Vegas Aces: The Coach

The Vegas Aces could've hired anyone as their head coach. Despite my protests, they chose my enemy, Lincoln Nash. With a family rivalry spanning two decades, I've been conditioned to hate the entire Nash family. But there's a special passion to my feelings for the new coach. He was my first when we were teenagers, and then he broke my heart. When I land my dream job as the new team correspondent, my boss tells me that my job is to become best friends with the coach. When I snag the first exclusive interview with Lincoln, it'll be our first time in the same room together in nearly twenty years.

We've been fighting each other nonstop as we push against the past, but it only takes one weekend for feelings two decades old to come rushing back. We can't be together. The reasons keep stacking up, from our bitter family rivalry to the fact that he can't get involved with a member of the media to the accusations regarding the way I scored this job. So my best friend proposes a fake relationship. He'll date her in public and come home to me, where we can get to know each other again and figure out whether there's a future for us.

That's when Lincoln's publicist comes up with a way we can work together, and it's brilliant. But when my father sees who I'm partnering with for my new project, he couldn't be more disappointed. It's further proof that there's too much stacked against us to ever come clean with our families.

Our secret relationship is revealed when a devious colleague who wants my job decides to print the undercover photos that he took of us. But he doesn't just call us out for getting together on the sly. Instead, he insinuates that Lincoln is a cheater while damaging my own reputation, too. My job is on the line, my family won't talk to me, and it feels like my life is falling apart. I hold onto Lincoln as the chaos swirls around us with the inevitable end always in sight.

I'm devastated when I learn of the secrets he's been keeping for two decades from a source other than him. I don't know how I'll ever trust him again. But I'm keeping a secret of my own. One he deserves to know.

I thought the final score ended in a tie where we both lost, but maybe there's hope to put a little more time on the clock.