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The boys join us to eat, and Cade wakes his mom up for a goodbye kiss before Jolene walks the boys to the bus and I head home.
And I can’t help but think on my way there that I want every morning to be like this. I want to see them even when I’m in season. Both of them. I want to share breakfast and laugh at Minions.
I want Jolene and Jonah to move in with me.
And I can’t wait to ask her.
CHAPTER 20: LINCOLN
“What the fuck is this?” I demand.
“I’m sorry, boss. Don’t shoot the messenger,” Megan says, and she turns and walks out of my office.
I read over the press release someone just hand-delivered to my secretary.
Across the top I find the words scrawled in my father’s familiar handwriting: Don’t want this getting out? Break it off before she hurts you even more than the first time.
I should’ve known this morning was too good to be true. I should’ve known that feeling I woke with wasn’t going to last the day.
I read the press release below my father’s handwriting.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Second Chance Romance? A Look at Coach Lincoln Nash and reporter Jolene Bailey’s Sordid History
I glance through the accompanying text. It’s an entire article detailing how we were each other’s first loves and how we reconnected and decided to keep it from everyone, including our families.
My father had enough connections to get our photos splashed all over the gossip sites practically overnight. I would not put it past him to do the same thing to us now with this article, and while anybody could’ve dug it up…nobody has.
It’s one more scandal on top of the pile we’re already dealing with, and I know my father is pissed about Asher—and probably pissed that I clocked him in the jaw—but this is a few steps over the line.
He insinuates things about Jolene that simply aren’t true. He says that she had the potential to ruin my future when that’s clearly an opinion. He details literally everything about our first courtship, and how he remembers some of the finer details is beyond me. And then he tells about how we reconnected once I got back to Vegas, how we tried to stay away but we eventually found ourselves in the same hotel room in Ohio. It’s like he talked to everyone in our personal lives and pieced together a story that’s actually pretty darn accurate.
But there are parts of it that aren’t, and the insinuations he makes would be damaging to both her career and her reputation.
He says she got the position as team correspondent the same way she lost it, and I know that’ll hurt her more than anything else to see those words in black and white.
I know why he’s doing this.
He wants to throw shade off what happened with Asher.
But it won’t work. They are totally separate issues, and anyone with a brain could see that.
I dial him up, and he answers right away. “Crawling back already?”
“How’s the jaw?” I can’t help my own smirk at that even though he can’t see me.
“So do I click send?” he asks, ignoring the jab. “Or did you break it off?”
I don’t answer his question. “I know why you’re doing this.”
“I’m doing this to protect my family,” he hisses.
“You know, you keep saying that, but all you’re doing is hurting all of us.”
“Not Asher,” he points out. “You’re the one who hurt him.”
“Excuse me? Who was pushing him to gamble high stakes? Not me, Dad. That was all you.”
