Page 98 of Payback
Several Months Later
“ALLIEHARRIS,”ISTATE, LOOKINGup at my gorgeous girlfriend from down on one knee. Her bright blue eyes go wide and her hands cup her cheeks in anticipation. “Would you do me the honour of…getting me a double Americano?”
Allie’s body instantly deflates and she lunges for me, shoving me off my knee and onto the floor of the coffee shop near her new place of work in East London. “You are such an asshole!” she exclaims, her voice getting that growly tone that I love so much.
I chuckle because this never gets old. “You really think I’m going to propose in a coffee shop?”
She juts out her lower lip in a pout. “Don’t you think we’ve given the media enough excitement? It’s been months of this now!”
I stand up and throw my arm around her, ignoring everyone as they stare open-mouthed at the spectacle I just made. My voice is a whisper when I reply, “I’m not sure. What’s the statute of limitations on the press forgetting we have a sex video together?”
She sighs with defeat. “Probably never.”
I laugh and move to stand behind her to wrap my arms around her waist and press a kiss on her temple. “Come on, mooi. We’re giving them a bigger better story with this. You may as well laugh. Everyone else is.”
We both look out from our little bubble of teasing bliss to see several onlookers pointing their phones at us. One of these videos will likely be sold to several of the entertainment channels that have been reporting on Allie and me for the past five months.
Thankfully, they aren’t reporting about our sex video anymore. Well, not very much anyway. These days, Allie and I are being regularly featured in the papers because the entire city of London knows that I am torturing my girlfriend with what the media are calling “Proposal Fake Outs.” It was Mac’s idea actually, which is no surprise there. He casually suggested one night that I give the media something else to talk about and I guess I kind of ran with it.
When Allie and I returned to London after her stepsister’s wedding, we both decided that getting engaged right away was a bad idea. Don’t get me wrong. I meant what I said that night. I want to marry her. I’m going to marry her. But we knew we needed to take some time to see what our new normal was going to be post-sex tape scandal.
Turns out, things are pretty great.
The worst aftermath was that my gran wouldn’t talk to me for several weeks. But she eventually came around, even making a trip up to London with my mom and sisters a couple of months ago. The visit was nice and only forty percent awkward during brunch when both my sisters asked Allie where she buys her lingerie.
Things with Allie’s family have improved as well. The Harris Brothers have done a complete one-eighty with me, especially after finding out that I was protecting Allie while getting my face punched in and refusing to sign Niall’s statement. Not only am I required to attend all Harris Sunday dinners, but I was even invited to help out with a Harris Shakedown that occurred after Tanner and Belle had their daughter, Josephine. When Belle’s father showed up to meet little Joey at the hospital, the Harris Brothers decided he needed to be shown who Belle’s real family is now. Evidently I am one of them now, too.
Allie ended up accepting a position at Sloan and Leslie’s clothing boutique as their marketing and public relations consultant. The two of them felt that if Allie could navigate her way through a sex tape scandal, she can do pretty much anything they need for their flourishing shop.
And since working at the boutique so much, Allie has become extremely close to Freya. Ironically, Freya and Mac are new best friends now, so hanging out with our closest friends is pretty damn fun these days. Allie and I keep watching for any signs of romance between them, but the unlikely pair seem perfectly content watching Netflix on the sofa together. The way they argue like an old married couple is actually pretty fucking cute.
As for my career, playing for Bethnal Green F.C. in the Premier League is going brilliantly. Our season started off a little rocky, but we all found our stride once we shook off our nerves from playing in the big leagues. Things even turned out okay for me on the endorsement front. I lost my sponsorship opportunity with Adidas but ended up shooting three commercials for the whisky distillery that Allie interviewed with back in Chicago. It turns out there are businesses out there that don’t look at scandal as a bad thing. In fact, I was worth a lot more money to them post-sex tape than pre-sex tape, so there are many silver linings to everything that happened.
And while I hate that our video is out there, it has actually made Allie and me closer than I ever thought possible. We’re the only two in the world who understand what it’s like to live with it out there. We can’t click delete on the people who have seen it or may have copies of it, but it’s all a part of our unconventional love story.
Once we took the, “if you can’t beat them, join them,” approach, our lives filled with a lot more joy. Hence, Proposal Fake Outs. It’s way more fun having the media inquire about those instead of the sex video. And even though Allie acts like she hates them, she’s been skipping more than ever the last few months. I know that means she’s happy.
Hell, I’m happy, too. Yes, what she did hurt me. Fuck, it hurt me a lot. But being without Allie devastated me more, and Vaughn’s words to me at Tower Park really struck a chord.“If there is enough love, all is forgivable.”No matter how much pain her betrayal caused me, I never stopped loving Allie. That’s why I’ll live with this video out there and protect her for as long as I live. She’s it for me, and nothing else matters more than her.
“You’re done after this, right? We can leave once you get the girls their coffee?” I ask impatiently because I have a tight schedule to keep today.
“Yes, I’m free as soon as I finish this last task,” Allie says as she hands the slip of paper with Sloan, Leslie, and Freya’s coffee orders over to the barista. “Still not going to tell me where we’re going?”
“No,” I reply with a smirk. “I told you, it’s a surprise.”
Allie pins me with a skeptical look. “Does it involve a plane ride?”
I laugh at the notion. “Not this time, mooi.”
She nods with appreciation. “Well, at least I know you won’t be doing another fake proposal. Good-God, I really thought that was going to be the one last week when you dropped down on one knee before your game at Tower Park.”
“You and thousands of fans in the stands,” I reply with a chuckle. “Christ, that one will be impossible to beat.”
She plasters on a fake smile. “Thankfully, we have YouTube links to remember it for the rest of our lives. Lucky us.”
I shrug. “At least that one has more views than our sex video.”
She rolls her eyes. “I’m starting to wonder if the sex video was less painful than this.”
