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“It’s his fucking team.” The scoff bursts from me with a nasal sneer.
“But you’re my driver,” Murph bites back, leveling me with a glare. “Get out of here and get your head straight before you consider coming back. You’ve stirred up enough shit and I’m in good mind to drop your ass.”
Dad steps in front of me, his posture steeled. He’s in protector mode, hackles raised and ready to pounce if he needs to.
“The last thing this team needs right now is bad press.” Murph lets out an exasperated breath.
“I haven’t fucked her—”
“That’s not what the photos suggest.”
“They’re from the hotel security footage. Natalya brought Rosie back from their lunch yesterday. I thought they were drunk. I…” Taking a deep breath to hold it together, I focus on my busted knuckles. “I fucked her once after the Abu Dhabi yacht party, and I didn’t even remember who she was until she reminded me at the event in Singapore, when Connor introduced her to us. It was one fucking time that she refuses to forget.”
“Those images are all taken out of context,” Dad says.
“I was pissed when she brought Rosie back to the room out of it and she wouldn’t leave. When I physically made her, she threw herself at me.”
“Great, so you didn’t fuck her, but you put your hands on her?” Murph laughs dryly, gaze lifting to the sky in frustration. “I don’t know which is worse! Fucking her or manhandling her.”
“After what she did to Rosie, she’s lucky she’s still breathing,” I snarl at him. “That psycho could’ve killed her.”
“What’s he talking about?” Murph glances at Dad.
“She spiked her. Rosie’s convinced it was in her drinks. The blood tests show there was Alprazolam in her system. A lot of it, enough to cause a mild overdose when she took Advil to counteract the side effects of the Xanax.”
“Fucking Americans and their sedatives,” Olivier groans beside me in French.
“Do you have proof?” Murph asks, looking between Dad and I.
“Aside from the fact that my girlfriend is still at the hospital recovering from having her stomach pumped after she lost consciousness? Or that she’s never taken sedatives in her life?”
“You know you need more than that to go around accusing her of anything,” Murph sighs, shaking his head. “If you were smart, you would’ve talked to Connor instead of—”
“He came at me!”
“You slept with his girlfriend.”
“Long before he did.”
“Brody, it doesn’t matter.” Murph levels me with an impassive stare, “You fucked her and the entire world knows it. It doesn’t matter where or when. It just matters that it happened, and the spin put on whatever you had with his girl is humiliating to him.”
“Whatever we had was one fucking night and a big fucking regret.” Something and someone so insignificant, and somehow she’s caused insurmountable damage and chaos. “How am I the bad guy right now?”
“Because you’re a man,” Dad sighs with a deep, exhausted exhale.
“You have a reputation,” Olivier adds after standing beside us in silence for so long. “And you fucked the wrong woman.”
“And you haven’t ever fucked the wrong woman?”
A grin cuts his face as he gestures to himself. “Difference is, my friend, I’m French. I have that magic touch women can’t get enough of.” He shrugs, giving me a matter-of-fact nod to his statement. “The ones I fucked loved my je ne sais quoi enough to forget they were meaningless to me. It’s le charme français.”
French charm my ass. “You’re full of shit.”
“Maybe, but I’m not the one with the press sniffing my dirty underwear or beating the shit out of my teammate.”
“What would you do?” Olivier and I have known each other for years. We competed in go-karts. We’ve raced for the same team. But never have I asked him for advice, especially not with women.
“Lie low and let it go,” Olivier tells me, patting my back like that’s going to help his advice sink in. “You picked a sour fruit and now you have to wait for the bellyache to go away.”
