CHAPTER 10 LINCOLN

I never hear back from Jolene about the podcast, but a new episode publishes when our new episodes always come through, so somebody worked on it. My guess is that it was her, and my other guess is that people are hanging on every word to try to detect anything between us.

But that's not where my focus should be.

I have a game on Sunday. I have to prepare for that, which means as the week goes on, we'll have intense practices followed by lighter practices, and then we'll travel to Green Bay for our game.

Before Jack left my office, I asked him if he knew any private investigators. He did, in fact, and he shared the information with me.

So I've already got a guy looking into Jeremy Landry, and I suspect he'll find something on him pretty quickly given what I know about the guy.

And then I force myself to focus on this week's game plan. I went down to practice and saw, much to my surprise, that both Mike and Andy were handling things. I sat in on a few different position meetings and found my coaching staff to be surprisingly competent.

I should never have doubted them, but I didn't get to be the head coach of an NFL team by relying on other people. I've always been of the mindset that if I want something done right, I need to do it myself.

But maybe the right thing in this situation was putting the right people in the right places.

After the team goes home, I head back to my office to study our upcoming opponent. And that's when Mike appears in my office door. He knocks on the frame, and I find myself already clenching my jaw just at the sight of him. I'm not sure why he induces such feelings of rage in me, but he does. We've done nothing but butt heads since we first met, and I just don't have the energy to go another round with him right now.

"What?" I mutter.

"Can we talk?" he asks.

I raise a brow and nod toward the seat across from me.

"You were right," he begins.

Now that is how you start a conversation with a rival.

"About?" I ask rather than saying that.

"Taking risks. I've always played it safe, and it worked for us last year. But these kids this year are a different crop, and they're young and excited and ready to push themselves to the next level. I guess I just wanted to let you know I'm on board. I trust you. You're experienced, and it took me a minute to check my ego about being passed over for the head coaching position, but Jack knew what the fuck he was doing when he hired you."

I stare at him for a few beats as I try to find the ulterior motive here.

There has to be one. Or maybe I'm just that jaded now that I've lost all trust in everyone.

"Thanks," I murmur. "Why are you telling me this?"

"I guess I've been thinking it since Sunday when I saw you in action, and I don't want there to be bad blood between us."

When he frames it that way, I wish I would've been the one to start this conversation. "I, uh…I'm going through some personal things, but I'm figuring it out. When I told you to do your job earlier, I want you to know it was because I trusted you would. And you did. You're my right-hand man, Mike, and the more I think about it, the more I realize that I appreciate you challenging me every step of the way. It only shows me we're both going after the same goddamn thing."

"Victory?" he correctly guesses.

"Victory," I confirm. "Let's fucking go."

"Let's fucking go," he echoes, and we're both quiet a beat. "You okay, Coach?"

I blow out a long breath. "I will be. Thanks for checking in on me."

He nods, and he stands. "Have a good night."

"You too," I say as he heads out, and for as shitty as everything else has gone lately, it feels good to finally be on the same page as Mike. Hopefully it's the start of a trend where everything else starts looking up, too.

It's a nice sentiment, but we lose on Sunday.

That means we have practice Monday, and I still haven't heard from Jolene despite my best efforts to try to reach her multiple times every day. I think about going over to her place, but I don't want to upset Jonah even though I miss him as much as I miss his mother.

I finally hear from her on Monday evening, and when my phone starts ringing way too loudly next to me on my desk as I'm deep into studying what went wrong in our game against the Packers, I nearly jump out of my chair.

I pick up the call immediately. "Jolene," I answer, my voice low and gritty, and I'm certain I sound like I'm panting, and maybe I am because my phone scared the shit out of me. I must've been deep in concentration.

She pauses a beat, and then she clears her throat. "Hi."

"How are you?" I ask. I sound like I'm begging for any scrap she'll throw me, but that's how I feel right now.

"Been better. You?"

"Same. It's good to hear your voice."

She bypasses that statement. "We need to talk about the podcast."

"I think we need to talk about more than just the podcast, JoLo."

"Don't JoLo me," she snaps. "Can we just…not do that yet?"

I hold onto that yet with all my strength. I think about asking her if that yet means we'll do it at some point. If we'll get it all out on the table and figure out how to move forward. I wonder when I should tell her I have someone tailing her ex. I don't want to keep any secrets going forward, so full transparency seems like the best option here.

"Whatever you need," I finally say.

"I need a job, and I'm continuing forward with the podcast, which unfortunately means that you and I are stuck together."

"Unfortunately?" I echo.

"We need to put together a show to air on Wednesday. I pieced together what I could with an unused restaurant review and some back-up interview material we had, but I don't have enough for this week."

"Then let's talk right now."

"Right now?" she repeats.

"Right now," I confirm. "I'm at the office. I can get on Zoom and you can have whatever you need for this week in the next few minutes."

"Fine," she mutters. "Give me twenty minutes. I'll send you a link shortly."

"I'll be here."

She cuts the call, and I wait. I try to get back into the film I was studying before her call interrupted me, but the truth is that my mind is racing with what the hell I'm going to say to her…with what the hell she's about to ask me.

