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“She says that she made him mad. They were talking about the wedding. He wants something simple, and she was pressing him for… I don’t know. Some detail that cost money. He accuses her of wanting to blow his fortune, I guess. She says that she knows that, and she shouldn’t have pushed.”

“That’s a load of horseshit.” The two mugs hit the counter with what should have been enough force to break them, but, somehow, they don’t.

A perverse part of you is disappointed. “Weddings are a lot of money. Point-blank, period. GoGo’s bitch ass has enough fucking millions to give her what she wants.

He probably snorts the same amount up his nose every other weekend.

And Gabi has her own money. Fuck him.” You stab the power button on the machine, recognizable by a universal symbol. “Fuck him so fucking hard.”

You’re angry as hell. Sterling looks blank. It could almost be mistaken for placid, if you didn’t know him better. Disturbingly calm.

“It doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t have to make sense.

” He pushes idly at the cuff of the bathrobe where it is falling down his hand.

“It’s not actually about money. Not that she has the kind of money he has, but that’s not the point.

If they didn’t fight about the wedding, it would be something else. ”

Focusing on drawing deep breaths in through your nose, you reach for the coffee beans, which are in an opaque, sealed jar.

They need to be ground. What does the grinder even look like?

You’re stupidly imagining a little hand-crank, like the one you use for your bud.

Back home, you either grab a convenience store coffee on the way to the facility or get one in the cafeteria.

Why are you so stupid? Why does this coffee machine need to have more steps involved than a fucking space shuttle launch? Why are you getting so mad?

You don’t realize that you are glaring daggers at the percolator until Sterling’s thousand-yard stare flickers in your direction. “Kai?”

“Sorry,” you mutter.

“She told me that she’s always bruised easily. Her iron level tends to run low, and her doctor has told her that’s why,” he tells you in that eerily subdued tone. “She said that she turned her back on him, and he just reached for her. That he doesn’t know his own strength.”

“News said that she was hurt on her thighs,” you reply. By process of elimination, you identify the grinder. It’s the size of a blender, covered in buttons and dials, and even has a screen. All to chew up some coffee beans. “She says that he reached for her leg? That’s a new one to me.”

“I told her to come over here,” he says abruptly. Finally meeting your eyes. “I’m sorry. Maybe I should have asked first. But I told her to come stay with me. With us. Just pack her stuff, and I’d send the plane. It would take a little more than twenty-four hours.

You nod vigorously. “Yes. Absolutely,” you agree. “What did she say?”

“She said she’s going to Cincinnati to be with her family.”

The coffee is ground. The noise seems deafening in the space between you two, but that’s one task out of the way. “Good. That’s really good. As long as she’s gone from Miami.”

“There’s a temporarily restraining order keeping him away from her when he posts bail,” Sterling says. “Not that shitty, abusive people always let that stop them. ”

You make an affirmative noise to let him know that you concur.

Examining the coffee maker, you realize that it’s not as intimidating as it looks from afar.

There are three brew options — iced, regular, and strong — and you set it to “strong,” feeling like the situation demands it.

The machine whirs to life, and you lean against the counter.

“Has she called her lawyer? What’s he saying? ”

“It’s apparently a ‘she.’ And she’s advising Gabi to press charges.” Sterling sets his mouth in a tight line. “She’s refusing. Gabi, is, I mean.”

“What the hell do you mean, she’s refusing?” Your eyebrows shoot up toward your hairline. “Are you kidding me right now? Please tell me you talked some sense into her.”

Sterling drums the counter with his fingers.

“There are apparently videos. Of the two of them in bed together. GoGo recorded them without her knowledge or consent, and she only recently became aware of them. She asked him to delete them, and he refused. He claims that he has the cameras so that the housekeepers don’t steal his jewelry, and it’s no big deal.

She’s worried that he might leak the footage to get back at her if she presses charges. ”

Your goddamned head is going to explode, you’re positive. “Revenge porn is fucking illegal,” you snarl .

“So is hurting people. But here we are.” He tilts his chin at you. “Coffee’s done.”

There’s a fine tremor in your hands as you grab the carafe and pour the coffee, a shake that you can’t manage to overcome.

A little bit slops on the counter. It just makes you madder.

Sterling gets up and comes around to help you out.

Doesn’t say anything, just grabs a dish cloth and wipes up the mess.

You retreat to the bar, cowed by your shitty imitation of a barista, and he grabs the sugar bowl and some teaspoons.

“Let’s just say that he leaks the sex tapes,” you reason. “Gabi’s got a hot image. She wouldn’t be the first pop star to go through that kind of scandal. It would suck for a little while, but people would move on. They wouldn’t hold it against her.”

He looks at you with big, solemn eyes. “You don’t get it.

That’s her body. Her intimate moments. Her privacy.

It doesn’t belong to the public, even if she dances half-naked on stage and sings about getting laid.

It’s not the same. It’s something that she shared with someone she thought she loved, and it got stolen from her.

That would always be on the internet. Every time someone wanted, they could just look at her naked.

Her parents would see it, even if they tried hard not to.

Her siblings. It’s a massive violation.”

Your heart sinks a little bit when you think about Sterling’s refusal to do anything sexual on video calls. The way that he’s only kissed you in public once or twice. What’s happening to Gabi—it’s his worst nightmare. A massive violation.

