CHAPTER 13 JOLENE

"Congratulations on your win, Coach," I say.

Monday afternoon marks the first time I have spoken with Coach Nash since last Monday, and while I attended the game this past weekend here at home, I brought Jonah with me and we ate peanuts and drank soda as fans rather than as Jolene Bailey, News Correspondent.

And you know what? It was a hell of a lot of fun.

"Thank you. It was a tough one, but I'm starting to see Fletcher turn it around."

"Any truth to the rumors about his personal life?" I ask.

He chuckles. "I decline to comment on my players' personal lives. Would you like to discuss yours?"

I roll my eyes. It's not like I even have a personal life right now to speak of, and given the fact that I'm carrying a baby that I still haven't told this man about, I'm not exactly in the market for dating.

"I hear Austin Graham wants to start sniffing around you again now that you're single…" he teases.

"Too soon," I mutter, and he chuckles. "You're in a good mood."

"We won. I'm talking to you. Things are looking up."

"Glad to hear that, Coach."

"What about you? Are things looking up there?" he asks.

"For one thing, Coach, we're discussing the team and your recent victory. And for another, I thought I was the interviewer here but you keep firing questions at me."

"Maybe I've learned a thing or two over the years." He shrugs.

"Back to this weekend. You made two fourth down calls that paid off. Can you walk us through those risks when you weren't guaranteed the victory yet?" I ask.

The interview gets back on track, and toward the end of our conversation, he says, "Anything else for the recording?"

I shake my head.

"You can end it there, but what's our plan moving forward for trying new places around town? I need to have Megan get these dates on my calendar."

"Hang on." I say my outro stuff, and he does, too, and then I stop the recording. "I'll come up with a schedule. Anywhere in particular you'd like to try?" I ask.

He names some different restaurants rapid fire style, and I jot them down with the plan to get Dave to come with and take some footage.

"Jack and his wife want to do one with us, and Troy Bodine is interested in a guest spot with his wife, too," he says. "Megan and Ellie have both also fielded calls from Mark Ashton, Alexis Bodine, and Cooper Noah. I guess our little podcast is the talk of the town."

"Damn," I murmur, a little starstruck by the names he just mentioned. "Okay. I'll get in touch with Ellie and schedule them in. Anything else?"

"When can I see you again?" His voice is edged with a longing ache, and it makes my chest physically hurt.

"I don't think it's a good idea for just you and me to see each other alone." My tone is flat.

"Why not? Afraid you won't be able to help yourself?"

I can't help a small laugh at that. "You're really cocky. You know that?"

He grins as he shrugs. "I just got some good news, that's all. So I decided to press my luck."

"I'm sorry. I'm just…not ready for that." I sigh. I wish I could be, but if I can't trust him, I'm not sure how I could ever move forward.

"What can I do to get you back, Jo?" he murmurs. "How can I make you trust me again?"

My phone starts to ring, saving me from figuring out an answer. I glance at the screen and sigh. "I have to go."

He looks like he wants to say more, but he opts out of it. "Okay. Same time next week?"

I nod. "I'll talk to you soon." I end the chat, and I stare at my phone a few beats without answering it.

It's Jeremy. I don't particularly have any interest in talking to him outside of our prescribed hours, so I ignore it. But I'm still thankful the call came in when it did so I didn't have to answer Lincoln's question. I wish I knew how to trust him again, but that's the thing about trust. It's easy to break. It's not so easy to win back.

"Am I overreacting?" I ask Sam in the kitchen a few minutes later.

She glances up from the book fair order form she's flipping through as she leans on the counter. "You're sort of a natural overreactor, babe. Add pregnancy on top of that, and we've got an emotional drama queen. So what specifically are we asking about here?"

I purse my lips and glare at her. "Forget it."

"Stop. I'm teasing you." She sets down the book fair flyer and sighs. "Yes, you are one hundred percent overreacting, but I get where you're coming from. He hurt you back then. Badly. It took a lot for you to be able to trust that he wouldn't do that again, only to have your heart shattered in a completely different way when you found out what he was keeping from you."

"Exactly!" I say.

"But I have to be honest." She folds her arms over her chest. "I've tried to put myself in your shoes. I know you're close with your dad, and I can't imagine how hard that must have been back then—you were worried about him, but you were also reeling from losing your first love, and then two decades later you meet up again…I don't know. I guess I just think the whole family feud thing is silly on both sides. You should be free to be with whoever you want to be with." She lifts herself so she's sitting on the counter she was just leaning on.

"In theory, you're right." I lift myself so I'm perched on the countertop across from her. "But I'm close with my parents, and if they hate the man I'm with, what does that do to my relationship with them? That's the train of thought that keeps running through my mind. How do we have Christmas dinner together when my dad is staring daggers across the table at him? How do we sit at Jonah's baseball games together cheering him on when I have to ensure I'm sitting between them so they don't start fighting?" I sigh. "When you're with somebody, you're with their family, too. And I can't sit at a Christmas dinner at the Nash house across from the man who intentionally hurt my father because of me. So yeah, maybe I'm overreacting to Lincoln holding onto that secret. But I don't think I'm overreacting when I factor in all the other stuff."

"Justify it how you need to, babe." She holds up both hands. "You have to do what's right for you. But it's not just your fathers involved anymore. It's not just your moms, or just the two of you. It's that baby, too. And maybe the baby is the little miracle that will bring your families together."

I set my hand on my stomach. I know she's right, and deep down I want to find a way to get past everything that's happened—from the moment his dad made a choice to right now.

"What do you need from him?" she asks, and it gives me something to contemplate.

Ideally, we'd find a way to make it work. I would choose him, and he would choose us—all three of us—and together we'd fight for our future.

Ideally, he would put me first instead of whatever secrets he's keeping for his father or anybody else, and I would know every single day that he's making a choice, and that choice is us.

But that's a lot to ask someone, and I don't know whether I have the courage to ask him to.

I do know one thing, though. I can't hide this baby much longer, and I think it's time I tell him…if nothing else, so we can figure out where we go from here.