A link comes through from her, and I click it and pull on my headset as her face appears on my screen.

There she is.

My chest tightens and my heart races.

I take just a beat to stare at her before I start my computer's video and audio.

She looks okay after the accident, and she looks as beautiful as ever. But seeing her face looming before me is a painful reminder of everything I've lost.

"Hi," she says a little awkwardly.

I press my lips together and nod.

"How's your head?" she asks, clearly looking at the cut on my head that's no longer hidden beneath a bandage as it's been healing up fine.

"It's fine. Yours?"

"Fine." She switches to business mode. "I have a list of questions to get through, so we'll just sort of have a conversation around those, okay?"

I nod again. "Yep."

"I know listeners will be tuning in to hear about what happened between us, so if we could just be…civil…and maybe keep private things on the private side so I don't have a ton of editing to do, that would be great."

"I will be more than civil, Jolene," I vow.

"Okay. Recording now." I see a light illuminate to let me know she's recording.

She starts with some introductory stuff, the usual script we use, and she mentions our first sponsor. And then she gets into it. "Well, Coach, we've certainly made some headlines over the last few days."

I offer a short chuckle. "That we have."

"I guess we should just get it out of the way and admit that Lincoln and I had a personal relationship that has ended, but we're committed to continuing to co-host this podcast together and remaining friends. In addition, I am no longer the Aces team correspondent for a local news channel, but my love of the game has never wavered, and not having restrictions placed on me by my former employer means I have a lot more freedom to interview players, coaches, and staff. I'm looking forward to continuing to bring you the latest insider information from the Aces in this role, and we're working to expand the podcast to offer even more insight into the team."

Remaining friends?

She never told me she wanted to remain friends.

"We're excited about the future of the podcast," I add. "And I'd also like to address some of the headlines that have come out about me."

"The floor is yours, Coach," she says.

I clear my throat. "I was raised to believe family loyalty comes first above all else, and I worked hard to maintain that throughout my life. But I recently learned how wrong that was. My loyalty can't be questioned. I was working from a place of what I thought was the right thing. But as it turns out, there were other factors at play, things I never knew about…things I fully believed despite the lies surrounding them, and while I remained loyal, I was also stupid. And for that, I will forever be sorry, in particular to you, Jolene, and your family."

"Oh," she says, clearly surprised by the direction I took that.

"I made a mistake, and it was a big one. I trusted my own father as I thought he acted out of a place of selflessness for me, but as it turns out, it was an absolutely selfish move on his part, and I'm stuck now paying the consequences for that nearly two decades later."

"That may be true, but you had ample opportunity to come clean," she points out, and I wonder if she'll edit this out or if she'll let it run.

I should be careful. I should choose the right words.

But in this moment, being honest with her feels more important than that. This might be my only shot to get her to really hear what I'm trying to say.

"I did, and I chose wrong. I thought dredging up secrets two decades old wouldn't do anybody any good when our main priority became figuring out how to bridge the divide between our families. Casting light on those dark secrets would only have deepened the divide."

"You don't know that," she points out.

"No, I don't. But they came out anyway, and look where we are now."

She's quiet as she takes that point under consideration. "I guess we'll never know if finding out before that would've changed things."

"What can I do to make it up to you?" I ask.

She closes her eyes for a beat before she looks away from the screen. Away from me. "Let's just stay on track here, okay?" She glances down, presumably at a paper with her list of questions, and then she looks up at me. "What went wrong against the Packers?"

I sigh. I felt like I was so close to getting an answer, and then she hits me with this question. Hard-hitting and painful just the same, though in a completely different sense, I suppose.

We talk about the game and what we need to adjust going forward. I wish we had Miles back. It's a team effort, but we sailed through the quarters he played, and now that Fletcher is in, we're struggling.

I do my best not to sound like I'm blaming Fletcher. I'm not, but if he doesn't step it up, my job might be on the line.

She's in her element as she reverts to reporter mode, and it's kind of amazing to watch. She's putting aside whatever personal vendetta she has against me in order to make this podcast a success, and her hard work is evident in every question she asks.

As we start to wrap the call, I know I need to tell her what I'm doing.

We both do our standard outro and issue our goodbyes, and she ends the recording though we're still on the call together.

"Thanks," she says, and I hold up a hand.

"Before you end the call, can I tell you something?"

She sighs. "What? I have a lot of editing to do since you couldn't stop talking about our personal life," she snaps as she jots something down on a notepad.

"I'm trying to figure out how to get you to trust me again, so I wanted to let you know I hired a private investigator to look into Jeremy," I blurt.

Her head whips up to look at me. "You what?"

"I know Jonah hates going over there, and I know you've been fighting hard for full parental rights. I thought maybe if we could find something on him, this would help. I'm fighting alongside you, Jo. Even if you hate me."

"I don't hate you," she murmurs, and she hasn't really reacted to what I just told her other than looking totally surprised.

"For the record, I don't hate you, either."

"I have to go." She cuts the call without a goodbye, and I'm left to wonder how she's going to take that little bomb I just dropped.