Page 2 of #Awestruck

With ISEN I’d traded on my family name and the charitable organization my grandmother had started. I would have done a lot worse just for a chance. Multiple, constant rejections did that to a girl. Women already had a hard time getting a foot in the door in this industry; now that I had finally made it inside, I wasn’t about to let this opportunity slip away from me. I would be ruthless. I would be ambitious and driven and do what I had to do to succeed.

But sleeping with Evan was a step too far, even for me. I considered trying to get one of his teammates to rat him out, but the guys on the team would be a dead end. The players would protect their beloved QB at all costs. He had led them to four Super Bowl wins in the last few years, and no one wanted that particular train to be derailed. Although I was willing to take the chance if it meant getting him out of Portland permanently. Our backup QB would be just fine.

Which left the wives and girlfriends (WAGs) of the Jacks. They would know the gossip. They would have heard things they didn’t let get out to the general public. I didn’t know any of the WAGs personally, but I knew someone who did.

I picked up my phone and called my older sister on her cell. It rang once before she answered.

“Aubrey Bailey-Price.” Why did she answer that way? Like, she could obviously see it was me calling. Why was she all lawyer all the time?

“Hey, Aubrey. It’s Ashton.”

“I know.” Aha! See? Totally called it. “What do you need?”

“Why do you assume I need something? Can’t I just be calling to say hi?”

She let out a long sigh, and I could just see her pinching the bridge of her nose, as she so often did in conversations with me. “I’m in the middle of something important, so if you could quickly get to why you’re calling me, that would be great.”

“Last year you did some work for Malik Owens. Something you said he and his wife, Nia, owed you for.”

I held my breath, waiting for her response. Aubrey took her attorney-client confidentiality very seriously, and the only reason I knew even that little bit about the Jacks’ defensive end was because she had been a tad bit drunk, and I had pressed her for information.

“How did you ...” she sputtered, obviously not remembering what she’d told me. “I never would have ...”

“I don’t know the specifics, and you don’t have to give them to me. But I need your help. I have to find an in with the Jacks. I’ve got to get some intel on one of the players, and the women are my best way in. If they owe you, I need you to call in that favor with Nia and set up a meeting.”

“Which player are you trying to get intel on?”

I hesitated, not knowing which way this would go. Aubrey had been friends with Evan in high school, which was how I had known him. He, along with half the football team and cheerleading squad, had hung out at our house all the time. It was how I had developed such a serious crush on him.

“Evan Dawson.”

“Really?” She sounded both surprised and, worryingly enough, delighted. My whole family knew the saga of Ashton and Evan—how he had shattered my teenage heart and single-handedly destroyed my entire high school experience. Aubrey, for some reason, had always thought that I had overreacted to the whole situation because I’d been, in her words, “so unbelievably young” and that I should have let Evan apologize to me when he’d tried to.

“Yes, really. Are you going to do it or not?”

There was a long pause, and I wondered if she had hung up on me. “What am I supposed to tell Nia?”

Yes! I threw my free hand in the air. Getting Aubrey to even consider it felt like a total win. “Just tell her you have a younger sister who recently graduated with a degree in broadcasting and communications who loves football and wants to get an insider’s peek into the lives of NFL players and their significant others.”

All true. So it technically wasn’t lying.

Another long, quiet pause. “And what’s in it for me?”

“Uh, undying love, adoration, and worship from your younger sister?”

“Rory already adores and worships me.”

“Debatable, since both activities would probably entail holding still for longer than ten seconds.” Our younger sister had the attention span of a gnat on coke. She was like what would happen if a fidget spinner could procreate. “And did you just make a joke?” It was very un-Aubrey-like.

“Possibly.” She sounded pleased with herself, which was good because it meant this was going well.

Until it didn’t.

“Tell you what,” she said. “I have this huge case I’m working on, and I’m in the middle of depositions right now, and it’s taking up all my time. Problem is, I’m also on the planning committee for the upcoming ten-year reunion. If you promise to help me out with the reunion however and whenever I want, I will set something up with Nia Owens.”

It was difficult to know how to respond. I wanted to thank her, get off the phone before more damage was done, and just pay her steep price in order to make this happen.

The other part of me knew how dangerous it was to give Aubrey a blank check like this.

---