Hollywood Hot Scoop
Badgers’ Bad-boy Buys Babe Bling
Happy Friday to all my Scoopers! As you know, we here at Hollywood Hot Scoop like to give you the latest and greatest when it comes to celebrity news, and you heard it here first! NFL legend and notorious ladies man, Javier Gonzales, has popped the question and will soon be having the wedding of the century. The Badgers’ tight end is best known for his mad defense, quick feet, and, let’s be real, his tight end. We all saw the full-page feature in Sports Unveiled. Wowee, but these players are built differently, am I right? Talk about muscles for days!
But I digress. You’re here for news, and we’ve got you covered! (Unlike Javier’s bod in that feature, wink wink!) If you didn’t already know, Gonzales’s soon-to-be bride is no stranger to Hot Scoop, and it’s clear Sage Morrow has a type. Before Gonzales, she was the longtime lover of our favorite former quarterback, Cole Evanson, who has been taking the world of rugby by storm after his abrupt departure from football two years ago.
It’s obvious that Sage, an avid Badgers fan, made the right choice when she switched her affections from Cole to Javier, who just helped his team win the Super Bowl. This is a huge win for the Badgers, who had a record-low season last year after their Super Bowl loss with Cole at the helm, and it’s clear the Oregon team is far better off without the football dropout.
We’ll have more details about the wedding as they come. For now, we just have one question: Who is going to comfort Cole now that he is totally alone? I’ve seen the man’s muscles, and with Sage moving on, he’s going to need someone to keep him company and lift his spirits. I’ll happily volunteer for the job!
Make sure you subscribe, and keep on sending on your own hot scoops! XO
Chapter One
Cole
Seven months ago
Of all the times for my girlfriend to call…
“Are you taking your turn or what, Evanson?” My teammate, who everyone calls Bean, narrows his eyes at me across the pool table.
I look down at my ringing phone again. This is the first time since I joined the Los Angeles Thunder rugby team a year and a half ago that any of the guys have even offered to let me join in on a game of pool, and I would be stupid to blow my chance to feel like one of them. But Sage rarely calls me out of the blue, and I worry something’s wrong. “Give me a sec,” I tell Bean and hurry outside the bar.
The call drops before I can answer it, but I call Sage right back, my heart pounding in my chest as it rings. And rings. When it hits her voicemail, I frown at my phone, then leave a quick message. “Hey, sorry I didn’t pick up in time. What’s up?”
Then I send her a text.
Cole: Everything okay?
To my relief, she responds to the text, though I’m not sure why she wouldn’t have answered my call.
Sage: I’m fine. Wanted to talk.
As I debate calling her again, I glance through the window and take in the annoyed expressions of the guys I’m supposed to be playing pool with. I don’t blame them for being impatient, especially because they were just starting to warm up to me, the outsider.
I send another text, hoping Sage will give me a clear direction of how my night is going to go.
Cole: I’m happy to talk right now if you want. Or you can call me later. Whatever works for you.
Truth be told, I’m surprised Sage wants to talk at all. For the last month or so, she’s been extra busy. Every time I try to video chat or plan a weekend up in Oregon where she lives, she blows me off, which is why I’m planning to head up that way next week to surprise her for her birthday.
Long distance isn’t easy, I’ll admit that, but I’ve been doing my best to make it work. And I’m hoping this surprise makes up for me being so far from her. The books she likes to read all have these grand gestures from the guys, and my goal is to pull off something that comes close to her favorite love stories.
I even rented out one of the ice rinks in Portland because she loves reading hockey romances specifically. I’m not a hockey player, but I do play rugby. Which is almost as cool? Sage might not think so, but she loves me even if I refuse to strap knives to my feet. I’ll do it this once because it will make her happy.
Though I should probably get back inside and stop making the guys wait, I try calling one more time, just in case Sage really needs to talk through something. Sage always comes before the team.
To my relief, she answers after a couple of rings. “Cole.”
“Hey, are you sure you’re okay? I know you’ve been stressed with—”
“Why do you never post about me online?”
I frown, looking down at my phone for a second. “What?”
“You never post about me. Are you ashamed to be with me?”
Swearing under my breath, I lean against the wall and settle in. So much for getting on the team’s good side. They’re not going to like me ditching the game, but this is more important. “Of course I’m not ashamed of you, Sage. I love you.”
I have a ring sitting on my kitchen table that mirrors my words. I intend to give it to her next week as part of the big surprise. At least, I want to give it to her next week, but that all depends on if I can pull off the plans I’m putting into play. And if I can finally work up the courage.