“You’re right,” you say quickly. “I didn’t get it. I understand, now.”

“GoGo’s got her by the neck,” he says. “I didn’t actually think he would have had that much forethought.

I knew he wasn’t a great guy. I figured it out about the drugs, based on little things Gabi told me and that night at the restaurant.

I eventually looked up his past. But I didn’t think he was capable of going this far. I don’t know. He seems…”

“Stupid?” You snort. “I mean, he pretty much is. The guy wouldn’t have made it into college if he wasn’t a blue chip recruit. High school football is wild in Texas. The boosters probably paid the nerdy kids good money to write his papers.”

Sterling shudders. “How is that legal?”

“It’s not,” you reply simply. “GoGo is a fucking dumbass. But that’s how things are.”

He stirs a bit of sugar into one of the mugs.

Tastes the coffee. Adds some more, then silently passes it across the bar to you.

That little moment— he knows how you take your coffee— is almost enough to dispel the black cloud over your head.

Almost. Sterling may be the cutest thing in the UK, but the GoGo and Gabi situation is a train wreck you can’t walk away from.

“What’s the team going to do?” Sterling asks.

You scoff against the lip of your mug. “What they should do is kick his shitty ass out, and all thirty-one other teams should blacklist him. In a perfect world. What will actually happen, I don’t know.

‘Specially if Gabi won’t press charges. The NFA claims to have morality clauses, but they aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.

Production is what counts, and GoGo’s really good at playing football. ”

Aghast, Sterling sets down the spoon he was about to use to stir his own coffee. “So, what? He gets away with it? He keeps collecting millions to play a stupid game after he just bruised a woman? And maybe not even for the first time?”

You bite the side of your cheek so hard, so suddenly, that you taste blood. Is that what he thinks about what you do for a living? That football’s a stupid game?

Sterling catches himself almost immediately.

“Jesus, Kai,” he says. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say…”

The legs of your stool catch the tile and make a horrific scratching whine as you push yourself abruptly back from the bar .

“I’m going to the gym,” you tell him. “I’ll be back in a couple hours, after I’ve gotten my head right.”

His hand is tentative on your arm. You hate that your gut reaction is to push it off. You don’t. But he can probably feel you tense up.

“What I said was out of line,” Sterling says quietly. “Please don’t let that be what you’re thinking of while you work out. It’s a terrible situation. I don’t want you to be mad at me.”

“I’m not mad at you,” you reply. It’s half a lie, but that’s not too bad. Just half.

“Do you want me to come with you?”

Your coffee is untouched after all that. It swirls black and sticky around the drain when you pour it in the sink. “No. I’ll be fine. You stay here. In case Gabi calls back, or… I don’t know. Go back to bed. Try to get some sleep.”

“Like I’m sleeping again after that,” he mutters darkly.

Upstairs, you change into fresh gym clothes.

Lace up your sneakers. Grab your bag, and your water bottle, and your over-ear headphones.

You put them on and make sure your music is playing on your way back through the kitchen, so you don’t have to talk to Sterling.

Rod Wave is blasting at a deafening volume .

You take the Tube to the gym, keeping your head low, and let your trainer run you absolutely ragged. Drop by drop of sweat, the anger and ugliness leaches from your pores. By the end of the session, your muscles are sore and exhausted, but your mind is strangely clear.

The message that you get on the subway back home doesn’t even rattle you: a strongly-worded missive from the Cyclones’ front office reminding you (and the fifty-two other active roster players plus sixteen practice squad members doubtlessly BCC’d) that, while you cannot be forced to stay silent, management would strongly prefer that you not make unauthorized statements on other players’ personal lives.

As if wild horses could drag a fucking sound bite from you on the issue. Hah. It’s still the middle of the night on America’s East Coast. The PR machine is working overtime.

By the time you get home, you are chill.

You drop a kiss on Sterling’s head. He has plaited his hair in two French braids and is sitting with his laptop, listening to some tracks that Graham sent over.

When he sees you, he looks somewhat anxious, and it makes your chest hurt.

You tell him that you are going to take a shower, and to meet you in bed after.

It’s lunchtime, and the sun is staring to just peer through the drizzly mist and gray clouds, but you two cuddle up and sleep the afternoon away .

A few days later, the verdict comes down from the Association: GoGo will receive a three-game suspension, to be served at the beginning of the upcoming season.

The news tastes as bitter as wormwood, poisonous on your tongue.

By that time, Sterling is getting ready for his fourth stop of this tour leg, the Dublin shows.

You let that distract you. Tour the Guinness factory, even though you hate stout beer.

Have a private picnic at a castle with Sterling, the ancestral lawn and the gray-green Irish Sea rolling out beyond where you sit.

Make silly Instagram posts about searching for your Lucky Charms

You purposely don’t ask Sterling about the pictures—the ones that led the police to GoGo’s doorstep.

You know exactly what photos the news station was talking about, the ones from that awful night at Mantel right before Christmas.

The film that Sterling paid the paparazzo to give him, the kid in the bushes.

You’ve lived long enough to know that revenge is a dish best served cold, but you can’t help wondering what made Ster pull the trigger at the moment he did. Did he consult his team, or did he decide all on his own? Did he hit send on the message personally?

You realize that it doesn’t matter, because you don’t care .

Fuck GoGo. If you had the means to do it yourself, you would have.