible for me to get through them. It left me with no choice but to stand there, helpless and trapped, while Kayla hailed a cab and jumped in with Dwayne.
Speeding out of my life.
Forever.