“Sage, where is this coming from?”
“None of the other guys on the team are afraid to post pictures about their wives or girlfriends.”
She means the Portland Badgers, the football team I haven’t been a part of for almost two years. I’m not sure how to feel about the fact that she’s still paying attention to any of the guys from my old team, but that’s not important right now.
“Javi says there must be something—”
“Javi?” As my eyebrows pull low, I try not to let my anger rise. I don’t want to jump to any conclusions about my former friend. “Why were you talking to Javi?”
“We bumped into each other the other day, and he asked if you and I were still together because you haven’t posted anything about me in months.”
“Sage,” I say, keeping my voice gentle. “You know that I have to be careful about things on the internet, especially with all the time I spend with Derek.” As one of the most sought-after actors in Hollywood, Derek Riley is too high profile to be casual about privacy.
Sage scoffs. “Ah, right. Derek. With all the time you spend with him, you might as well be dating him!”
I hold back a groan. “He’s my best friend.”
“I thought I was your best friend.”
Best friends talk more than once a week, but I won’t say that out loud. Despite my best efforts, it’s been so long since I regularly spent any time with Sage that sometimes it feels like we barely know each other. I’m trying to fix it. To get us back to where we were when I lived in Portland with her.
“Sage,” I breathe, curling my free hand into a fist to try to keep myself from panicking. I don’t like where this conversation is going. “I know it’s been hard since I moved back to California, but—”
“Hard?” She laughs. “No, I don’t think you know the meaning of the word hard, Cole Evanson. Not when you took the coward’s way out. You could have been something great--we could have been something great—but you threw it all away. And for what? To pretend you weren’t going to be a legend? So you could always come second to those fancy friends of yours? You can’t tell me you’re happy living in mediocrity, Cole.”
I swallow the emotions that stick in my throat as her words settle over me, heavy and cloying. I feel like I can’t breathe. “Of course I’m not happy,” I say thickly. “Not when I’m so far away from you.”
“So come back.” Her words are pleading, and they feel like a knife in my chest.
My response comes out small. “You know why I can’t.”
“I know why you won’t,” she counters. “Because you don’t have any backbone. You’re pathetic, and I feel like I’ve wasted the last eighteen months waiting for you to be someone you’re not. I’ve been such an idiot.”
“Sage,” I croak.
“I’m done waiting for you, Cole. You’re never going to grow a pair and be the man I need you to be.”
“Sage, don’t—”
The call drops. So does my phone, clattering on the sidewalk at my feet and landing face up so I can see the newly shattered screen.
I know the feeling.
Present day
This is not a hockey romance.
I don’t know why that line keeps running through my head, but it’s really starting to get on my nerves. Maybe it’s because I watched a hockey game last night even though I tend to avoid watching sports other than rugby. The game was playing on the TV over Sage’s head in the restaurant, and watching it was easier than looking her in the eyes while she explained in detail why she broke up with me last fall.
I didn’t ask her to do that. In fact, I would have preferred she didn’t, but she said her conscience wouldn’t rest easy if she didn’t list out all the reasons she’d needed to tear my heart out of my chest seven months ago. She showed up at my house without warning, dragged me to the restaurant, and then dove right into her explanation like it was a completely normal thing to do on a Friday night.
This is not a hockey romance.
If it were, we probably would have ended the night making out in the bathroom instead of me left standing outside a Chili’s in the rain with a wedding announcement held limply in my hand, watching the love of my life drive away to the airport because she thought it was a good idea to rub salt into the wounds she inflicted over the phone.
For some reason, I put the announcement on the fridge when I got home, as if I need the reminder that I’m not the guy who gets the girl.
You are cordially invited to celebrate…
“You with us, Rihanna?”
I blink, slammed back to reality by the voice of my teammate, Gator. He’s scowling at me as the noise of the crowd rises around us. It’s nowhere near as frenetic as a hockey arena would be, given we’re outside and the LA Thunder are one of three Major League Rugby teams in Southern California. Rugby is a growing sport in the US, but it doesn’t get the same attention as a bunch of dudes with sticks and a puck.
Those guys get the crowds and the girls, apparently. That’s what all of Sage’s favorite books would indicate, something she never failed to tell me whenever she read a new one.
“Don’t call me Rihanna,” I growl, as angry with Gator as I am with myself for getting hung up on my ex. Again. I swallow my frustration and shake out my arms as we move back into play. We paused for an injury on the Jackals’ side, which gave me too much time to think. Praise the heavens we’re gathering up for a scrum to resume play and I can shift my focus back to the match against Dallas’s MLR team. We’re only down by five, and there’s enough time on the clock for us to get a try if we keep possession of the ball. If one of my teammates can get the ball over the line, I can attempt to get a kick for two extra conversion points.
