BLAKE
The restaurant is upscale. The kind of place where the team takes photos for i********:. Lots of windows. Lots of light. Lots of space for people to notice things.
Elle and I arrive together. We're supposed to. We're a couple now. Public. Real. Fake. All of it blurred together.
The team is already seated. Coach. Vault. Royce. The guys who matter. The guys who decide how things are interpreted.
They all look up when Elle walks in behind me.
I see it immediately—the recognition. The understanding. She's here. With me. Not separately. Not at different tables. Together. She's my girlfriend. That's the story now.
Vault's grin is huge.
He's sitting across from us, and he doesn't even wait for us to sit down before he speaks.
"So you two are actually together," he says. Not as a que
