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All that matters is this woman lying in my arms, the love of my life.
“I love you, Nick,” she whispers.
“Yeah, you do,” I reply, grinning. “And I love you. Everything’s gonna be good, babe. I promise.”
28
ELISSA
It’s been a few days since Nick came home and with our promising conversation with Gerry, we’re both hopeful, but there’s still that small bit of fear that everything will change, and Nick will be gone again. But this time, it’s the hopefulness that outweighs the fear.
We’re woken up by the ringing of Nick’s phone and we groan in unison, having stayed up late last night chatting and feeling more relaxed than we have in months.
“Ignore it,” I mutter, rolling over so I’m now cuddled into the warmth of Nick’s body. I don’t have to work today and all I want to do is stay in bed and bask in the quiet calm that we finally have.
“Just let me see who it is,” Nick mumbles back, his eyes squinting as his phone glows brightly in the dim room.
I let out a huff of mock annoyance, pressing my lips to his bare chest. “Who is it?” I ask when he doesn’t tell me right away.
But I don’t have to wait for him to respond, hearing him say, “Gerry, you have some news?” is all the response I need. I’m glad he answered it. It would have sucked to ignore his call. He’s the only person either of us should be answering for.
I sit up in bed, watching Nick’s face, hoping for something great, but Nick’s face is impassive, and he says very little. I can hear Gerry talking, but I can’t make out what he’s saying, and I almost tell Nick to switch over to speakerphone, but I don’t want to interrupt him.
It only takes a few minutes of conversation for Nick’s face to change, and it’s then that I realize things are going our way.
“Thanks, Gerry, thanks so much. You have no idea how relieved we are. We’ll be in touch if we need anything else. Again, thank you,” Nick says, smiling from ear to ear.
Gerry continues talking and I almost can’t stand the wait. I’m losing my mind over what he’s saying, but it’s obviously good. With my teeth clenched, I shake my hands in front of Nick’s face, and all he does is hold up one finger. Pretty soon I’m going to smack the phone out of his hand and beg him to tell me what’s happening.
“Nick!” I whisper-shout, my eyes wide, and he lets out a small chuckle. “You’re killing me here.” Nick smiles, pulling the phone away from his ear, he switches over to speaker now.
“Gerry, Elissa’s here with me. You want to give her the news?” Nick says, a cheeky look on his face, enjoying that he’s been keeping me waiting. I know it’s good news, he wouldn’t have made me wait if it wasn’t.
“Good morning, Elissa,” Gerry says, greeting me with his deep voice. “I have some good news.”
“I know you do!” I squeal, desperate to hear what he has to say. “I’ve been trying to wait patiently, but you two are making me crazy.”
Gerry chuckles, “Well, I figured Nick would have had you on speakerphone already, but I guess he likes to keep you waiting.”
“And so do you, so just get to it, please,” I demand, but as nicely as possible.
“I’ll start with the easy part; Nick’s contract has been voided, which means he is able to leave without any repercussions,” Gerry starts, and I let out a sigh of relief, realizing I’ve been holding my breath as I waited to hear the news.
“Do we have to pay back his signing bonus?” I quickly ask, which was our biggest concern. Knowing we don’t have a fine for breaking the contract helps, but what about the money Nick got for making the team?
“Nope, none of it. At this point, the US team will be reaching out to Nick to try to keep him quiet since they now know there is a pretty damning article in the works,” Gerry tells me. “They will always want to protect themselves from any negativity in the media, so they will probably try to buy Nick’s silence. That part is up to Nick and how he wants to proceed. It could be a lot of money. Obviously as your lawyer, I recommend staying away from anything that makes it so you are tied to them.”
I look over at Nick and he nods, indicating that he has no interest in taking any more money from the team. Neither of us want to be tied to that mess.
“Thank you, Gerry, we really appreciate you helping us with this,” I say, feeling a little guilty that we weren’t paying him. He might be part of the Holden company, but Nick and I aren’t, so he did this out of the kindness of his heart, getting paid by Max’s parents’.
“Don’t thank me,” Gerry says, a bit of a demand to his tone. “It’s you we have to thank for this, Elissa. You’re the one who contacted the journalist and she’s the one who got the whole thing going.”
“What?” I ask, confused.
“Yep, it was you. We wouldn’t have gotten this inside information if Gemma hadn’t started looking into things. She set a fire under the US team committee because they don’t want this kind of information coming out. Then all I did was reach out to the committee and ask for Nick to be released from his contract. It was quite simple in the end.”
“Wow,” I say, my word quiet. I had no idea it would come to this by asking Gemma to write a story about the team. I knew there were some sketchy things happening and I hoped it would help Nick’s case, but I had no idea it would play out like this.