I could use a good kick to something.
This is not a hockey romance. If it was, I could get into a fight in the middle of this game and be praised for it rather than penalized. I’m not a violent person, but Sage’s unexpected appearance at my door last night threw me.
I knew things were over between us the night she broke up with me over the phone.
Why would she come all the way to California just to remind me?
Gator tucks his arm around the hooker, Jet, as they get set up in the huddle. “You don’t want me to call you Rihanna, then stop acting like a diva,” he says and then ducks down, disappearing into the scrum.
I roll the ball into the scrum as both sides fight for forward movement, and it ends up kicked back to me. I grab it, quickly assessing the Jackals’ defense, and then toss it behind me to the fly-half, Moxie, who immediately hands it off to one of the centers, who makes a break for it. He goes down halfway to the goal, thanks to two Dallas players, but I’m quick to grab the ball and toss it to the outside center, who throws it back to our fastest wing, Bean.
Bean barely avoids a tackle and dives for the try-zone, planting the ball on the grass with triumph.
Thank goodness. Though I feel the pressure building as I get set up to kick the conversion, my determination rises right along with it. After last night, I really need a win.
Though we’re farther from the center of the field than I’d like, I settle the ball just how I’d like it. I take a breath, tuning out the sounds of the crowd, and then I kick, breathing a sigh of relief when the ball sails through the posts only moments before the clock runs out.
The rest of my team swarm me in celebration, but the pleasure I feel for our win is only momentary. Seems like a lot of things are momentary lately, and the sinking pit in my gut as I join the rest of the Thunder in the locker room feels like a bad sign.
I’m blaming it all on Sage, but that excuse is only going to last for so long. This is a me problem. One I don’t know how to fix. I haven’t been the same since the phone call that ended our four-year relationship, and I feel like I’m slowly sinking deeper and deeper every time I try to pull myself out of the dark pit she threw me into.
“Drinks?” Moxie, our fly-half and team captain, sits himself down on the bench next to me once I’m showered and dressed. I was working up the courage to go back home to that stupid wedding announcement, but I waited too long if he thinks I might actually go out with the guys tonight.
I huff a laugh. “No thanks.”
Moxie kicks his legs out, crossing one foot over the other as he reclines against the wall behind him. The rest of the team are goofing off as they slowly filter out of the locker room, all of them ignoring my corner like they always do. I may have earned the game-winning points, but that doesn’t change their opinions of me. “This is why none of them like you.”
“I don’t play to be liked.” I wasn’t the team’s favorite person to begin with, coming from the NFL—football is an inferior sport in their opinion—but this whole thing with Sage has probably set me back when it comes to being accepted by the Thunder. After more than a year on this team, I was starting to find my place, but the last seven months have…sucked. I’ve sucked. “As long as I play well,” I mutter, “it shouldn’t matter what they think of me.”
I’m pretty sure my skills on the pitch are the only reason I’m still here.
Chuckling, Moxie rolls his eyes and pats me on the shoulder. “I know this league is still new, but some of these guys are shooting for the national team. International contracts. They need wins to do that, and we play better when we’re bonded as a team.”
I raise an eyebrow at him. “Did they make you captain because you’re so motivational, or does that part come with the gig?”
“Chicken and egg, my friend. Come out for a beer.”
I shake my head. It’s as much because I generally don’t drink and because I know I won’t be good company. My surly mood will probably make the rapport worse. “Next time.”
Moxie scoffs but heads out, calling back, “You say that every time, Rihanna.”
I really need to kill that nickname.
My phone rings when I finally head out to catch a ride, and the tightness in my chest eases when I see that it’s Freya. If someone had told me half a decade ago that I would become close friends with a literal princess, I would have laughed. Or maybe not. At the time, I was pretty much on top of the world, so I might have thought a friendship like that was inevitable.
I could really use her big sister energy right now.
I swipe the answer button as I start walking down the sidewalk. I’ll walk off my remaining adrenaline from the match until the conversation is over and I can snag a ride through the app. “Hey, Peach, it’s early.” It’s early morning in Candora, her island home.
Freya clucks her tongue. “For you it is late, Cole. I expected you to be home, but you are not.”
My steps pause. While I’m glad to hear her voice, there’s something strange in what she just said. “You’re in California.”
“And sitting on your couch. The match ended almost an hour ago.”
