Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
I’d watched Nettie in championship games. I’d watched her play for the United States of America during the Olympics. I’d watched her fend off offers from Europe. I’d watched her sink her heart and soul into this game.
So yes, if anyone could come back and be just as good as she was pre-baby, it’d be this woman.
“How will that work with a baby?” I asked carefully. “Will you be taking her with you?”
She looked at me solidly then.
“I’ve negotiated a new contract,” she said softly. “With Oregon FC. In that contract, I’ve agreed to make two out of every five practices on site. The other three I’ve negotiated to do on my own at the state-of-the-art facility an hour away with a private coach with Oregon. When I need to be on site, they’ll send a private plane for me. I’ll do this for two years, where I’ll work with their young forward that’s in high school right now. She has three more years, and she refuses to leave high school before she graduates.”
“Oh, wow.” I blinked.
“They have a forward that’s retiring next year, so it works out perfectly,” she said. “And it works out great because that forward they’re hoping to bring to the team actually lives and plays here now.”
“Who? Bossy?” I asked, feeling like I already knew who.
She nodded her head in affirmation.
Nettie was a twin. Her twin sister was Eddy. Eddy was engaged to one of my club brothers, Weaver Grant. And Weaver Grant had a daughter that was a phenomenal soccer player. Berkley “Bossy” Grant.
I hadn’t realized that Bossy was that good.
To be honest, I hated soccer. So of course I wouldn’t pay attention to Bossy’s games.
I had an irrational hate for it because it’d stolen my life from me.
Maybe not in actuality, but that was what it felt like.
Each time she walked out of my door, it was because of the soccer game she needed to get back to.
It was impossible not to hate it.
“So where are you staying until you have to go back?” I asked carefully.
I fully expected her to say Miami, where her main residence was, and not the apartment that my father had bought for her and Eddy. The one he’d purchased for them when their parents had kicked them out when they’d found out that Nettie was pregnant.
My dad, the best man that I knew, was a softy.
He also hated my mother and would do anything he could to rile her up.
Like buying a couple of teen girls that he really liked an apartment building and letting them move into it when he knew it would piss his wife off.
“Here,” she said softly.
My entire being just…sighed.
“Oh, thank god.”
Her lips quirked. “But we have to set boundaries.”
I frowned. “What?”
“We can’t sleep in the same bed. We can’t be together, Boone. We will strictly be living together for the baby’s sake,” she stated. “I want you to be a father to this baby, Bart. Not on the periphery. When I start work again, I’ll have to leave and spend days away. I want the baby to have their life as uninterrupted as possible.”
Here.
She meant to live here.
With me.
This was…beyond anything I could’ve ever hoped to imagine.
Sure, she didn’t want to have a relationship.
But that was something I could work with.
I could make this work.
We could make this work.
She stood up and walked to the hall where she’d left her stuff, gathering it all up and standing at the door as she turned to look back at me.
We stared at each other for a long moment before she said, “And Boone?”
I swallowed hard. “Yes?”
“I don’t want your mother having any part in our baby’s life.” She backed up toward the door. “Not to hold her. Not to know anything about her. I want her nowhere near, or I’ll use every single cent I have in savings to fight you for her. Your mother comes anywhere near here, and you’ll regret it.”
With that announcement, she backed out of the house and shut the door.
My shoulders sank.
She would ask that.
The impossible.
Four
She’s really pleasant to be around unless she’s hungry, tired, hot, cold, thirsty, she can’t find her phone, or she’s otherwise slightly uncomfortable.
—Boone’s secret thoughts
Boone
“What do I do?” I asked my father.
He leaned back in his chair, his fingers steepled over his expensive Armani tie.
“You have a few options,” he offered. “We push the plan forward and see what we can accomplish early, or we continue on with the long-term version of the plan. And you try to explain to Nettie what you’re trying to make happen, and hope that she works with you.”
Work with my mother?
Never.
It’d taken me a while, but eventually I’d caught my mother in her lie.
She had had something to do with Nettie’s miscarriage.
It wasn’t like I didn’t believe Nettie when she’d told me what she suspected.