Page 134 of The Home Game

Matty grimaced at them, making an exaggerated “yikes, I’m in trouble” expression.

They both grinned and Mitchell waggled his fingers in greeting as he passed by while Birdie mouthed a “congrats” to him.

But one look from Kate had him following her and Gilly through the door and into her office, tail between his legs.

“So, uh, I’m guessing you heard about the wedding?” Matty said weakly when they were all seated.

Gilly scowled, crossing his arms. “What did I tell you about getting your name in the gossip pages?”

“Antoni and I got married!” Matty protested. “We didn’t have an orgy on the steps of city hall or anything!”

“I don’t care if you handed out goddamn loaves and fishes to starving orphans!” Gilly scoffed. “No news is good news, do you hear me?”

“Well, Michael, don’t be too hasty,” Kate said, a glimmer of her humor showing through her annoyance. “Feeding orphans is good PR.”

“Look,” Matty said. “I get it, okay? You want to keep gossip about the team quiet, but what the fuck did you want me to do, Gilly? Not marry Antoni?”

“Of course we’re not saying that,” Kate said in a soothing tone. Gilly scoffed like he was about to argue that but Kate continued. “What we’re saying is we would have liked to have a heads-up about this.”

“And save the personal shit for the off-season like every other player out there,” Gilly muttered.

Sure, a lot of players did get married and have babies in the off-season but Matty bit his tongue instead of pointing out that technically the season hadn’t started yet. “I wasn’t trying to cause any problems for the team.”

“I know that,” Kate said but she still looked frustrated. “However, the fact that this was so sudden and secretive is absolutely raising some questions and stirring up interest in the relationship.”

Matty sighed. “I know. But sometimes you just—you know it’s the right time.” That was about the closest he could get to telling the truth without making this whole thing worse.

“Well, I suppose it’s true what they say. When you know, you know,” Kate said with a little shake of her head. “I certainly did with my husband.”

A jolt went through Matty when he realized the words she’d spoken matched the ones engraved on the inside of his wedding ring. He glanced down at it, twisting it around his finger. “Uhh, yeah. I guess you do.”

What were Eliza and Enzo trying to tell him and Antoni?

Kate continued. “What Michael and I are trying to say is that when you knew you were planning to marry Antoni, you should have said something to us. This team has been the focus of some rather intense scrutiny in the past year. We’ve had weddings and engagements out the wazoo and that’s really ramped up the attention paid to the team’s personal lives. We would have appreciated a heads-up that this wedding was about to take place so we could get the proper social media posts scheduled. You understand that, right?”

“I do,” Matty said with a sigh, debating how honest he wanted to be with them about the situation. “And I am sorry. This was kind of a whirlwind. We just … look, Antoni is in the middle of trying to get permanent custody of the kids. Their grandparents are trying to cause trouble and we wanted to be sure that Antoni’s situation looked as stable as possible.”

He looked Kate in the eye, hoping she could see how important this was to him.

“I understand that,” Kate said softly. “And I’m deeply sympathetic. But we could have helped you manage the PR aspect of it if you’d given us some prior notice. Given your … previous history with the gossip blogs and your ex’s penchant for getting her thirty seconds of fame whenever it’s offered, it was obvious that this was going to be more than a short blurb about your nuptials.”

“True.”

Kate held his gaze. “This was also bound to be especially big because this is the first time you’ve ever publicly acknowledged your bisexuality. You are bisexual, yes?”

“Yeah,” Matty said because while he didn’t personally care that much what he got labeled as, it always seemed really important to other people.

Bi worked.

“We could have helped head all that off with a simple statement from the organization,” Kate pointed out.

“You’d probably have had to pay Courtney off to keep her quiet,” Matty said bitterly. If she hadn’t said anything to JockGossip yet, it was only a matter of time.

“Well, sometimes these things can be … arranged discreetly,” Kate said. “We try to avoid it when at all possible but it is an option if necessary.”

Matty blinked. Shit, he’d never thought about that.

He idly wondered about what they’d paid people off to keep quiet about in the past. And then he thought about the situation in Evanston a few years ago and shuddered.

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