I smile, which is a rare occurrence lately, and pick up my pace. I live too far from the stadium to actually walk the whole way, but I have a new pep in my step. “If I had known you were coming to the States, I would have headed out sooner.”
“Are you making friends with your team?”
“I’m not seven.” But I know she won’t take my deflection, so I reluctantly add, “And no. I’m not.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not having this conversation with you, Peach. I’m going to hang up so I can…” My words drop off when a sleek black car pulls up to the curb next to me. A door opens and closes, then the driver, dressed in a fitted suit and wearing a chauffeur’s cap, moves to open the back door for me and fixes me with a steely-eyed stare. “I’m guessing this is you?” I say into the phone.
“If you refuse to use your vehicle,” Freya replies, “the least I can do is offer mine.”
I sigh, but I can’t argue. I tend to get in trouble if I’m behind a wheel, so I avoid it whenever I can. “Thanks,” I murmur, speaking both to Freya and to her driver. “See you in a bit.”
By the time I reach my house, my excitement at seeing my friend has been dimmed by the exhaustion that always sets in after a match. When I made the switch from football to rugby, I figured the wear on my body would be similar. Quarterback to scrum-half is a relatively even trade role-wise. But it turns out rugby doesn’t have the same ebb and flow as football, and I’m on the field pretty much from the first second to the last with only a fifteen-minute break in between halves. It can be a brutal eighty minutes of gameplay, but I love it.
At this point, it’s one of the few good things I have.
Nodding to Freya’s latest bodyguard standing on the porch, a stony looking man with a bushy mustache, I step inside my front door only to be mauled by a blonde in heels. I grunt, but Freya weighs next to nothing so she’s easy to hold as she embraces me, arms around my neck.
“Congratulations on your win,” she says.
I didn’t miss the wrinkled card she’s holding before she hid it from my sight.
…celebrate the marriage of Sage Morrow to Javier Gonzales on Sunday, June Second…
Grimacing, I pry her off of me and keep working my way into the house so I can dump my bag in my room. “You know it’s not nice to snoop, Peach.”
“You put it on your refrigerator. I would hardly call that snooping.” Freya sounds like she was born and raised in upper class London but spent her teenage years on the Scandinavian Peninsula, which makes sense given the location of her island country in the North Sea. But it makes it weirdly difficult to take her seriously when she says informal words like snooping in her royal way. “And besides,” she continues, “your vulgar tabloid, Hot Scoop, shared about it half an hour ago.”
I groan. I tend to ignore the stupid website, hoping they’ll leave me alone, but I should have known better. Dropping my bag on the floor at the foot of my bed, I return to the front room and join Freya on the couch. “I’m glad you’re here,” I tell her, closing my eyes as I let my body settle.
“I told Derek about Sage’s wedding.”
“I’m less glad you’re here,” I grumble.
Laughing in her ridiculous, goose-like way—the only time she is not prim and proper—Freya rests her head against my shoulder and cuddles in close. I have no idea why she picked me as her favorite out of our group of friends, but I’m not complaining. It’s nice to know I have someone looking out for me, even when she can’t be around very often. The older sister I never knew I needed.
“Your friends should know that you are hurting, Cole,” she says as she cradles my arm.
“I’m not hurting.”
But my argument falls flat even before she murmurs, “Lies.”
My friends are all famous in their own ways, and each of us has good reason to hide as much from the public eye as we can. But we don’t like to hide from each other, even if it’s difficult to open up sometimes. Freya knows I don’t mean it when I say Sage didn’t hurt me, and I’m sure the rest of my friends would agree.
I sigh and settle lower in my seat so the pair of us are cuddled up closer. I’m more tired than I thought. “When did you get here?”
“A few hours ago.”
“You should have gone to Derek’s and gotten some sleep.” Derek Riley, the friend I’ve known the longest and the unofficial ringleader of our group, has a mansion in Malibu with space for all of us, though most of us like our own space when we can get it. Freya, however, usually stays there when she visits, and I doubt she slept on the plane ride over.
She mumbles something, half asleep already, then says, “You needed a friend.”
As much as I don’t want to admit it, she’s right. Now that Sage is for sure moving on and leaving me in the dust, I feel more alone than ever, and that’s not going to change.
The problem is the rest of my friends, just like Freya, are going to try to fix it all for me, which means by the time the sun is up in the morning, I’m going to have six people all thinking they know what’s best for my life. I love them, but they can really be a pain in my rear end.
“That means you too,” I murmur to Freya, who is sound asleep against my shoulder, and then I slip into a dreamless sleep.