beautiful mistake - joe burrow

111

Elle was quite nervous as she and Joe drove to the facility the next morning and walked together to the conference room. They had agreed last night that they would make their relationship public and not, as the other option would have been, dismiss it as a fling and a one-time thing.

Making it public did not mean that from now on they would have to play influencer couple and post every detail about their relationship on social media. On the contrary, they had decided together to keep their relationship as private as possible.

So why publish it at all? The press would rather lose interest in all this if Elle and Joe confessed to their relationship, could show themselves publicly without risk, and just didn't make a big deal out of it, than have to be constantly on guard not to be discovered and face ongoing articles if they were seen together after all, if they denied the relationship.

Elle was about to enter the room when Joe stopped her and took her hands in his. "Hey, calm down. No matter what is about to happen in this room, it's not going to change anything for us, okay?" he kissed her on the back of her hand.

"Maybe we're driving ourselves crazy and they just brought us here because they're throwing us a surprise party to celebrate our relationship and we're about to be handed a big cake with the words "congrats"" Joe quipped, which made Elle laugh a little.

"Let's not put it off any longer. Get in there" Joe smiled encouragingly at her before opening the door and entering the room still holding Elle's hand.

Already seated at the table were Zac, Nick, Paul, Mike Brown and a woman and a man, both in suits, that Elle didn't know. "Hey everybody" Elle raised her hand briefly in greeting.

"Miss Simmons, Mister Burrow, we've been waiting for you" the woman stood up and extended her hand to Elle. "Lindsey Bradley. This is my colleague Brock Lowman" she pointed to the man who had also stood up to shake hands with the two.

"We are here on behalf of the NFL. Please sit down" she pointed to the chairs across from them, which were between Zac and Paul. Joe and Elle exchanged glances before sitting down.

"Miss Simmons, Mister Burrow, as you might have guessed, we're here because of the pictures and videos that have been going around since Sunday night showing you two....well, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about" Lindsey Bradley opened the file that was on the table in front of her.

"We're supposed to be clarifying some details on behalf of the NFL, so we can decide after that how we're going to proceed" Brock Lowman added.

"Proceed? What could happen?" Paul asked in surprise.

"We can't say until we know all the important facts, Mister Sparling. Before then, we don't expect Miss Simmons and Mister Burrow to receive any consequences" Lindsey explained.

"Consequences?" this time Zac was the one staring at the two suited people in surprise, but they simply ignored the reaction, as well as the confused looks everyone else was exchanging with each other.

"In order to get a clear picture of the situation, we would like to talk to all of you individually. First, please, with Miss Simmons and Mister Burrow. The rest of you will be questioned afterwards" Lindsey explained. "Is there somewhere around here where we can talk without being interrupted?"

"We...we can go to my office" Elle suggested. The whole thing just seemed suspect to her and now having to go in for one-on-one questioning felt like she had committed a crime.

"My office is free too" Nick offered. The two NFL representatives seemed to agree and exchanged a few unintelligible words with each other before standing up.